I’d always heard that initial stage of getting into the programming field was a difficult first step. I was struggling with the prospect of having to work over the summer in a dead-end job that had nothing to do with my career of choice. Just as I was beginning to despair over what to do with myself, my instructor posted a link to the SciTechsperience program from the Minnesota High Tech Association. I immediately recognized the opportunity of an internship where I would be challenged, and which would allow me to grow as a junior developer. I read through the job postings and came across the listing by Mobile Composer. The work plan for the summer, and the technologies I’d be exposed to were very appealing to me. I quickly sent in my application. In less than 12 hours I had an interview set.

Once I began the internship, the scale of what we would be creating really set in for me. I was fairly familiar with HTML, CSS and ASP.NET in terms of web development, but when it came to JavaScript I had no experience. We watched online courses to get us up to speed on the programming languages with which we would be writing. On day one we were assigned the task of making our “Summer Playground” project. This was our chance to begin working with some of these new technologies.

Each week we prepared a presentation to show the progress on our project. Our weekly tasks were to mimic pieces that would be within the actual Orchestrate app, Mobile Composer’s flagship project. Throughout the summer, we had our high points, our low points, and some frustrations. We had a solid team of four, however, and we overcame our obstacles together, and met our goals ahead of schedule. After the summer internship I was offered an opportunity to continue working with Mobile Composer, on a part-time basis, while I finish my program at Anoka Technical College.

Since starting as a part-time employee for Mobile Composer, I have become the “Analytics Guru”, adventuring my way through incorporating data visualizations with D3.js, and most recently using the Syncfusion Angular 1 charting library. This has been an amazing learning experience so far, and I greatly look forward to what the future holds with Mobile Composer.

Below is a skill set rating the interns created from the beginning and end of the summer.