by: Samanyu Bhupalam

The culmination of all IT pathways is usually an internship. This can be through one of two programs: Gifted Internship and Work Based Learning. I chose the former.

The Gifted Internship process starts the previous year, or my junior year, where I had to submit an application where I provided my answers to common job interview questions and circled my interests. That’s a difference between the programs as Gifted Internship places you into a company, meaning my main job was to polish my resume, make a good impression at my interview, and work 70 each semester of my senior year.

The company I was placed with was a startup trying to revolutionize the job searching field using AI. When I began, I had to take some courses on generative AI, which winded up being useful since I spent the rest of the semester working with generative AI, helping create a chatbot that suggests colleges for a student based purely on their resumes.

Internships are different for each student since each company approaches how to handle us differently. Some of my friends are in positions where they’re treated like full employees, but I was essentially placed in a big sandbox with some really cool toys I wouldn’t usually have access to.

68 hours in as of this week, I’m grateful for the experience since this opportunity gave me a lot of experiences, I’ve never had in a school CS class and I’m excited for the opportunities and experiences I’ll have next semester.