Forever-Digital is a look inside the life and mind of 
Archive for May, 2008
05.13.2008 | The Verdict Is In…
Pack your bags because this summer I’ll be blogging to you from one of my favorite places on the planet. That’s right kids, I’m headed back to San Francisco! After a full week of edge-of-your-seat nail-biting suspense, I got the final offer last night! I don’t think a week has ever felt so long!
So what’s this absolutely perfect internship I went on about in my last post? What could be so incredibly awesome that I’m going to drop my summer classes, put off my research, pack up and fly across the country in less than 14 days? I’ll tell you what:
That’s right! In less than two weeks, I’ll be sitting in orientation at Yahoo! HQ for the second time. Crazy, isn’t it? I mean, Flickr is, by far, my favorite site on the web. And now I get to work there?! I still can’t get over it. Try it - search my archives for “flickr” - I mention it in 56 entires!
Now the fun begins. On top of the 2 projects I have standing between me and summer, I have to find a place to live in San Francisco (and boy is that always a treat) and pack up because I’m probably headed out some time next week! Talk about a whirlwind!
Here’s to getting out of Ithaca in one piece!
05.06.2008 | Decisions
I know, I know, I’m a huge blogging slacker. You know how it goes though - end of the school year, life as a Sun editor, sleep - it all adds up to subtracting from blogging time. I was doing so well too!
Since I kind of left everyone who doesn’t follow me on Twitter or know me in real life hanging, I thought I’d do a quick catch up on what became of my last post (my interview with Microsoft)…
As I mentioned, I did get an offer from Microsoft to be a UX (user experience) intern. I turned it down. Boy, let me tell you the looks I got from my friends. “Are you insane?!” Well, sometimes, yes. But this time? Not at all. I put a lot of thought into it. A LOT of thought. In the end though, I realized that it wasn’t the place for me at this time in my career. I was really looking for a UX position that involved research and working with users. I was looking for something that was different from last summer’s internship. The position I was offered involved web design, which is all well and good. I really enjoy designing sites. But as I realized last summer, I don’t really like doing it in a corporate setting. Maybe for a smaller company, or maybe on the side, but too many cooks in my Photoshop kitchen is just not how I work. The people I interviewed with were really nice and I would probably have really enjoyed working with them, but I felt like the internship was too similar to the one I’d already experienced and In the end, I realized that it just wasn’t the right time. I felt I could learn a lot more from the other opportunity I had on the table.
The other opportunity is staying here at Cornell for the summer. Again - “Are you insane?!” This time, probably yes. The current plan is to take 2 classes and do part-time research with one of my professors on collaboration and instant messaging. I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing summer here in Ithaca - free from all of my extracurriculars, from 2/3 of the classes I would normally take during a semester and would have the time to focus on tackling that stack of books I’ve been meaning to read for years or that AJAX or RoR that I’ve been meaning to learn for even longer. Not usually how I like to spend my summers, but hey, I’m flexible.
THEN I heard about this internship opportunity at Yahoo!. I read the description and my jaw dropped to the floor. It was as if they’d written it exactly for me. I sent my resume in immediately. You know that post I wrote last summer? The one about the perfect job for me and the subsequent page I made about my Dream Job? Well, this internship hits EVERY SINGLE POINT. Every one! It was too good to be true.
I had my first interview for it yesterday and I have another one coming up next week. If all goes well, I’ll be out in San Francisco again this summer. Fingers crossed, everyone!