Add "intern-diaries-mertia" & "intern-diaries-sajag-s".

_posts/2022-09-02-intern-diaries-mertia.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Summer Diaries: Citibank"
+category: summer2022
+tags: [wona, column]
+author: "Aishwarya Mertia"
+image: aishwarya-m-intern-cover.png
+excerpt: "Grinding DSA all day for months, a nerve-wracking intern season and finally joining Citibank as a Technology Summer Analyst Intern. It certainly was a roller-coaster ride. The takeaways are immense, and the journey also holds several life lessons."
+---
+
+Grinding DSA all day for months, a nerve-wracking intern season and finally joining Citibank as a Technology Summer Analyst Intern (PS: I still haven’t memorised this designation). It certainly was a roller-coaster ride. The takeaways are immense, and the journey also holds several life lessons.
+
+I worked at Citi this summer as a Technology summer analyst intern after securing a place in the on-campus internship program. 
+
+The COVID-19 pandemic was a gloomy phase for many. Disconnected from friends, locked in your homes, missing out on the college life of our dreams, putting on weight and whatnot. However, it presented us with an opportunity to work on ourselves and expand our skill sets. This is what I precisely did, utilise this period to work on my DSA skills. Leetcode was my Bible, Youtube lectures replaced Netflix and Eat, Sleep, Code, Repeat became my mantra. Preparing for the intern season consumed a significant chunk of my time during the fourth semester because there wasn’t much to do anyway, owing to the online semester. 
+
+## The Intern Season
+
+The intern season is indeed a time of nerves, testing your patience while you fail to spot your name on the shortlist. Skimming the noticeboard constantly, filling applications on Channel-i, appearing for multiple tests a day, reaching the final interview round and yet not making it. Disappointment and hopelessness take a mental toll, especially when you come from a non-circuital branch like Civil Engineering. When you finally bag that dream internship, it all pays off. A feeling of satisfaction, like none other, fills your heart. In the entire process, my peers tagged along and became my backbone.
+
+Supporting each other when someone missed the CGPA cutoff and celebrating successes, the intern season also became a period of great bonhomie.
+
+## Life at Citi
+
+When Citi broke to us that the internship would be virtual, it did shatter our hearts, but we were still looking forward to it. The seven weeks long internship acted like an eye-opener to the Corporate world. Outlook became the new Whatsapp. We worked on our pleasantries. We would no longer join meetings, but ‘bridges’ and ‘folks’ was the new buzzword in town. Citi graced their interns with stunning ‘Welcome kits’, which we received at the end of the internship.
+
+The team at Citi is amiable, and the workload is minimal. They gave us a fantastic platform to interact with students from other colleges. Also, a shoutout to Anurag and Keerthana for being amazing co-interns.
+
+## The Project
+
+We were assigned to different business units. I worked under the TTS vertical. Apologies, I don’t know the full form. We were grouped in teams of two or three, while some interns worked individually. Our project was to ‘Document APIs using Swagger.’ Our goal was to develop a generic Springboot project, documenting APIs to enhance the client experience while consuming APIs. Swagger is an industry-standard tool and is widely used to document APIs meaningfully. It is an extremely handy tool and very user-friendly.
+
+We worked on the project from scratch, researching the Swagger Documentation and upgrading the project to the latest version, OpenAPI 3. We documented the APIs using YAML, integrated the file in our project, and utilised Swagger to render the API documentation. I won’t bore you with many technical details. Our manager, an IITR alumnus, heartily appreciated our work.
+
+## Learnings and Takeaways
+
+“Work hard in silence. Let your success make the noise.” You will have to prepare for months, alone, sitting in your room or maybe even the ‘infamous’ library. Time and again, roadblocks frustrate you, but keep going. Genuine and honest efforts will undoubtedly yield results. A bit of luck does help.
+
+Working on something entirely new on your own and implementing it successfully was the primary learning experience from the internship. When we were introduced to Swagger, we knew nothing about it apart from the fact that its developers had tried to come up with a really cool name. However, patiently learning about it taught us a lot of things that helped us successfully implement the project.
+
+Never feel afraid to ask for help. The role that your friends play will go a long way.
+
+## Points to Remember
+
+Explore what you exactly want from the intern season. Do you even want to give it a shot?
+
+The nitty gritty details of the intern season and PIC guidelines can be cumbersome to understand. Make sure to research all details well and reach out to your seniors for guidance.
+
+Start preparing in advance and be consistent in your preparation. Consistency is the key to cracking the intern season.
+
+Everything is there on the internet. From lectures to resources, you name it. You just need to slog hard enough to get there.
+
+Corporate life may seem to be an entirely different world. Take your time, read things properly and always ask for assistance. You’ll surely make some sense out of it.
+
+Last but not least, do give your friends a chapo after bagging that internship :)

_posts/2022-09-02-intern-diaries-sajag-s.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Summer Diaries: McGill University, Canada (MITACS)"
+category: summer2022
+tags: [wona, column]
+author: "Sajag Swami"
+image: sajag-s-intern-cover.png
+excerpt: "I cold-mailed a few profs whose work had piqued my interest and got a research internship for the summer of 2021. This internship gave me a good insight into the fundamentals of research."
