No pain, no gain

My name is Sang Ok Suh. I’m currently taking the last class of the OSU post-bacc CS program, the class that’s forcing to me start this blog. I’ve always wanted to start a blog but I never really had the courage to do it, maybe because I’m not confident with my writing skills or maybe I’m just too lazy. But here it goes!

Two years seemed like eternity when I first started this program. I was just starting my first job out of college as a data analyst at a mobile game company. I was excited about work and this program but knew that the workload will be stressful.

COVID happened, which changed the whole work situation; forcing me to work from home during my last one and a half years at the gaming company and also during my recent Summer Internship at Walmart as a Software Engineer Intern.

I kept track of my Summer internship hunt and it took me over 6 months and 300 applications to land an internship. I initially applied to about 200 companies from September to November of last year which resulted in rejections after taking the Online Assessments that usually asked leetcode-styled problems. I solved about 15 leetcode problems then and I knew I wasn’t ready so I spent the next two months on leetcode every day.

After two months and over 100 leetcode problems, I was ready to apply again. I applied to about 100 more companies and eventually passed the final rounds for two companies. I ended up joining Walmart and had a great internship experience (which I’m planning to write a blog post about). I think that experience helped me land my current Fall internship at a local finance company.

I’m finally at the tail end and two years indeed felt like an eternity. Taking classes while working full-time required a lot of sacrifice and good time management. But I’m glad that I went through all that work because no pain, no gain.