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My Summer @ Google - CSSI
September 9, 2011
Introduction: What better way to recap Google’s summer programs and internships than to hear it from the students themselves? We begin this series with a post from Gabe, a freshman at the University of Southern California who recently attended Google’s
Computer Science Summer Institute
in Mountain View, Calif. CSSI is a three week program for incoming college freshmen interested in studying computer science. They come in with little to no prior programming experience and leave having built a fully functional web application. To read more about this year’s program check out this feature from the
Official Google Blog
.
I admit it—CSSI absolutely ruined me: The program skewed my perception of what working life was supposed to be (monotonous) and crushed any uncertainties I had regarding my future in computer science. CSSI made computer science three-dimensional by bringing the possibilities within the field to life. It accomplished this through a rigorous curriculum that involved creating interactive mobile and web applications, learning about Google’s initiatives to help increase diversity in computer science, receiving lots of Google swag, going on field trips around the Bay Area and attending panels where we heard from accomplished speakers from major companies in the industry. Google makes a real impact on a massive audience, and my experience there made me excited about the prospects and opportunities that lie ahead.
I probably should have known that my time there would be the only three weeks in my life that I’d get up before 8 am eager for lessons, running on snacks from the microkitchens until we returned to our rooms back at Santa Clara University and resumed work with our late night coding parties. When I first read about CSSI on my high school’s AP Java mailing list, I don’t think I could have envisioned a fraction of what it entailed. We were constantly applying what we learned at the Googleplex, where the Google engineers guided us through AppInventor, HTML, CSS, Python and various other tools for web application development. They never assumed that we had extensive experience with programming and readily shared their comprehensive knowledge, never forgetting to constantly push us to reach the answers for ourselves. As we spent our last days in the vibrant workplace at Google’s headquarters, now equipped with the skills to develop web applications, we worked in teams on interactive websites that would be our final projects.
Starting with the first career panel and lasting throughout the session there was a recurring theme that permeated the group—follow your passion. It was pretty obvious that Googlers were practicing what they preached, too, since it seemed like everyone at Google loves what they do. That mantra, “follow your passion,” was the reason behind every single one of us enjoying our work. We were given the freedom to construct applications that interested us and would be used practically by ourselves and others, and even within our teams we were able to work on the aspect of programming that we preferred, be it the aesthetic side of HTML and CSS, the logic in Python or even a mixture of both. It was great to be given such autonomy and allowed to run with our ideas.
During programming breaks, there were plenty of activities, like sharing late night snacks, hanging out in the common rooms, touring San Francisco on the intern cruise, biking around the Google campus and playing frisbee on the beach in Santa Cruz. None of these would have been half as enjoyable without the people, and the diverse perspectives that they represented. Perhaps what impressed me most about the program was the intellectual curiosity of my peers and also the Google engineers, who were unfazed by our questions about how to implement our complex ideas. The mentor buddy I was paired up with, a Gmail performance team leader, was not only a great technical teacher, but a great role model: I could see that he had a genuine and sustained interest in learning and taking advantage of opportunities. Ultimately, the biggest prize I walked away with was the connections I built with the people, who share a burning interest in technology.
Yes, CSSI ruined me, in the sense that it uprooted my doubts in the impact of computer science, and replaced it with concrete evidence of the positive influence it has on society. It spurred me to always expand upon my current knowledge, and left me with a voracious hunger for innovative technology that can revolutionize the world.
Posted by Gabe Lew, CSSI 2011 participant
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