The Masochist's Institute of Technologyanecdotes of an ambitious MIT student

Hey all! I see it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but honestly, the internship life barely leaves me any time to do leisure-related things. Toss in a dance recital last weekend, ADT rehearsals twice a week, and preparations for [super secret project]… by the time I can sit down and catch my breath, it’s 10:00pm at night, and the most I can do is relax with some new age music, sleep, and then get up and do it all over again.

Anyways, let me tell you a bit about my internship at Unica Corporation!

I’m working a product management internship for the NetInsight product, which is Unica’s web analytics software. I was a bit nervous when I first came in, because I wasn’t quite sure of what “product management” would consist. Even nowadays, I’m not quite sure what it means. I’m taking on a plethora of jobs, including coding, writing documentation, undergoing TAM (technical account manager) training, etc. In fact, this entire week consisted of training and setting up a database. The latter sounds like it should be easy, but I ran into errors left and right (mainly due to my restricted permissions on the test server).

I’m really glad, though, that I’m actually working on things that will be useful. “Real work”, Chao calls it. The stuff that I’m programming will someday show up in a release; one day, I can point to the features I’m implementing and say, “I did that.” I feel this has/will be a great experience, since I’m being exposed to so many aspects of the industry: developing, marketing, strategy, pricing, management…

Goal for this summer: meet everyone who works in the Unica building. EVERYONE.

I sit in a cube right next to my “secondary supervisor” Mike Lu. He’s not actually my supervisor, but he directly reports to my supervisor Dan DeMichele. For lack of a better term, I call Mike my “secondary supervisor”, haha. He’s been really nice about answering my questions and handing me files when I need it. Many of the other employees have also been really nice to me. Franklin (who sits on my right) dropped by to say hi on the first day. Gerry, Joe, Rahman, and Corrine have been helpful in installing items for me when I don’t have permissions. I’ve befriended nearly the entire HR department, along with quite a few directors and important people like Bill Ferro and Todd Belcher. For the most part, I really like meeting new people and learning about what they do. Everyone here has such an interesting personality, and group dynamics are always interesting to watch.

The people to whom I’ve definitely gotten closest would be the new TAM hires, who are on-site for 2.5 weeks getting training and practice. Brandon Madsen (from Utah), Dustin Wallace (from California), and Anand Madhavan (from Nebraska) are some of the most amusing and fun people here. We bonded over Starburst, Milano, World Cup, and TAM training. A few days ago, we went with Todd Belcher to Web Analytics Wednesday at the Asgard Irish Pub in Central Square. WA Wednesday is basically a meetup of individuals working in or interested in the web analytics industry; I got to meet another intern at Localytics, some more Unica people, and a handful of others from around the area. It was definitely “not a haahrible moment to remember”.

Photo courtesy of Brandon (snagged it off your FB)

Unfortunately, though, the three of them will leave next Wednesday. As such, this weekend we’ll be hanging out around Boston (along with Grace, who will be in Boston for a few days with her mother, the wonderful Michelle Herman). And speaking of this weekend, boy have I got a lot planned!

Friday

• 6:30-11:00pm ~ China’s Disabled People Performing Arts Troupe at Kresge! They were the ones who performed Thousand-Hand Guanyin for CCTV!

Saturday (aka “Day of Dance”)

• 00:00-2:00am ~ MIT Mafia Society summer session #01
• 10:30-11:30am ~ Intro to Ballet class at the Dance Complex
• 2:45-3:15pm ~ ADT performance at Sidney-Pacific’s Cultural Festival
• 7:30-10:30pm ~ ACAS Chinese Dance Festival

Sunday

• 00:00-2:00am ~ MIT Mafia Society summer session #02
• during the day ~ hanging out with the TAMs, Grace, and MIT friends
• 5:30-7:00pm ~ dinner at Fire & Ice
• 8:00pm ~ Skype session with Chao! =)

Thank goodness for weekends. Without them, my life would be so hectic. Is this really what the working life feels like? It’s a little saddening but also really nice. I like the fact that after I come home from work, I’m not obliged to continue working unless I want to. Contrast this with school, where the real work doesn’t even begin until you get home! I like being able to walk home from Central Square and grab some food. I like living close to Shaw’s, where I can go and pick up some fresh fruits at any time of the day (well, before midnight). I like living a distance away from my usual friends and taking time to work on my personal development without interference. Not that I don’t like my friends (quite the contrary), but when I spend most of my time socializing with them, it’s hard to work on personal things.

Dear newspaper staff of Vista Ridge High School, my alma mater:

I honestly believed that throughout the years, your quality would improve. When I was Business Manager so many years ago (2005, to be exact), we were in our infancy; it was almost permitted that our quality was less-than-stellar. But five years later, and you still print inaccurate, terribly-written articles? Please, please do something about your proofreading skills and verify your damn sources before you print anything… or else those of us who can easily call your bluff will begin writing enraged blog entries defaming your organization.

…. oh, wait.

