One of the most important parts of learning is gaining awareness of what areas you have for improvement.
My internship gave me a lot of opportunities to discover my strengths as well as weaknesses as well as clarity and insight into what I should be working on moving forward.
When I initially started working on my second Java ticket, I thought it would take roughly the same amount of time as my first Java ticket, since the tasks were quite similar.
However, it ended up taking me more than twice as long to complete due to a few mistakes I made in my initial approach.
First, I didn’t take as much time thinking and learning about the problem and thoroughly considering how to implement a solution before I started coding.
I learned that investing that time and effort up front to understand the problem can help you create a solution more quickly and effectively.
Second, I tried to work on two tickets at once since the next (my third) ticket touched a similar part of the codebase.
However, I ended up introducing unneeded complexity that slowed me down.
Going forward, I took away the lesson that, while it is good to think about building a solution that is extensible, it can be very important to focus on breaking things down and doing one thing well at a time, especially when you’re learning.
Like I mentioned before, the internship also gave me a better idea of what growth areas I’d like to develop further for myself in my career.
I want to work on developing my technical skills as a software engineer like implementation, design, and my ability to read and write code.
I also want to continue focusing as well on my soft skills such as leadership, written and verbal communication, and planning.
Finally, I’d like to explore new fields within the software world that interest me such as machine learning, personalized education, and audio processing.
In conclusion, this internship experience has been a great way of identifying where there is room for growth for myself in my craft as a software engineer.
