I Is For Impostor

4 min read

On today's menu was alphabet soup, character cookies, octopus, a mock interview, and an extra large dose of feelings of inadequacy. 

To start, I went to lunch at 5BB for their awesome ramen and what was supposed to be alphabet soup, which was being served at two of the cafes in the building. I only saw one letter in it though, the rest was just vegetables. I thought it was a G and started laughing but it ended up just being a Q. At least the ramen was good.

They even had these rice krispy-like dessert at Truck Pit, but instead it was composed of letters in the shape of a small cube. I wonder how they even made these-- or rather if they just bought the letters like that somewhere or actually made them somehow.

Mine didn't really have any recognizable letters in it, but at

in this one at least an R is visible. Must be for Rice krispy.

I also bought a couple xyz domains today since they're ridiculously cheap. I've wanted to own a website for a while now and with a domain at a dollar per year, why not? I'm going to figure out how to host it myself, but that's going to require me to get a server and secure it, which should be a fun side project for the upcoming semester.

After that, the majority of the afternoon consisted of me just updating design docs so whoever takes over my project after I leave has thorough documentation of each component and the overall project. It's a confusing thing and I know how I felt trying to learn all this stuff for the first time. Not to mention a lot of teams across the company will eventually use my project so it's important for them to understand how it works. Plus it looks really good for the conversion packet since supposedly 6 design docs is way over the norm for an internship, surprisingly.

I also had yet another mock interview scheduled for 3 PM. I had one yesterday too with someone I didn't know which went okay at best since my brain doesn't seem to be working lately with this cold. Not to mention it was also a dynamic programming question, which I was not very happy about. This time around it wasn't just an algorithms question, it was actually a complicated design one, which I also was expected to write code for.

Thankfully this isn't the mental reaction I have anymore to mock interviews, but they're still not fun

Unfortunately, I only booked the room for half an hour since it's tough to book anything other than a phone room for more than that in the middle of the afternoon. We ended up moving to a huddle when I was just getting started trying to write code. By the time I actually understood the problem and was able to write up a solution an hour and a half had gone by, which is obviously not good.

The more mock interviews I go through, the less prepared I feel for conversion, ironically. I managed to get my interviews pushed back 2 days extra, but I still don't think that's going to be enough time to get me ready. It's better than nothing though.

Eventually it was time for dinner. Half of the dessert table was covered in alphabet sugar cookies. I took a picture since there were so many but my phone decided to corrupt the data. I suspect the recent OTA software upgrade I did on my phone was the culprit since it finished about 5 minutes prior. It decided to spare the picture I took of the octopus I grabbed for dinner after actually sitting down with my team.

It might not look it, but it's almost impossible to cut it with a butter knife. I actually couldn't eat it.

Although I think I'm technically code-complete for the summer, I'm not satisfied with sitting around all day studying so I'm working on one of the parts of the project that wasn't my job to implement. I probably won't finish it, but I can just pass what work I get done for it onto the other guy. After all, I only have 10 more days until this internship is officially over.

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