Mid Semester Check-in

This term has been flying by fast and quite honestly, there are so many events that have happened in the past bit. I decided to drop Functional Programming despite that it sounded like a super fun class with a super awesome prof. Unfortunately, when I checked my school credits, I was already 9 credits over the minimum 120 credits. I did not need Functional Programming for graduation so it was a $400 'fun' class that was a little too expensive in my opinion. I was already taking EECE 412 Introduction to Computer Security, a 4-credit $600 class for fun. I have been missing classes a lot lately because I have been making various trips out of town. Let me recap them.

3 weeks ago, I was at Club Regionals competing with Traffic to qualify for a spot to USA Ultimate Club Championships. The first day was perfect weather and our team played really well. However, the next day came with horrendous, Pacific Northwest rain and wind and my team did not perform up to our expectations. With a tough finals loss, we came 2nd to qualify as the 5th seed to the Club Championships. After that, I took off to Redmond/Bellevue area for my Microsoft full-time interview. If anyone of you has ever interviewed with Microsoft, you would know that they treat interviewees well. I stayed at Marriott Residence Inn in Redmond and the whole process was super well organized. I went to Seattle the next day to see my old colleagues from Amazon before heading to Bellevue Square Mall to look around. Didn't buy anything though. The next day I had my interviews and they went well. I ended up receiving a full-time offer from them for which I have still been deciding between Amazon and Microsoft's offers.

After coming back and staying for a week, the following week, I took off to the Grace Hopper Conference in Minneapolis. While there were about 15 students from UBC attending this conference and majority of us receiving funding from our department to go to the conference, we flew out of Seattle to help save some money for the trip. While saving $250 each was nice, we lost 1.5 days to travel which was more 'expensive' than I thought it was. I'm not sure if I would have went the same way if I had a second chance. Anyways, the conference was amazing. Minneapolis was a lot warmer than I have expected. It was super inspiring to meet various groups of technical women that have made great achievements through their own struggles. It was so great to see how hard work and perseverance can lead to great things. I met my Amazon (AWE) mentor, Marissa at the conference too! I got to meet and connect with various technical women that were so open to listening to my concerns and giving me quite advice. In terms of the talks, some of the technical and researched base talks were interesting but they weren't super in depth which was a little disappointing in my opinion but it was hard to cater for a large, diverse audience. I personally really enjoyed the talks on career development especially due to the fact that I have a slight glimpse of the industry from my internship experiences but have yet to face the full sets of challenges that a full-timer would see. There were lots of little things (ex: negotiation with your manager, how to grow your career, getting promotion, etc...) that I would never think about. I would really love to attend this conference in future years as a non-student.

The career fair seemed to be even bigger and better this year. Not only did I get invited to a handful of interviews, there were lots of excellent swag to get. I only went and got the ones that I really wanted because I thought it was wasteful to just grab everything that was free. I really liked the Google plastic folders, Red Hat wallet, Amazon AWE pull-up, $10 iTune, Dropbox tshirt! I ate too much popcorn during the conference too. I also answered a coding challenge from Amazon that gave me a Coding Ninja figure and a pink t-shirt that has yet to arrive. A Google recruiter approached me after the conference asking if I wanted to interview for a full time position. Honestly, I have two awesome full-time offers already that have deadlines in the upcoming week. I don't think I'll be able to make use of the opportunity this time around.

For this week back, I've been trying to get ahead with school work. My Computer Security group has decided to do a project on Binaural CAPTCHA as Human Interactive Proof on Massive Online Gaming. It's an interesting topic and perhaps something that may be useful! I'm going to be away all of this week to head to Frisco (near Dallas), Texas for the USA Ultimate Club Championships. I'm super stoked and excited for the competition. Time for me to get packing!