We had a two amazing interns help us this last month and we asked them to share their experiences.
David Garber is an Epicodus student, temporarily living in Portland and working as our web development intern.
One of the reasons that I left Santa Monica to attend Epicodus code school in Portland was to enable myself to have a location-independent career. I love to travel. My previous job at Verizon Wireless (don’t get me started) had me locked into going to the same physical place every day. Working in a corporate environment, I never took vacation. I never did travel.
So, when I read about a remote internship, I was fascinated! The description referenced frequent “high-fives,” which is not what I’d expect from an internship prefaced with remote, meaning to me “Located far away; distant in space.” If I were to design the ideal internship to test the life that I want to live, this would be it.
Imagine my excitement when I got the internship. So, why am I so scared?
We spent our first day together onboarding at a Co-working space called Hatch, a great space with lots of friendly faces. Aside from keeping a blog, I didn’t have much experience with WordPress. It wasn’t easy but we got up and running. My classmate John would be my coworker for the next 5 weeks. We, along with Jewel and Daren, the partners of Workfrom, created the “Diamond Five,” which is where we sat around a table and high-fived the person on either side of us. It felt the farthest thing from remote…or scary. It was a great day.
Having a remote internship in a city I’m relatively new to means I get to be a tourist every day. I have an excuse to find the best coffee (and Wi-Fi) and a great place to eat for lunch. After my 2000 Toyota Camry, which has been parked under a tree and only served as an avian restroom since I’ve moved to Portland, my most valuable possessions are with me every day as I travel across the city. I wouldn’t argue with anyone who accused me of “living the dream.”
I was once in a temple in Greece and inside the prayer book was written, “There are no strangers, only friends who haven’t met.” My fears of leading a lonely, solitary existence were unfounded. Because of my experience I am no longer scared to work remotely. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always easy. Whenever I have to give back that sweet, sweet coffee I’ve consumed, I have to pack up my things and bring them to the restroom. There are conveniences you give up in order to live a lifestyle where the world is your office.
John L. Young is an Epicodus student, temporarily living in Portland and working as our web development intern.
Twenty five years ago, My friend Darryl just got a Macintosh and after it made some funny farting sounds, he could click on pictures on a site called AOL. He didn’t need his 386 anymore, so he passed it down to me. Well, I wanted to click on pictures too, so I took my clunky 386 apart and added in more RAM and an internet card and taught myself some DOS. With this DOS knowledge, I installed Windows 3.0 and could click on pictures too.
Since I had some experience with command line and DOS, I was able to get a job working in casinos on computers writing batch programs and editing text files. I loved using the asterisk wildcard. I could shorten my code and narrow my searches. I always had that asterisk in my side pocket.
Fast forward twenty five years, I’m still toying with computers. I recently completed an Epicodus code camp where I learned Ruby on Rails and other programming languages. I was even able to use my Buddy, the asterisk wildcard, and show others his power too. Shift 8. BAM!
Following Epicodus, I scored an internship with Workfrom.co, an awesome group of people where the founders, Darren and Jewel, would be working with me to help broaden my skills and teach me new things. Although Darren and Jewel were a couple of the most laidback, easygoing, friendly people I’d ever met, I felt a little awkward and uncomfortable when working alongside these rockstars. One day in particular, Jewel was showing me the grep command. I had seen it before but forgot how it was used. As Jewel was watching over my shoulder she said, “type grep blah blah blah asterisk”. So I typed grep blah blah blah … ASTERISK? WHAT THE HELL IS ASTERISK? I thought to myself, “it sounds familiar”. Time stood still. As we both stared silently at my monitor Jewel said, “it’s the shift 8”.
If you don’t feel dumb once in awhile you’re probably not growing.
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