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My job hunting journey was just as challenging as anyone else's... as cliché as that might sound. I definitely underestimated the market a whole lot. 


I thought because there were a lot of software development roles in the market, it would be easier for me to find one that fits. One that checked all my boxes and one that is closest to what I want to dive deeper into - front end development.

But as soon as I started going for interviews, I was surprised by the different reality that I faced. I can definitely say that companies expect a lot out of fresh grad. I was told that "attitude matters more" but in reality, only one company who I interviewed with seem to consider that.

Some of the reality includes the lower salary range than advertised, the overly complicated technical questions and even the multiple interview stages that wasn't initially mentioned. Let's just conclude that I came out of those interviews with some trust issues on the general workforce.

After finishing internship and going through all that, I was lucky to be offered a job by my internship company - KPMG. 

Funny thing was, a day after KPMG called me, another company decided to proceed me with the next interview stage. Talk about timing. Didn't even put much hope on the first round!

However, I declined the follow-up interview invitation on the spot and had a hard time moving on with it, because as much as I'd like to work in KPMG, this company actually aligned more with my career interest... Long story short, I think that regret lessen after finding out how much KPMG is paying me my starting salary haha. Also, the fact that I am still part of the development team is actually good enough. 

I respect people who moved on with all their interviews and end up with multiple job offers, because interviews (especially multiple stages) is actually very mentally taxing and if I managed to secure one good offer, you best bet I don't want to go through the rest of the trouble only to decline it later.

Now, the department told me to start next week which means that I only have like 3 weeks break from my 6-months internship. Honestly, it's quite sad but I guess, I should feel relieved that I don't have to worry about job applications any further.

I stopped applying mid-August and all those companies got back to me within a month - some earlier than the rest. I had interviews while I was busy finishing up my internship report and presentation, but thank God for work from home. I literally scheduled the interviews in-between my meetings.

There's a lot of lesson learnt from the entire process, which somehow helped me to understand my rights as an employee better. I'm glad I got a taste of how hard real job interviews can be. I highly recommend fresh grad to savour the different experiences BUT didn't say it was gonna be all rainbows and sunshine.

If there's one thing I got out of all this, it would be to give your best in every single job application. Treat each one of them like it's the only job you want while applying, without seeing desperate. The results might be in your favour if you show them how great of a match you are.

For now, goodbye job interviews, goodbye my last ever student break... Hello, adulthood and commitments.

Dropping by,
Melynn
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Thinking of recommending some songs I got hooked to on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. And well since blog is my only safe haven, why not share it at the place where nobody usually comes right? 

Disclaimer: Like any other commitment-related stuff, I can't promise that I will have a part 2 onwards BUT I'll try my best to not ditch it so soon hehe.

Song Pick is basically a series with a list of song recommendations that I've recently discovered and enjoyed for the past month or so. I think my music taste is very typical pop genre and a little ballad depending on my mood. I do listen to hiphop and raps, but often times when I do listen to those it's either because someone recommended it to me or my favorite artists have something to do with it. All in all, I hope you can give some of them a listen!

1. ONEUS - Life is Beautiful

When I first heard this, I thought it was just a nice happy summer song. But when I wanted to sing along with it, I realized that behind the summery vibe the lyrics were actually very motivational.

I'm currently in the phase of feeling insecure as a fresh grad, so this song literally came just in time to tell me that "it's okay if you don't have anything you want to do and it's okay to walk a little slower".


This song has an English ver. as well, but to me, Korean lyrics are best when you understand the actual phrases they use. Not gonna lie, I kinda felt reassured about my life after listening to this.

2. PENTAGON - Cerberus

I'm so biased with this recommendation lol. This song is by the three PENTAGON maknae a.k.a the trio who produced a lot of other PENTAGON's songs. Kinda like the 3RACHA of PENTAGON if I can steal that idea haha.

Cerberus is the 3-headed dog who guides the gate of hell according to the Greek methodology. Basically, they're comparing themselves to it since they're the viscous trio.

I like when a song has a good hook and this one definitely has that! At Kino's part (0:42)! 


Pour liiiiiiquour~ (aigoo)

3. THE BOYZ - KINGDOM COME

Ok, confession time. I actually have not watched the last episode of Kingdom oops. But I'm already spoiled and know the entire ranking so it's fine. Don't feel like wasting 3 hours of watching iKON losing lol.

