start of summer tidbits by Joonho K. '20

Hello!

Just giving a quick update on what’s going on with my life and what I’m doing this summer. I’m doing this because a) I need to break my blogger drought (rip sophomore year) and b) I’m working on a really big blog post but it’ll take some more time, and in the interim I’ll be doing a lot of small, bite-size blog posts!

So how was sophomore year?

Hm. Academically, it was rough, for sure. I’ll get more into it in a future blog post, but the classes were definitely the hardest they’ve ever been, and I’m sure they’ll only get harder. :(

But I got to spend that year in Next House, and in Sigma Phi Epsilon, and with Toons, and a lot of new people. And when I look at my experience last year overall… it wasn’t too bad. (More to come later.)

What am I doing this summer?

So you may have heard of x-terms, which is a new thing that is starting this fall. I was lucky enough to get an offer from a company called Everbridge to work for them in the fall as a part-time software engineering intern! I was really happy that I finally had a job, and a chance acquire experience in industry. But I still had nothing going for me over the summer.

I had a lot of backup plans: read, code, do my own projects, travel, just relax at home, study Japanese, etc. But luckily, again, I told the company that my summer was totally free and I could start in the summer as a full-time intern if possible, and they said sure. So here I am in Burlington, MA, peering down into a rabbit-hole of a codebase and getting a head-start on my x-term! :D

I’m living at a place called Couch House in Somerville this summer. It’s a really nice place: it’s called couch house because the living room is literally just couches EVERYWHERE and there’s pretty lighting and there’s a TV and someone has all the Nintendo consoles and another person is raising LIVE CHICKENS in a REAL CHICKEN COOP in the backyard and getting FRESH EGGS from them?? Like?? I feel like I won the summer housing lottery.

What other non-academic or non-work things do you want to do this summer?

I picked up a beginner Magic: The Gathering deck last week because I wanted to learn how to play, and I have somehow gotten some of my 2East friends to start playing with me. It’s a really fun card game! It’s also a fairly expensive investment if you want to be competitive. Luckily for us, we’re fine with sticking to our beginner decks and learning the rules for now. :)

I want to keep working on my Japanese, and I also have a lot of books I want to read: Slaughterhouse Five; Infinite Jest; Thinking, Fast and Slow.

I want to actually go to the gym at a regular basis this summer because I haven’t really been able to do it during the school year. ;-; My coworker is literally a god, he has a huge container of whey on his desk and is Odin incarnate but he’s also really kind and gave me a bunch of workout tips.

Anything else?

Balance patch in Boston is by far the best LAN cafe in the area, so if you’re into video games, PC gaming, VR, etc. with a nice vibe and good food, I highly recommend!

I’m learning a lot about the ‘agile methodology’ in software development (mainly because I’m part of an agile scrum team at work): there’s a lot of weird vocabulary that goes into it, like ‘sprints’ and ‘grooming’ and ‘ceremonies’ and ‘stories’ and ‘velocity’ and so on. It’s a really interesting way to approach workflow as a team! If you’re into Course 6-y software engineering stuff, take a look at it!

I’m also going to date this post by saying this, but Nintendo is going to start their E3 presentation in literally less than an hour and I am SO FREAKING HYPED. (smash 5 pls be good)

fin