Hey everyone!
I hope you’re all having wonderful summers! Mine has been fantastic – easily one of my favorite summers to date. This blog is meant to be a mid-summer update: I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to so far this summer, and then what’s coming up the rest of the summer.
I started my summer by volunteering at Viterbi Commencement. It was so fun and exciting to see my friends and (slightly older) classmates graduate. It made me pretty excited for my own graduation, but also a little nostalgic – I can’t believe I’m already a senior! It feels like I was just attending summer orientation for freshmen.
After Commencement, I headed home to Portland, Oregon for almost a month. This was actually the longest amount of time I’ve spent in Portland for a couple of years now, so it was a wonderful chance to see family and reconnect with high school friends. I spent a lot of time enjoying the summer weather – hiking, visiting the beach, and eating tons of fresh fruits and vegetables. It was awesome, but after a couple of weeks of vacation I was definitely ready to start my internship.
So as I mentioned in my last blog of the semester, this summer I am working as a technology consulting intern (Advisory Summer Associate) for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in San Francisco. I started in June, so I’ve been on-the-job for a little over a month now, and I’m having the most amazing internship experience. I’m getting a lot of opportunities to learn from and network with other PwC professionals, and apply my classroom knowledge and experiences to the “real world.”
I started the internship with training in Orlando, Florida. It was actually my first time visiting the sunshine state. The orientation and training in Florida was a neat learning and networking opportunity, plus I ran into a couple of awesome Viterbi students there.
We found Juliana! @viterbistudent s take PwC intern training! #ViterbiCareers pic.twitter.com/709KXTW7WZ
— Lauren Howe (@USCLauren) June 16, 2015
After finishing up training in Orlando, I returned to San Francisco and started client service work. If you’re not familiar with consulting, the way it’s structured at many firms like PwC is a little different from traditional industry work. Most of the PwC professionals on my team travel to their client site Monday – Thursday. So one of my coworkers, for example, might be based in Boston, and fly out to work on a client engagement in San Francisco every week. Many weeks she would fly out Monday morning, work on-site Monday – Thursday, and then fly back to Boston Thursday night, work in the Boston office or work remotely (from home) on Friday, stay the weekend, and then repeat. For interns it’s a bit different – some interns are traveling a lot (like Jordan) and some, like me, are staying pretty close to the area we live in. I think it’s safe to say that for many consultants, the job involves a lot of travel. At this point in my life I find that very appealing, but I would imagine that lifestyle is not for everyone. While I’ve been working very hard this summer, I’ve also had plenty of opportunities for fun adventures as well. For the 4th of July weekend, I took my first-ever trip to Texas! I visited one of my best friends (a fellow Viterbi engineer) in his hometown of Houston, Texas. We had an absolute blast, despite the sweltering humidity. I don’t know how you Texas-natives tolerate it – Los Angeles may be sunny and warm, but it’s almost never humid – I am quite grateful.
My first time in Houston! Had such a fun holiday weekend with @brybrycurtis and @JackRockLucas pic.twitter.com/oxHSaeNnmN — Juliana Porter (@juliana_porter) July 5, 2015
I’ve also had plenty of time to explore the amazing city of San Francisco. In addition to looking around on my own, my mom and I did some fun activities when she came down for her birthday weekend. We also have a lot of intern events at PwC. We took a boat cruise / tour of the San Francisco bay, did a community service event at the food bank, and we’re attending a San Francisco Giants game next week.
Well, that’s my summer so far – busy, but wonderful. I have about two more weeks left of my internship. After that, I’ll hang out in San Francisco for a bit longer before returning to Los Angeles to move in to my new house! I’m planning to fly home to Portland for a week in mid-August, and then it’s pretty much time for school to start again. I have a lot to look forward to this year – more on that in a future blog!
Until next time,
Juliana
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