The month before my first internship, I read Alexey MK’s A Brief Guide to Tech Internships. In it, Alexey talks about his internships at Facebook and 2bkco, and what he learned from both.

I used Alexey’s experiences as reference all the time as I interned. So I wanted to pay it forward by sharing my own personal experiences.

Here goes :)

But wait who am I?

I’m Rishi, and I’m a Computer Science graduate from UC San Diego. I started this blog to write more for my friends.

I’ve also done my time on the internship circuit. 5 internships now, which is as many as those pesky Waterloo kids do!

I have interned at Qualcomm, Apple, Google, Zenreach and Flexport.

I was pretty fortunate to get a head start. I took AP Computer Science and attended multiple hackathons in high school.

Qualcomm

My first internship, what I lacked in experience, I made up for in enthusiasm. I came to work the...

Here’s how I managed my email through email-heavy recruiting seasons:

1. If you have multiple email addresses (like a school address), set up mail forwarding to a primary email address

Mobile apps can consolidate and show your emails across accounts, but you want to see your emails across one inbox on desktop too.

2. Use Gmail with its Primary, Social, Promotions, and Updates tabs.

If an email arrives in the Primary tab, but should be in another tab, or vice versa, drag it to the appropriate tab, and mark “yes”:

You won’t miss emails.

3. Every time you log into your email, check (as in check the checkbox) of emails you would no longer want to see in any tab.

Set up a filter that automatically archives emails like these.

4. Treat your primary inbox as a task list. Archive the email if and only if you complete the associated task, probably to read it.

This has worked super...

In part 1, I shared my freshman and sophomore year internship experiences. Here, I share my junior year internship at Google Canada.

I found myself in Waterloo, Canada because I wanted to explore a place outside the Bay Area. Now, all my friends are Canadian 😠. I’ll write about my Canadian adventures outside the office another time.

On with the story:

Google Canada

My internship at Google didn’t look like it was going to be much different. I thought I was still going to be insecure about work, since I hadn’t done jack at Qualcomm, and didn’t get a return offer from Apple. But things were boutta change!

At Google, I started keeping a work journal as a Google Doc. Every day, I would go to my journal, add the date at the top, and use that entry as a scratchpad for the day.

Like so:

Wed 8/16/19
…

Tues 8/15/19
…

Mon 8/14/19
…

Here’s a sample entry (from a later internship):

I...

I’ve recently come up with this principle I call, always ask.

Think to a time when someone dropped something in conversation you didn’t know or didn’t understand.

Maybe a technical concept. An inside joke. A pop culture reference.

Did you pass it off as if you did understand? Or did you ask them to explain?

Unfortunately, I usually tend to pass it off. I let them keep talking, or worse, I pretend to know what they just referenced.

This is the easy way out.

Most of my life, I didn’t really “get” music. That is, I didn’t get the music my friends listened to.

I did like music. I was really into Tamil (Indian) music and I’d spend hours listening. But I never knew what American music was.

Over time though, I learned to fake it really well. I never wanted to straight up ask what song was playing, because I didn’t want to reveal how uncultured I was.

Earlier this year, I stopped faking...

[If you’re a responsible person, this article is not for you…]

Last weekend, I totally neglected myself and my needs while moving to Waterloo, then traveling to New York City. My trip was:

San Diego > Toronto > Waterloo > Toronto > New York City

over two days.

This was a humbling experience for me. I’ve prided myself on being above creature comforts. Now though, I realize I too have some basic comforts I want covered.

Some achievements I unlocked:

• Slept 6 hours in 2 days
• Snapped at mom for no reason twice in 2 days
• Ate only a granola bar in 24 hours
• Stayed in a prison cell 1 star hotel in Chinatown
• Held pee through a 2 hour bus ride
• Peed behind a building shortly after
• General mayhem

In light of this episode, I’ve decided to reflect on taking care of myself LOL

Sleep

At first, I was confident I hated Canada and New York, because I was so low on sleep. When you’re low on sleep...

This post I will explore why and what I want to write.

Before I can ask myself why I want to write, I would have answer the question, do I want to write?

Well, I know I love to read. I remember as a kid, my mom would tease me for taking too long to poop. I wasn’t caught until sixth grade, when she found a copy of Eragon under the bathroom sink. I was and am a compulsive reader.

I usually question what I know about myself, but I can easily accept as fact that I love to read.

I can also accept that I enjoy thinking. I believe there are meanings, explanations, and systems behind most things, and I think hard to uncover them. I’ve been described by a friend as intense in this way.

If I enjoy reading and thinking, it must be likely I enjoy writing. Reading and researching, and thinking and analyzing precede writing.

Now, I’ve read writing is distilled thinking. So, what I would hope to...

I read 1Q84 a year ago, and there was this character I adored, Tengo. Tengo lives a simple life. He teaches math three days a week at a cram school

Here’s Murakami, describing Tengo’s four days at home:

“When he was home, Tengo usually wrote from first thing in the morning until the approach of the evening. All he needed to satisfy him was his Mont Blanc pen, his blue ink, and standard manuscript sheets, each page lined with four hundred empty squares ready to accept four hundred characters.Once a week his married girlfriend would come to spend the afternoon with him. Sex with a married woman ten years his senior was stress free and fulfilling, because it wouldn’t lead to anything. As the sun was setting, he would head out for a long walk, and once the sun was down, he would read a book while listening to music. He never watched television.”

For me, there is something in Tengo’s...

To celebrate the end of finals my freshman year of college, I binged the TV series Master of None. I must not have paced it well, because when I finished, I felt terrible. My eyes hurt from staring at the screen, and my body ached from laying in bed all day.

Sure, I enjoyed the show. But ultimately, binging on the show left a bad taste in my mouth.

Introducing TTA (Time to Aftertaste)

After a long TV session, the aftertaste I’m describing is probably the most pronounced. But this aftertaste follows other media too.

If you’ve ever spent an evening browsing the Internet for too long, you might know what I mean.

At first, the articles are interesting, and informative. After an hour though, you might have been overloaded with information. You might find yourself far from your research topic, now on Buzzfeed or on Youtube.

You end your session of Internet browsing with an aftertaste...

I de-activated Facebook and Messenger for a week this month, and this post reflects on my findings.

Halfway through that same week, I also deleted most apps on my phone, including Gmail and Chrome/Safari. My post tomorrow will reflect on that.

Disclaimer

I’m not a stranger to limiting my access to social websites and apps. While this week turned out to be a challenge, I’ve taken similar steps before. I previously deleted my Snapchat and Instagram accounts, and the Facebook app on my phone.

This post will not be about Facebook, which I barely use, just Messenger.

Motivation

I de-activated Facebook and Messenger because I was glued to my phone the week before. It was early in the quarter, so my friends were generally active on Messenger.

My intent was to clear my head and to be less needy. This was mostly done on a whim, as an experiment.

Starting troubles

The first day was the...