Author: Samantha

During the internship, Leo was my go to person whenever I needed help of any kind. He always made sure I had everything I needed. He always provided me with resources and provided me with the up to date knowledge when it came to web development languages.

He was always willing to share his experiences with me when it came to his own past internship, the job hunt and how he is able to maintain a work-life balance. He also helped me decided whether or not I should pursue web design or web development. He explained he had gone through the same process while in school, but he figured out sooner he wanted to be in the web development field so he was disappointed when CityTech didn’t offer as many coding classes as he had hoped. He encouraged me to just code a little bit every day and stay up to date on the latest in the languages. He said everything he knows now is self-taught and that is how it usually is in web development.

Having Leo as my supervisor was a great experience. I learned a lot and was able to determine the next course in my career. Sounds like a successful mentor to me!

The Glimpse Group does a lot of events in hopes of gaining new clientele. My supervisor,Chris, is the one going to these events majority of the time. He goes to speak about our goals and who we are as a company. For this particular event, since it was at Fordham University School of Business (Columbus Ave) and close to the office, Chris asked me to help out. He told me he needed help setting up and gave me the task of running my own VR station. Whenever I had a VR experience, it was always set up for me, all I had to do was put the headset on. You can imagine I had no clue what to do. Also the VR experience I would be setting up was for a subsidiary I had never worked with, which was D6VR https://www.d6vr.io/. They focus mainly on graphs, charts and numbers for business meetings (which in my opinion is boring). So I had a boring station and in charge of setting up tech I never used before. Great. The odds were against me but I couldn’t help that I wanted to go and see what Chris did when he participated in these events.

Upon our arrival, the staff at the university were very helpful and we were able to set up right away. I had practiced setting up the VR station at the office so I was pretty confident I could help the student have a great experience. Once the students arrived, I instantly became so shy and could not network for the life of me. I was barely able to hold a conversation. The most I could do was explain the VR experience and tell them that this was great opportunity, which was good but I wanted to converse more. I just didn’t know how to begin a conversation. There were also other VR experience stations that weer much more fun, so my station didn’t attract many people.

In the end, the event was successful since Chris came to my rescue and began talking to the students in my station. But also, Chris was able to make a great speech on the great AR/VR was have at The Glimpse Group. This event taught me, I need to work on my networking skills and be more open to starting a conversation with others because you never know how those connections could benefit you in the future.

The internship experience was a great one. I learned a lot about myself and what I’ll be looking for in future employers. In the beginning of the internship, I doubted myself and didn’t think I had the skills to complete the tasks necessary. But, as the internship progressed, I became really excited. It helped me realized that web design and development was something I really wanted to do and I became super motivated to make sure my work was the best. I remember talking to my partner and telling him, “I wish I was getting paid for this!”. In telling him that, I wanted to talk to my supervisor about working there. He agreed and said hopefully at the end of the internship, they would try and hire me. As the internship progressed and continued to work on the same project, I did get a little bored. Doing the same project every time I was in the office, I started loosing a bit of motivation and my progress was slower than it was in the beginning. I told myself I needed to stick it out and this is how it would be if I was working full-time. I started to progress a bit more since I knew I could begin the development process once the design was completed. I was simply waiting for the approval of the UX/UI designer and supervisor. Once it was finally approved, I was motivated again to show them the developer skills I had. But the design was a lot more complex then I realized. There were a lot of elements I had no idea how to code. Majority of the time it was a lot of self teaching as Leo didn’t have the time to sit down and help me. But he was very helpful and gave me all the tools necessary in order to solve any issues I had. There was also a lot of new material and things I didn’t learn when I was in school, so all of these things really discouraged me and in the end, I didn’t get to develop as much as I wanted.

As a whole, I feel like I could have done a lot better. I let my lack of confidence jeopardize my performance. At times I gave up and didn’t do the research necessary to complete certain tasks. Looking back, I know I shouldn’t have been so hard on myself because it was an internship and I was still learning. But also, I should have had more discipline and done the research and taught myself what I needed to know.

In the end, they couldn’t hire me because they didn’t have the budget. I was really heartbroken and even cried, but it was a lesson learned. Don’t give up half way and give 110% the entire time. It’s my life and I need to dedicate myself to my education because technology and coding languages are always changing and I need to keep up to be able to stay in the field.

