In a short but albeit it very adventurous undergraduate professional career, I’ve had the privilege of spending each of my internships in unique locations. This summer was no different and I found myself driving up the entire west coast up to Seattle where I spent the summer on VR/AR team in Google Seattle!
While I can’t say too much about my team given some confidentiality agreements, I can proudly say that research and development team I was on focused on real-time 3D human capture and rendering, which gave me the opportunity to learn a lot about the field of computer graphics, despite my limited exposure to research in the field of computer science. It was also more than a little gratifying to be given so much knowledge and agency as an intern. I was given access to internal tools and information and given the start up-y vibe of the team, I knew the work that I would be doing would undoubtedly continue to see use beyond my the length of my internship. My increased knowledge over the C++ language and my further understanding on how to write code that is healthy, extensible, and developer friendly code have been major takeaways from the far to short time I spent with my amazing team at Google.
The company I worked for wasn’t the only highlight of my summer. I also fell in love with Seattle as a city. It was my first time in the Pacific Northwest and I was truly taken aback by how beautiful it is during the summer. The weather was always just right, lingering always around 80 degrees, making it perfect for all sorts of outdoor activities. One of my favorite memories of the summer was going kayaking down Lake Union with my team; nothing like having fun on company dollar! The brilliant green of Washington also had me do my fair share of hiking that culminated into a weekend getaway to Olympic National Park! While the hike was killer for a newbie like me, nothing will ever really beat the view from a peak you’ve worked so hard to get to. Seattle is undoubtedly a city I would recommend anyone and everyone should visit at least at one point in their lives and one I am eager to revisit.
