Why Not?

Last fall I went into the school year with a few expectations.  I would stay there for the year, be a Resident Adviser, find a new internship for next summer, and just have an all around good time.  Then came the time of the fall’s Engineering expo.  I was invited to a lunch with company recruiters, professors, and other scholarship winners from the past year.  At my table I got to sit with the recruiters from IBM, Google, Microsoft, and a defense contractor.  It was an enjoyable lunch, great (free) food, and a chance to get to know various reps.  When the lunch was finished and before I got back to my room at my computer, I already received an email from the IBM recruiter asking me if I would be interested in a co-op in Raleigh, NC.

I had never been to Raleigh before, not even North Carolina, and I was scared to go at first because of the horrible time I had in West Virignia the summer before.

How was I going to meet people?  Were there going to be others there my age?  Where will I live?  What is there to do there?

And how do I feel at the end of it all?  Raleigh. is. awesome.

The past seven months have been one of the best times I have ever experienced.

The only other times in my life that have been equivalent to this were my summers at Camp Marshall.  Looking back on it, the reason I loved my summers there was because I grew as a person throughout each summer.  The people there were always older and more mature than me, and being from all around the world, all had varying amounts of wonderful stories and experiences.  Camp was the place where I developed who I was as a person, it helped create the personality I have today. Unfortunately, there was a quality of my personality that I was never able to embrace while there, and that was my geeky side. This is the reason why I loved my co-op so much.

Working at IBM was an amazing experience because of all the friends, colleagues, and people I was able to meet.  The people I interacted with were of a sort that I always wished I grew up around.  These people were experts in my field, all at varying levels in various specialties.  I have been able to meet authors of technical books I have seen, commiters for major open source projects, executives who have decided what products will do, heck my boss alone helped launch a space ship.  My mind was blown. But the real enjoyment came from the other co-ops I met. The friendships born from the people in the same position as me were the ones I cherish most.  It was these people with whom I could trauly be myself and embrace the geeky side of me.  These people inspired me greatly just from the amount of passion and drive some of them had.  These people helped to push me to be a better developer, a better thinker, and much more experienced with my field.  These were the friends who I could come up with an idea ofr a hack, a mod, a website, or program, and they would push me as much as my push them to learn and create these ideas.  For that, I could not thank them enough because I now feel like I am becoming an expert in my field.

Beyond that, there was so much that I was able to experience and do with them.  Almost everyone I met had the same mindset when an idea was brought up: let make it happen.  This is the mindset that I believe is what makes people enjoyable, it allows random fun, exciting adventures to happen.  Just to name some of the most memorable I had:

-The Krispy Kreme Challenge
-Skydiving
-White Water Rafting
-Creating a pool of Non-newtonian Fluid
-Patent Meetings
-Working from anywhere
-This game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-WVC2JsJ9o
-Sir Circus Rock Band Group
-Salsa Dancing

And this is not even scratching the surface of what IBM alone offered me. The chance to work with people from around the world.

Thank you to everyone that helped to give me a wonderful time full of amazing memories.