Majority of my internship, I was on my own at my desk doing my work. For me, having so much independence was a new experience. I normally always envisioned someone looking over my shoulder and constantly letting me know what needed to be done and by when. So when that wasn’t the case for this internship, I was honestly thrilled. I myself work better when I don’t have someone hovering over me because I tend to get nervous and make more mistakes then I usually would on my own. I found that I work very well in this type of independent environment. I understand what’s needed of me and I make sure to get it done in a timely manner to allow myself room for error and to make an necessary changes if necessary. When looking for more internship and jobs, I’m looking for the same work environment because I feel like that is where I thrive.

Majority of the time during my internship I was working alone at my desk. There weren’t any projects where I needed to collaborate with someone. There was a lot of critiques and suggestions from the UX/UI designer but no one worked on the web design except for me.

Also, when the development process began the majority of the coding was done on my own. Leo was very busy with other projects that had a sooner deadline, so he wasn’t able to code alongside me as we had hoped.

During my internship, I struggled with the idea of whether or not I wanted to become a Web Designer or a Web Developer. While working on the projects for Early Adopter, majority of the time I was doing web designing. This entailed a lot of sketching, wireframes and Photoshop work. I always needed to update my supervisor on the progress I was making and ensuring the design is what the company needed. While I very much enjoy the design aspect, I also really enjoy the development and coding. When designing the website, you see it’s potential and what it’s going to become, when coding the design is finally coming to life. There is a lot more trial and error because code break and doesn’t always work the way you want or the way you expect. It can also be frustrating at times, especially when you have an idea but you don’t know how to code it. That’s when you have to research and look for the best possible way to effectively execute your idea.

I was fortunate enough that Leo was much more interested in the development aspect as well. I was able to learn a lot from him and he helped me choose whether or not I wanted to be a developer vs a designer. As of right now, I’m a much better designer than I am developer and I have much more confidence in my design skills then my coding. But, I was encouraged my Sarah, who is the UX/UI designer, to pursue a career in web design and build upon my development skills within the position. I feel like that was he best advice I could have gotten.

I really thankful for the opportunity to find out what I want to pursue so I can spend my time and energy perfecting my coding skills. Coding languages are always changing, so it’s very important to stay on top of it and learn what’s new.

GitHub is a global company that provides hosting for software development version control using Git. It is a subsidiary of Microsoft, which acquired the company in 2018 for $7.5 billion. It offers all of the distributed version control and source code management functionality of Git as well as adding its own features.

GitHub is a development platform inspired by the way you work. From open source to business, you can host and review code, manage projects, and build software alongside 40 million developers.

When the development part of the internship began, GitHub was how my supervisor Leo and I were able to keep each other updated on the progress of the code. When using GitHub, I can work on the development for the website and run the updates through the iTerminal. Once the updates are completed, Leo can see them and continue developing where I left off.

For the duration of my internship, I worked using Photoshop 80% of the time. When I first began, I needed to convert a lot of images to PNGs for the 3D artist. There were over 500 photos. My laptop was also very old and couldn’t handle Photoshop converting a mass about of images at one go, so I had to convert the images one by one. It was very frustrating but I knew it needed to be done.

Once all the file converting was done, I was finally able to sit down with the UX/UI designer Sarah and discuss where to begin with designing the website. Normally, a web designer create the wireframe but Sarah went ahead and did some of here own. She explained what they potentially wanted done for the site, but I was able to edit it how I saw fit.

The workplace culture at The Glimpse Group office is very casual. Our attire was business casual. On an everyday basis, I would go in with a tshirt, some simple skinny jeans and some boat shoes since the weather was warm. On occasion, I would wear a blazer.

My day began at 10AM and I was able to take a break at any time. On certain days, I would go out for lunch and stay out wherever I decided to have lunch at. On other days, I would sit at my desk and not leave the office for the entire day, up until 5PM when it was time to leave.

My supervisor Chris was also very flexible with my work schedule. My days were Monday, Thursday and Friday. On occasion, I would need to switch days and he was very willing to switch my days and ever gave me a difficult time. Also, if I needed a day off he was willing to work with me. As long as I communicated with him on which days I needed off or needed to switch, he was okay with everything. I also always made sure I got my work done and kept him up to date on my progress and what my next steps in were in the process of the design.

I simply love this work environment and the work relationship I had with Chris. We always had open communication and he was always transparent on what work needed to be done and by when it needed to be done. He also always gave me space to let me just get my work done and if I needed any help I could always go to him or to Leo. I hope in the future, whether it’s another internship or a new job I hope to be working in a similar environment.