It’s been a while since I’ve written a post, but that just goes to show you how amazing this past year was. I did end up attending Georgia Tech. It was one of the best decisions of my life! The ups, the downs, and everything in between made my freshman experience memorable. The friends I’ve made will be the ones I’ll never forget: from Alvan and Patrick who like to relax to Spero and Kunal who will stop at nothing to build a billion dollar company.

My Android skills have improved greatly. I can now look at any Android app and tell you exactly how it was built, or at least with a quick Google search with a side of StackOverFlow tell you an extremely precise summary. Also, for people who think Google searching is not a skill by itself, it is–period. It’s actually the cornerstone to the process of software development.

My most prized software creation has to be Nexrave. Though I tried creating it back when I was in high school, I wasn’t able to create it from scratch until now. Nexrave has the technological capabilities and complexities of Facebook’s Android app; as well as, it was supposed to rival Eventbrite’s, Yelp’s, and Foursquare’s services. Nexrave, for those who don’t know, was an event discovery mobile platform that allows guests to chat with each other before, during, and after events. It was making up for what most event discovery platforms did not do: focus not just on event discovery, but creating a socially engaging community at any event. Sadly, creating a two sided market place is hard. So that’s a project I’m putting to the side for now. (Nexrave, my love, you’ll always live on in my heart!)

I chose to work at United Parcel Service (UPS) as a mobile app developer this summer. It was a cool experience for my first internship. The biggest part of this great experience was thanks to my manager, James Min, and my peer leader, Aaron Seaman. They were kind, didn’t micromanage me, and often took the other intern and me out for lunch. They really did make me feel like a true UPSer!

While at UPS, I had a main project and a (self-initiated) secondary project. My secondary project was an Android app that would hold some of the essentials of a large warehouse. It included a news feed of warehouse-specific and global UPS news, a task system where managers could assign tasks to employees, a screen to see employee-specific incoming and outgoing packages in the warehouse, and a messaging platform for employees to communicate with each other.

My main project was even cooler than my secondary project! Using an Android phone’s camera, I could get the length, width, and height of a package. There’s actually a whole industry working on turning 2D images into useful 3D data–and I was able to do it! I got the three dimensions (length, width, and height) from a two-dimensional image. This project that I worked on by myself as an intern, will actually save millions of dollars for UPS! How’s that for individualistic power.

I didn’t get to go to LA last summer for Make School’s summer program. However, I still did end up learning swift and iOS app development: through self-study of course. I’ve been looking at their Product College, and it seems like the perfect match for me. I’m thinking of maybe pursuing that route to complement the knowledge I already accumulated from college. Make School was my dream back in high school. Why not still pursue that dream?

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The Life of Shane Austrie

Posts tagged with internship

The Summer of 2017