Internship Journals

On the last day of my internship in 1 Paste Inc with Colin’s guide, I bought him a thank you letter to thanks him for guiding me to step into the real world. However, he just got a new job in a company that needs him to work on-site for a period of time so he can’t continue guiding me and giving me project. He referred me to one of his friend’s company to continue learning from the real world.

For this Journal I want to talk about I got a new task from the previous client about the shipping center website. On the first task, he asked for the English version of the website. This time he assigned us a new project which adds a Chinese version of the website so his main customer, Chinese, can read the website as well, even they don’t speak English. Like last time, he wants the project done very quickly.

Since computers which bought in this country is English base, add a new language version to the website is not a big problem but making sure all computer can read the text became one of the main minor problems we need to face.

During the internship job, I found myself doesn’t have enough skill to finish clients’ project by myself. I downloaded a lot of mobile apps for me to learn and practice while I am on the bus to the office and inspect the code for the project I had worked and Colin fixed for me. Moreover, I am feeling the life real industrial in much different than the life in school.

On the last Journal, I talked about we got a client he wants the project done within 5 days, and we accept the challenge. since I didn’t finish my code fast enough because every time when I stuck at some points I always stop there and google for the answers instead of finish everything I knew first then do the search, so at the end I leave very short time for Colin to finish the rest of the code, the back-end. Even Colin has a very good coding skill, it still takes him to finish the work plus fix my errors until mid-night for 2days. After we submit the work to the client, very likes it and paid us more than we ask when we meet.

here is the website for this fast project.  http://www.shipspace.com/

On 10/24/17, Colin called me in the morning say that he just got a client, do I have time to meet the client on the afternoon. Since I am mostly free on that day, I choose to go meet the client with him on that day. This client’s company is in Brooklyn after I drove there I realize that it is very hard to find a  parking spot and it is almost meet the time for the appoint, so I have to park my car in a meter spot and hope the meeting will don’t when the meter expire so I don’t have to run down to pay for the meter again. Colin is lucky he found a spot, so he told me if the meeting is so long that you need to go down for the meter again, don’t tell the client you are going to a meter, just tell him you need to go to bathroom because you will never want your client to feel you are worrying about another thing besides the meeting. On the meeting, the client told us he wants to have a website which has both Chinese and English, also he wants it done by the end of the week. After a little conversation between me and Colin, we decided to do this challenge.

I almost get surprised every day either from how the company is running and my supervisor’s coding skills. After I got the first project, I spend a lot of time and all my skills from school to build and develop it.   At the last week of the deadline. I finish all the design and code, then let Colin finish the back-end of the code. however, on the second day, after I send my work to Colin, he said to me that I used a lot of extra and not necessary code in the syntax it may cost the website load slower. He printed out a piece of the copy of my code and explain to me how to simplify my code. I am so confused at the beginning because some of the codes are learned from school but after his explanation, I understand that I just overuse the code I that I commonly use. The second thing he notices me is I need to organize my code better for later edit because almost no one can fulfill client project at the first time, they always ask us to fix things.

On the second week, Colin hired me as his intern, he brought me to one of his clients. It is the company that I applied for intern before. before entering the door of the building Colin tells the client that I am going to in charge of this project from the beginning, talk to the client ask for their needs and “pollute their mind”, he uses the word pollute because this will make us easier to finish our job, and coding is somehow harder than using photoshop, sometimes a little change, most of the code needs to be rewritten again. however, I didn’t successfully pollute the client and keep asking me to do more and discount on price then Colin jumps out and helps me the fight back and get extra money for the project. This super surprises me again as I have been hired.

1 Paste Inc, is a company that does website and promotion for other company, my position in the company is front-end web designer. At the time when Colin asked me am I interested to work with him as an intern, I answered him immediately because at my first interview in the other company was not so good as I expect and I don’t want to waste too much time on the hunt for a job at that moment.

After I scheduled an interview with him, I remember a tip from one of my Web design class professors that interviewer will ask people to write code on a paper instead of testing them on a screen, so I spend the rest of the time to read and tried to remember all the code that I had wrote for other websites I made for homework. At the time when I arrive at his office, I feel very surprised, because the company is so small, either number of member and the site. however, not surprised, Colin asked me the write a simple website from a random webpage that he picks from Google on a piece of paper.

1 Patse Inc is the private company that I working as an internship. I am so lucky that I don’t need to hunt too much for an internship because the supervisor is one of my friends that I made from an Asian festival even couple years ago. This is a very small company, only three people work there. The office of this company is located on flushing, Roosevelt Ave.

Even though the company is very small, but there are a lot of works there because everybody is representing a department. like my supervisor, Colin, he is the one who manages the web development department.