Counter-Blog: Path to Awesomeness
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Jason is an intern at the company I work for and he wrote his take on the Path to Awesomeness. As a mentor, I hope to be helping him along his awesome journey. I decided to write a counter-blog that talks about how I'm helping him along the way.
- Learn bout real projects: Requirements, customers, deadlines. Ah the joy of real projects. The classroom environment tries to provide these things, but it doesn't compare to working on a real project. We put our interns on existing projects that will expose them to all of stresses and fun times of a real world project. Right now Jason is working on a real world project and doing quite well.
- Learn about research: The first day that Jason started, I gave him an article on How To Ask Questions The Smart Way. Since that day he has never asked me another dumb question ;) But as Aaron pointed out in his comment, the research skill that we want to impress on our interns is learning how to research. My goal is to expose Jason to a wide variety of interesting science topics which may spark some interest and maybe some gradute research of his own.
- Learn about software development processes: I'm concentraing very hard in this area to teach him about the entire software process. On his journey, I want to him to be fluent in software tools such as Eclipse, JUnit, Checkstyle, Findbugs, and other static analysis tools. I'm focusing on his code quality and implementation with frequent code reviews using Jupiter. I'm trying to get him to start off with good habits by commiting early and often. He got familiar with Hudson, our continous integration build server, by adding his own module to the integration build. My goal is for Jason to absorb as much as possible by working closely with the developers on the project team.
- Learn how to learn: Figuring out problems on your own is a very important skill to have. As everyone knows, Google is your friend. This might be the most important skill for to learn because it will help you throughout your entire career. Basically, learning how to learn means trying to figure out a problem on your own. If you still don't understand what is going on, think of some educated questions and ask your peers. They will be more than happy to help if you have invested some time on the problem. This item is a must for all interns to understand. Luckily, Jason picked this one up on his first day.
- Learn how to increase marketability: Jason wasn't too sure on this item. We want our interns to be wanted by companies in the high-tech industry. Our goal is to increase the skills of our interns for their benefit rather than our own company interests. By increasing our interns value, they in turn increase our company's value. Marketability means having something other companies want, like your l33t skillz. We want everyone to see that you outperform everyone else at the same level. We want you to stand out and be awesome amongst your peers. How we want to accomplish this is by exposing our interns to as wide array of work experiences that they can't get in school, but also focusing on key areas that we believe will help them succeed and stand out.
- Learn about the industry: Finally, we want to our interns to know what's out there. What other types of work is out their in the government and private sectors. By showing them what type of work is available, they can make a choice on their career path. Hopefully that career path involves our company, but we want our interns to enjoy their career. We want to help them succeed in their career and life even if that means saying goodbye.
