August 26 - Sentex Data Communications

Thursday, 9:15 in the morning, summer 2010. Usually, at this time, this season, I would prefer to lie in bed, laze around or play video games. But not this month!

Since the first day of my internship here at Sentex Data Communiactions, I wake up every day bright and early (well not early really) knowing that my day is going to be filled with excitement, challenges, jokes and fun! It has been 3 weeks already and whether it’s the assignments that I work on or the hilarious conversations and jokes that take place, there has not been a single day when my brain is left unchallenged and dead.

During my first week, I was introduced to the staff (very cool people!), given a tour of the building and informed of what Sentex does and its operations etc. Next, as requested, I gave a brief presentation about myself, Shad, my experience at Shad, and our Shad Nationals project. Making the presentation was of great benefit to me as well as to my Shad Cup team as our product was subjected to many important questions that we had not addressed before.

I was introduced to my assignment early second week. I was to create and design Android applications using Eclipse, a platform designed for building integrated web and application development tooling. Well when I first heard it, I made no effort to hide the fact that David might as well be speaking to me in another language. I had no idea what I was being told to do, let alone be able to do it, considering my vast lack of experience in the field. Now, thanks to 3 weeks worth of patient help, advice and walking over (every time I had a problem), I am extremely proud to say that I now know exactly what “” means among many other things! I was given a brief introduction to programming, and given various online tutorials to follow. I am happy to say that although at times, it was frustrating to see projects fail, it was truly rewarding and a shining TA-DA moment (with the sound effects and all) when I got some of them working (Calculator, Currency Converter etc.)

Wanting to succeed in my assignment was my goal and motivation, but really honestly speaking, it was the random conversations (StarCraft, cars, boats, arranged marriages and food), the hilarious jokes (Ninja-Bread Man-David), Jabber and the “intellectual” talk that livened my day, everyday! Wanting to be a farmer, I never imagined myself working for a month in front of a computer, 8 hours a day, 4 days a week. But this internship has opened a door to a whole new world for me, one that I will continue to explore even after the end of the month as I want to learn programming, more about app development, Arduinos etc.

My take home message from this internship? -No matter where it is you work or what it is you do, be comfortable with everyone and enjoy yourself, because that’s where the real learning happens!

Vigne Sridharan
Hometown: Guelph, ON