When I started my internship, I definitely did not think I knew anything about programming. I had convinced myself that I wasn’t good at anything and I was going to never succeed as a software engineer. I think this was a mixture of my own mental health at the time and seeing everything that my classmates were creating around me that I never thought I could do. However, as my internship progressed, I had mini victories every single day that showed me that I was going to succeed because I was proving to myself that I could overcome all of the obstacles in front of me. In the end, I was able to create an amazing internship project and my company loved it. They are still using it today and I’ll get to add more to it when I go back to work for Premera again in April (after I graduate).
Since I proved to myself that I can do anything I set my mind to (within reason, obviously), I have a lot to look forward to and a lot more I want to learn. My team at Premera consists of six systems engineers and me, the only software engineer. I’d like to dive into learning parts of their jobs and learn how to use skills from both jobs to make me a better programmer. I know I’ll be making plugins for the company, and I’d also like to learn how they build and automate pipelines. In addition, I’d like to learn more about cloud engineering and there is someone on my team that specializes in the cloud, so I’m excited to learn more.
If it had not been for this internship, I think I’d still feel very negatively about my abilities. So the most important thing I learned was to have confidence in myself.
Leave a Reply