4 min read
Today was yet another long day of orientation, courses, and meetings. As I arrived at 9 AM, running on a whopping 3 hours of sleep from stress, over half of the interns were missing from the room. We had been told by our calendars to go to floor 10 and by the presentation from the previous day to go to floor 4. I almost went to 10 myself but for some reason the button in the elevator wouldn't work when I pressed 10 so I went to 4 instead. At least the elevator knew where I was supposed to be going.
After waiting for more interns to show up, we undertook more courses and training, this time geared to what would be relevant to our product areas. Eventually lunch rolled around and I checked out one of the cafes I hadn't eaten at yet. This one was called La Place (yes, pronounced like Laplace Transform), which was claimed to have the best food of them all. Yet again we all sat in a big group at a table and talked with new people which I have to admit is much more interesting than sitting by myself at dining halls like I did back in my freshman year.
After that we all ran back to the talk room for more courses, the first of the afternoon being 3 hours long. By 2 PM (2/3 of the way through the course) I could barely keep my eyes open. Earlier in the day I had scheduled a first meeting with my assigned mentor for 3 PM, to which I eagerly ran off to after sitting in the same spot for hours.
Some of the best advice I heard was that we weren't expected to absorb everything within the first week which was a huge relief considering how much information is being thrown at us. I heard the same thing from other Googlers in my product area later at this evening when we again went to Hemispheres for dinner. This time we actually got to eat outside but I forgot to bring my phone to take a picture of the view from the terrace.
Once again I got to sit in on another video conference and set up my work station this evening too. My keyboard and mouse were a bit chalky since they did a bit of painting on the wall right next to my desk. Rather than just wiping it off, the Googlers took me to the tech stop down the hall to get a whole new keyboard and mouse and recycle the old ones. (I'm sure they'll just clean it off since they weren't broken or anything.)
I didn't take this photo, but they do use scooters to get around the floor faster
To conclude my busy day, I decided to take a scooter out for a spin around the 4th floor. For some reason I'm unstable on anything with 2 wheels but luckily I didn't fall on my face like I was expecting. I must have looked like a little kid trying to ride a scooter for the first time ever, but I didn't care.
After returning it to a scooter station it was 8:30 and high time to head back to the apartment. I notice time seems to fly by here. This was the second day in a row I was almost there for 12 hours but it definitely feels shorter than the 8 hours a day I spent in the office at my last internship -- although I'm guessing that might change after orientation week is over.
I did happen to see something cool as I was leaving at dusk: the Empire State Building lit up purple. I knew it lit up but I didn't know the colors could change.
The photo doesn't nearly do it justice
Next time I'll have to see if I can take the elevator up to Hemispheres to get a nicer photo. Until then, I'm going to need to rest up for yet more classes tomorrow.