Blog #3: My Internship Wishlist

Dear Company Claus...
I only have one wish from an internship: gaining more than losing. I want to gain useful skills, good networking opportunities, and an opportunity for full-time employment after graduation. I don't want an internship where I lose financial stability while working there, replacing another full-time employee's job, and do tedious work, such as paper filing, bringing coffee, answering phones, and many more. All of what I described in my wishlist is every internships criteria according to the "Employer Guide to Structuring a Successful Internship Program," and Jacqueline Smith's article, "Internship Wish List: The 12 Things Students Value Most" in Forbes, an American business magazine. In Smith's article, many of her reasonings for an internship to be good comes from statistical reviews from undergraduates' needs. And, the guide correlates to how an internship should be structured to help both the employer and intern.

Companies Want More From Interns With This Wishlist
There are a lot of what interns want, and in return, of course, companies want something in return, and it is a lot. Today, companies are searching for interns who have skills beyond any average intern. They search for skills that a full-time employee with a bachelor's degree or higher already have, such as "2+ years of [insert programming language]", "1+ years of work experience", or "know 2-3 of these computer science topics: [insert a long list]". Many of these skills are not what interns should already have, yet companies want to pay someone of those skills with the same wage of that as an intern, according to http://alexeymk.com/a-brief-guide-to-tech-internships/.

What Interns Should Do About This?
As for specifically for computer science undergraduates, they need to be more confident in their skills. There are many free, online learning tools to learn all these skills to gain a company's trust that they can grant their internship wishlist. The free online courses are lectures from top schools that are open for anyone, YouTube videos with tutorials, online schools that offer free courses, and many more. They need to know how to sell themselves as the best.

Lists On How to Land an Internship
1. Attend Hackathons and actually participate
2. Have an active Github
3. Establish online presence
4. Career fairs
5. Attend tech talks
6. Practice interview questions
7. Be active in computer science-related clubs and events
8. Make a website with a nice portfolio
9. Make many projects

Work Cited
1. "A Brief Guide to Tech Internships." A Brief Guide to Tech Internships. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
2. "How To Get Hired -- What CS Students Need to Know." How To Get Hired -- What CS Students Need to Know. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.

Blog #2 How do you use technology to deal with annoying technology?

ONE EMAIL, ONE LOVE

Spam has always been annoying, especially when I see a spam title similar to this subsection title. I receive them on a daily basis since I've been using my email for quite some years now. They are annoying, but I also must admit that they are pretty creative and funny. 

I suggest reading carefully at the names.

I remember spam emails were quite abundant back when I had my first email, which was more than ten years ago. Spam and regular emails were in the same inboxes. And, they have not stopped sending since then. It has became so normal when it comes to having an email that no matter how annoying it is, it is pretty easy to simply ignore it, especially with a Gmail's organized sections to put spam in a hidden folder. Besides spam, I think the most annoyance that I get from technology are robotic telemarketers and phone calls from places that I believe are most likely telemarketers based on the location on my phone that I am pretty sure I know absolutely no one there.

Combat Annoying with Annoying
I believe the way to combat annoying telemarketers and spam is to fight back by annoying and wasting their time. It keeps them off of my back and takes time away from them to scam other innocent, naive victims.

I would most definitely waste their time, as how James Vietch did in his Ted Talk. However, I never seemed to had a chance to do so. The telemarketers that I always receive are always robotic or that I always miss their call and never got to have a chance to let me fight them. Emails, on the other hand, I do not want to click on emails that suggest anything of romance-related because I do not want to soil my eyes if there was a "dick pic" attachment. However, I would think using my time on replying email scammers would be more fun than wasting my energy and time on the phone.

Back then, I have always thought that by simply opening an email can lead to a virus. Since emails have improved, it no longer does that, as long as attachments are not downloaded and links are not clicked from the email, according to Chris Hoffman who is a technology writer for howtogeek.com. Emails are similar to text files. It is essentially a HTML document.

Gmail
An example on what companies are doing to tackle annoying technology, Google's Gmail is a good example. Gmail uses an artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect any spam that tries to sneak into inboxes, according to Lance Whitney who is a journalist and software trainer at CNET. Whenever a user tags an email that is spam, the AI will learn from its mistake and make sure that spams like that will never appear in inboxes again.

Word Cited:
1. Hoffman, Chris. "HTG Explains: Why You Can’t Get Infected Just By Opening an Email (and When You Can)." HowTo Geek RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
2. Whitney, Lance. "How Google Tries to Keep 'sneaky' Spam from Your Inbox." CNET. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.