Nonetheless, the newspaper site definitely looks a lot better (I will ignore the fact that it seems to be made from a template). But that is no excuse for articles like this one, in which I can count at least three inaccuracies… the first being that MIT is not an Ivy League university! Not to mention the slew of English usage errors (the most prominent being the incorrect capitalization of the title; “of” and “the” should not be capitalized in Internet print headline titles)…

Tables. Ohh, tables. If you’re going to use them, place the sorting column (in this case, the last name of the student) on the furthest left. Otherwise, it really confuses the reader. I was literally sitting there for 30 seconds before I realized that it was not sorted alphabetically by category name. Oh, and it would really help to have table headers, right? Please don’t be lazy about this, editors.

Please get your photo captions correct. There is no such category (at least at the time of writing, 2009-2010 year) called “Computer and Mathematical Sciences”; Sarah competed in the “Mathematical Sciences” category. I won’t even start ripping apart the first paragraph of that article, which sounds like someone regurgitated a protein shake of Dickens and Hugo. Get to the point; I’m a newspaper reader, not a novel-gobbling hobbyist. My time is precious and I want to know what the article is about, not the intricate, life-alterating beauty of scientific advancement.

Please don’t use red text and underlining for emphasis. It’s not web 2002 anymore. And for god’s sakes, put some spacing between those lines of text!

Please, no more painfully obvious advice columns. In fact, the suggested “tips” almost beg the question; if I wanted to save money, of course I would save it… by not spending it. Duh. Either write better tips or come up with a better headline.

High and low C’s don’t really “blend”. Their frequencies are multiples of each other;  it’s like hearing the same note. I wouldn’t call that a blend. In fact, “blending” refers to the quality of the sound, not the pitch! Does the author of this article even know anything about music (besides what he picked up from watching Glee?) Perhaps you could speak instead about the harmonious thirds or melancholy minor sixths?

Oh god, did you just use double question marks in that last bullet point of the first section?? Don’t you realize how much it makes you sound like a MySpace-obsessed 7th grader?? And what’s this?? Double exclamation marks in the very last sentence of the article!!

I could go on and on about the quality of my former high school’s newspaper; frankly, I’m fed up with the level of mediocrity present in my alma mater. Please shape up, guys; I don’t want to tell people I went to a school where no one knows how to write a proper newspaper article without at least five mistakes.

While having a delightfully reflective conversation with Chao last night, we somehow stumbled on the below topic:

(02:10:59 AM) Chao Xue: do you sometimes feel like we’re going against our nature?
(02:11:09 AM) Chao Xue: trying to be technical and businessy people?
(02:11:20 AM) Chao Xue: while we’re really artists in the heart

My immediate answer was that I “view my emotional side as rather separate from my career”, but the question still significantly troubled me. I fell asleep at 3am still mulling over the topic, and now that I’m rested up from a good night’s sleep, I feel as if I should expand on the idea of “career vs. Career” a bit.

I often joke about the fact that I am a money-monger; I laugh about how I’m going into finance so I can get rich; I dream about the huge house I will eventually own and boast about the towers I will someday own in NYC. One of my most uttered phrases is, “Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness was dead wrong.” To any common stranger, I probably seem like a very materialistic person, always thinking about money and the goods it can buy.

However, while it is true that money is an integral part of my motivation – yes, I do dream of waltzing down Fifth Avenue and buying $500 shoes like they’re nothing – I don’t adhere to the belief that money is everything. I just view it as.. a means to an end. Likewise, my planned “career” (investment banking, or something similar in the field of finance) is just a stepping stone to something greater. Not that I don’t hold an interest in finance (on the contrary!), but I definitely can’t see myself working in a corporate setting for my entire life. After a while, I want to be more independent; I want to start my own company, be it a business solutions consulting practice or a software marketing company.

(02:12:39 AM) vivian: I distinguish between my academic/career side, and the more personal side
(02:12:48 AM) vivian: so that when I come home after a hard day’s work, I can sit and reflect
(02:12:59 AM) vivian: it’s a bit harder at MIT since work is never really finished…

Ultimately, I want to start my own entertainment agency, so that I can share my love for music with the world. If I could, I would attempt to be a performer myself, but I cannot sing well enough, cannot compose, cannot arrange music, cannot play music, and cannot dance all too well. So I would probably function best as the director or producer, shaping and molding new artists until they too can find their voice. I view this as my final Career – the job that I would most love to have if money were not an issue.

I’m sure most people have a similar Career in mind, whether it’s being a professional world traveler, or a journalist, or a fashion designer, or an astronaut. You know, the jobs you wanted to be as child, when there were no limits to possibility. A child’s mind is innocent and pure; without taint of the “real world”, without knowledge of money and the power of status. I think the fantasies we dreamt up during that period of our lives is a reflection of our true selves. Wouldn’t it be amazing if, at the end of the day, everyone was able to achieve what they truly wanted to achieve?

I definitely don’t want to disappoint that starry-eyed 5-year-old that grins up at me from my old, yellowed photo albums. She had big dreams of being famous, of being a star, of sharing her thoughts with the world. And even as I sit here, a cynical and pessimistic young woman of nearly 20, I make this promise: I won’t give up on my younger self and her Career goals.