I think I can…I think I can…:SWP and Interns keep chugging along

Hi, my name is Ashlee Snyder and this is my second summer at Infinera’s Summer Work Program in Pennsylvania. I am an incoming sophomore at Penn State University, currently studying kinesiology with the hopes to pursue a Doctorate in Physical Therapy once I graduate.  After having a great experience here last summer, I was excited to start again this summer. Just like I expected this summer has been just as great so far, however, it is definitely more challenging. This summer at Infinera I have had the opportunity to work with the Test Set Development team to design a new instance of a bug tracking system for test equipment. Since my major is kinesiology, I had no background in how to design this new instance. However, the team has been wonderful in helping me along. There is always someone around who can answer the millions of questions I have. One of the reasons I like working at Infinera is because of how generous, helpful, and friendly everyone is to each other. That makes coming to work each day more exciting. With absolutely no background in the beginning, I am now confident and understand what I am doing and it is only half way through the summer.  I have learned so much already and can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer will bring.

 

Hi! I’m Shalini Corzine, this fall I will be a freshman at UC Santa Barbara. I will be coming in with an undeclared major as I have several different areas of interest, hopefully I will find a passion to pursue in one of the subjects I’ll be studying this coming school year. This summer, I am an intern in the Customer Service Organization; I specifically work with the Quality Team. As of now, I am transferring information regarding PCNs and FSBs onto SharePoint in order to make the data more accessible to other employees.

 

On the first day, I was incredibly nervous. I had a preconceived idea of the company and I had thought that this program would be very individualistic, just as my last internship had been. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the environment here was more like one of a community, and I was relieved to find that all of the SWP students bonded incredibly fast. The fact that we are all around the same age only allowed us to connect on an even deeper level, and I can tell that a lot of the friendships I have made here will be long lasting.

 

Although I have only started working here a few weeks ago, I can already conclude that this has been such a great experience for me. I am so grateful to have had an opportunity to join this program; I have met so many wonderful people here that have given me exposure to the business world. I love how eager everyone is to introduce me to the aspects of this company, and my manager is incredibly open to answering any and all of the questions I have regarding Infinera. It is so wonderful to work next to such amazing people; I can’t wait to see what the rest of this internship has in store for me.

 

My name’s Alyssa. In the fall, I will be attending James Madison University studying Occupational Therapy. Although I’m going into health sciences, I’m really enjoying my time at Infinera PA. I performed an MSDS audit for the manufacturing floor and I’m editing any data sheets that need to be changed on the online repository.  I’ve learned quite a bit about time management, because this has been a very time consuming task. I’ve also learned about safety here at Infinera, which is very important. I expected everyone here to treat us as if we were just students and I was pleasantly surprised when I went around and did my audit, because everyone seemed to treat me as an equal. I’ve been able to communicate very well with others in order to complete my task and this experience has been very beneficial.

 

Hi, my name is Karthik Bhaskara, this fall I will be attending University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. This summer is my first year participating in the Summer Work Program, here at Infinera.  I have enjoyed my time so far here. I have been assigned two projects that entail software and computer engineering which I will be studying at UIUC this fall. I really like that my projects fit my interests and I’m looking forward to expanding my knowledge of coding and problem solving.  One of my projects that I am especially intrigued by is that I am in charge of an open transport switch manager which has so far included over eight hundred lines of code.  The trials that I encountered while learning the code, were solved in one of two ways: I was either able to use the internet to figure out the string by myself or I had to ask my manager for help. So far I have had a positive experience here at Infinera, made friends, and learned more about Computer Engineering. I am looking forward to getting further into my projects and overcoming the obstacles that I encounter.