Weekly Reflection Goals #4

At the start of the week, one of my goals was to apply to more internships. That past week, I had said that I gotten "in the zone" and applied to many internships. This week I did the same and applied to way more internships that I had previously done. It would have been more but the user interface on some of these sites had me commit errors that had me restart the application. Long story short, they infuriated me that I didn't even want to apply to their company. There was also one company who had stopped recruiting interns but still had their job posting up, so I did get an email explaining this. At least I know it was not based on my skills or work. This is quite thoughtful, although frustrating, of them to send an email as I do not know where I stand with others.

I was able to reschedule the over-the-phone internship interview that I mentioned last week for this morning. Long story short it went great! I'm moving on to the next steps, in the next business week. I am so grateful for the interviewer for being so understanding and sweet. This experience made me motivated again for this internship process.

I have not really practiced interviewing as much as I should have or looked for people to help me practice my interview questions. I really should. For todays class we did practice; especially behavioral questions, which I struggle with the most. I took advantage of the studio time for this class to re-write and write responses for questions asked. I used the good ol' method of pen and paper, which helps me write down my ideas faster.

Reflection Weekly Goals #3

At the beginning of the week, I had said that one of my successes way reaching out to my manager and asking him for interview tips, which I then used for my first phone interview. I thought it went well and it took longer than last year for them to deliberate that I was not moving to the next round 😅 so that's an improvement on its own.

I was going to have another phone interview this Friday but I had service connection issues and the interviewer was unable to reach me. That was such a bummer since I was excited for this interview since I felt more prepared but I hope we could reschedule for the end of February, as we talked about in our emails.

I also talked about how I had not applied to as many internships as I would like to. The same day, though, I got into the zone and applied to several internship and it continued into the week. I almost double the internships I had applied to, though I still want to apply to way more. Especially since I notice that a lot of the companies I had wanted to apply to stopped their search. The new way I will approach this internship applying is to now apply my top the companies first and then the fillers, so I do not miss out on any other opportunities.

Reflection of Weekly Goals #2

The other week, I set a couple of goals to be completed by the end of the week. This week, the same goals still stand. This article will keep me accountable and note my progress so far.

One of the goals was to apply to a great amount of internships; more specifically—ten or more. To be honest, I have not fulfilled this goal yet. I have only applied to two more internships this week, which is 80% less that I planned to. There is no real excuse other than me procrastinating, which is a huge problem for myself. This will not continue to happen as I really do want to land an internship.

One of the other goals was to prepare for interviews. I asked my manager if he could help me practice for an upcoming interview. He was really excited to help me, which was motivating, and supplied me with great insights. For example, my mentality, going into the interview. He said that I need to go in with the mentality of "Why should I join your company?," not "I want to join your company." He also helped me phrase answers using the STAR method: Situation, Task, Action, and Result. I was really grateful for all of his help.

These were my set goals and I at least completed one successfully but I still need to acknowledge the urgency of applying for internships and it seems like many are expiring in February. I wish there would have been more preparation last year, as many of my classmates agree. It was not shown as urgent last semester when a lot of the big tech companies were hiring but now we are bulldozed with reality.