Internship at University of Southern California – Aditi from BITS Pilani
To her, this internship was a month of learning, travelling and full of sharing and exploration. They have formed their little India in a faraway land and did all kind of possible mischiefs. Now she is back to her home, but the vibes of California are still intact in her.
With just four days into the 5th semester at college, we found Microsoft banging the institution’s door for recruiting summer interns. This sent a chill across many of our spines, wondering if it is that time of the year when you start hunting for internships for the next summer. We were barely out of the holiday season after a hectic summer internship, and now finding ourselves scrounging for the next summer internship already. This period involved a lot of phone calls and messages to the seniors inquiring about all the internship programs a third year graduate could possibly apply for. This was the time when I narrowed my eyes on the prestigious Viterbi-India scholarship program for a research internship at the University of Southern California. The results were out in January after a month long wait, and I was surprised at the speed the other Viterbi interns made friendly ties with each other and the frantic search for accommodation in Los Angeles. Everything was pre-planned, thanks to social media, flight seats were booked together and accommodation was taken nearby, bank accounts, sim cards and what not!
In the summer of 2015, I found myself with 20 brilliant minds from across the country with varied cultural diversities but united by the country of our origin – India. It was our own little India amidst the land of Stars and Stripes. I was working under Professor Craig Knoblock at the Information Sciences Institute, Marina Del Rey. The project I worked upon was in the domain of data integration and artificial intelligence. The task at hand was to automatically map datasets to a large real world ontology – schema.org. We trained upon nearly 1 terabyte of data and in the future will expand upto 25 terabytes. Big data is the new oil in the industry, and new methods are being employed to refine it, thus the exposure to this new trend and working with it was a career re-defining experience all together.
Weekdays were hectic and tiresome with the daily routine being – getting up in the morning, cooking up breakfast and lunch, working from 10 to 5 at the institute, cooking up dinner (yes, thanks to my two room-mates, I can cook effortlessly now) and then crashing onto the bed. Weekends were the only driving factor to work the entire week, planning for the weekend was started 2 days prior with a lot of hustle-bustle on the social media groups. All 21 of us along with our friends from Caltech and UCLA would hang out together and we would etch memories that would last a lifetime. We ended up going to Malibu – the most expensive city in the world, a trek to the Hollywood sign – a 17 km long trek!, Six Flags Magic Mountain – the adrenaline rush of the roller coasters that made us forget our fears, San Francisco – the city that stole our hearts, Las Vegas – most of us being under 21 we might have to plan a trip again to the sin city, 4th of July fireworks- the only time in U.S when it is legal to burst firecrackers and an unending list of attractions!
Well the trip wasn’t entirely rosy as I have painted it so far, we had our share of ups and downs with two of our friends getting lost on a freeway, with one of the interns losing his traveller’s card, with the police crashing our place when all of us were making a lot of noise at one of the apartments! But in the end the whole U.S experience was worthwhile. From trying a lot of different cuisines to endless hours shopping for friends and cousins, every moment is remembered. I wish I had a pen sieve like Dumbledore so that I could treasure my memories forever!
Made friends for a lifetime, did some great work in the big data field and made the most of the opportunity I had, ‘the internship’ was an experience that will be close to my heart for a long time indeed.
If Aditi’s experience motivates you, you can check the latest international internships and latest Engineering internships.
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