+---
+
+## Background
+
+In my third semester, I got interested in the application of data science in drawing inferences from physical activity data. I cold-mailed a few profs whose work had piqued my interest and got a research internship for the summer of 2021. This internship gave me a good insight into the fundamentals of research. I enjoyed the work and almost always learned something new in the weekly meetings with my supervisor. After this internship, I wanted to work on another research project to learn something new and apply what I’d learned.
+
+As the intern season drew close, I faced a dilemma: whether I should try for on-campus internships or focus on research internships. Peer pressure is not something that has ever intimidated me, but during the intern season, I could feel it as I saw my friends land internships at some fantastic firms.
+
+I spent a few days contemplating whether to try for on-campus internships and decided against it and instead chose to focus solely on research programs as I wanted to explore the research domain further. Before following through with this gambit, I consulted some of my seniors, who gave me good advice, strengthening my resolve to pursue a research internship.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/sajag-s-intern-01.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+## MITACS
+
+MITACS Globalink is a Research Internship Program funded by MITACS Canada which invites undergraduate students from across the world to pursue a research internship for 12 weeks at a Canadian university. The amount of funding one receives is quite substantial (~9000 CAD during my time). Another perk of this program is that MITACS Globalink interns are eligible to receive a one-time award of 15,000 CAD if they return to Canada for full master’s or Ph.D. programs or Postdoctoral fellowships.
+
+The application process and eligibility criteria can change over time. Thus, I believe it’s best to visit the Globalink website for the latest details. The application process is pretty straightforward.
+
+MITACS was the only research program I applied to. I didn’t have any interviews for my selection, but I had many friends who had multiple interviews. I got my selection mail in the second week of December 2021.
+
+## Montréal
+
+Montréal is the largest city in Canada's Québec province. French is the city's official language. Fitting in a new town is always challenging, but Montréal had a certain ​​je ne sais quoi that proved quite appealing, and I have loved it since the day I landed there. What I liked the most about the city was that despite living downtown, nature was just a stone’s throw away. Mt. Royal (which lends Montréal its name) was less than 2km from my home, and I often went running there.
+
+Montréal is lovely in summer with its numerous musical, cultural, firework, and food festivals. It has some scenic biking trails as well - the Lachine canal, for instance, has an excellent route that showcases some of Montréal’s dynamic landscape: parks, skyscrapers, and historic buildings.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/sajag-s-intern-02.jpg){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+## McGill University
+
+McGill University’s main campus is in a unique location between downtown Montreal and Mount Royal Park. It has some historic buildings. On the days I didn’t go to the lab, I preferred working from McGill Library. When the skies were clear, I worked from the green spaces on the campus, where squirrels often used to join me for lunch.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/sajag-s-intern-03.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+## Work
+
+As a part of my project, I needed to study the role of life stress in the risk of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). I had access to a dataset of residents of Montréal, which I used for my study. I employed statistical tools like latent profile analysis, multiple regressions, hierarchical regressions, etc., to meet the two objectives.
+
+I had weekly lab meetings with my supervisor where I’d report my progress and obtain feedback which helped optimize the work for the following week. I worked closely with my supervising professor and postdoc and learned a lot from them. For instance, my professor taught me how to evaluate results from the perspective of clinical interpretability, which is often quite different from how one considers results from a purely statistical standpoint.
+
+## Memories (to last a lifetime)
+
+I joined McGill Outdoors Club and attended its weekly meetings every Wednesday, where we played ultimate frisbee and discussed future trips. I met some of my best friends at these meetings.
+
+As Montréal is a multicultural city, I had the opportunity to interact with people from all across the world, quite literally. France, China, Brazil, Germany, Korea, Mexico, Iran, Hong Kong, Egypt, Spain, Japan, Colombia, etc.
+
+This was the first time I had this opportunity, and interacting with and making friends with people from across the world was a pretty exciting and fun experience.
+
+I went on trips almost every weekend. I spent one weekend in Ontario, where I got to witness the beauty that’s Niagara and Toronto with its spectacular skyline. Thanks to this trip, I made some terrific friends with whom I went on many other trips. Québec has quite a few National parks, and I visited some of them. I also went biking to some quaint towns close to Montréal.
+
+I spent my last Sunday at the Osheaga Music Festival, where I watched goosebumps-inducing live performances by Glass Animals and Dua Lipa.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/sajag-s-intern-04.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+![pic](/images/posts/sajag-s-intern-05.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}
+
+## Concluding thoughts
+
+This was the first time that I’d traveled to a foreign land. I had to take care of almost everything: buy my groceries, cook my food, clean my apartment, and take out the garbage. I believe this experience of living independently will be helpful in the future irrespective of choosing a life in a corporate setting or a life in academia.
+
+All in all, it was a life-changing experience for me personally. I gained more insight into what goes into research than I ever thought possible in a 12-week-long internship.
+
+Meeting people from across the world and making new friends had to be the best part of this internship.
+
+For anyone aspiring for a research internship, if you’re eligible for MITACS, do consider applying for it.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/sajag-s-intern-06.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto;"}