But since the final song was pre-released, I listened to this song before seeing their performance stage and boy, did I really like it. No wonder this song topped the charts so quickly!

My fav has to be Sangyeon's high note at the end. The live performance literally gave me goosebumps!!


4. BLACKPINK - You Never Know

Not a new song but I only properly listened to it after discovering it from SuperStar YG. It's one of those sad BP song. Not that they have a lot of it anyway but I really liked 'Stay' so this song has a similar vibe.


The chorus says it all.

You'll never know unless you walk in my shoes
You'll never know 엉켜버린 내 끈
Cos everybody sees what they wanna see
It's easier to judge me than to believe

5. Stray Kids - Star Lost

My brother have been weirdly obsessed with Stray Kids after founding out they sang for one of the anime's ED (ending theme song). He was surprised upon finding out they sang 'God's Menu' and that I made a dance cover of the song last year(?). Then Kingdom happened so we talked about SKZ a lot since I also heard more of them from Kingdom.

Now, he's at that fanboying stage and his bias is Seungmin haha. Since they just came back with 'Thunderous', naturally, my bro made me listen to their latest album and this song was one of our common like. He isn't really into heavy EDM songs so I guess this song successfully made the cut. 


P.S. He also wasn't into 'God's Menu' actually boohoo. 

6. Park Ji Hoon - Gallery 

Not a fan of Wanna One but because I watched the web drama "Love Revolution", I decided to give his comeback a listen which I turn out to quite enjoy.



7. A.C.E - again (g.o.d cover)

This is an old song by g.o.d so it sounds very 1st gen kpop. But my boys sounds good singing some oldies and if you like some Hospital Playlist OST vibe, check this one out for that same OST-worthy feeling. Best yet, it's on Spotify too!



Here's a video of the performance for a good view of their vocal harmonization.


P.S. If you didn't know, Hospital Playlist's OST are remakes of songs from the 90s too!

I guess Imma end the list here. Just keeping the list short one at a time, even though I have more on repeat haha.

Dropping by,
Melynn.
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We have finally come this far. I'm almost finishing 6 months of real working experience without even stepping into the office at all or get to meet my colleagues in real life, but that's okay cos I really like working from bed home. 

I don't like to admit that I've changed BUT I definitely felt like my thought process changed so much compared to the first half of 2021. 

My performance during my internship wasn't exactly applaudable though. I never quiet stand out among the other interns and my image to my seniors were probably that I'm the kind to "only do as I told" or a "yes man". Honestly, I did only deliver what was requested and even so, it felt like I've done enough. I guess I'm not that ambitious after all haha.

However, I love that my job allows me to have a fair share of work-life balance. It's an unspoken rule that nobody messages outside of office hours and I really like that boundary.

During my free time, I've been really into self-development stuff, specifically investment and coding side projects. 

For the first one, I started from learning about personal finance to the benefits and strategies of investing especially for beginners and youngsters. For someone who likes to have plans, understanding more about healthy financial strategies and what should be the smarter money decision kinda get me into that mindset where I should act as if I am already making a big amount of money even when I haven't.

I also joined a couple of webinars regarding investments and even found good YouTube contents explaining more on the financial stuff, which opened my eyes a lot. I also started reading some financial books, though this one is taking me forever to finish but I am indeed making some progress which I'm still catching up on.

And on top of that, I've been trying to be better at programming whereby I started to play with codes based on my own initiative. Quiet scary at first but finally convinced myself to start somewhere.

At first, I started because of the pressure at work but then I found a really good tutorial by chance, which made me realize that personal projects don't have to be 100% original. Like I can literally follow a tutorial on YouTube, style it in my own way and call that mine. So, I've been trying to do that, even though it's quiet hard to keep up especially when I'm always stuck with errors related to different operating system (aka out of my control). The amount of troubleshooting is kinda tiring to say the least. But I have hope in completing the entire course so I hope I can share the link to this project in the future 🙏

Lastly, of course since I am left with a couple more weeks, I have started to apply for permanent roles and some graduate programmes. After talking to my team leader on some potential career paths and the different technologies, I don't think I'll be staying in KPMG after the internship just because I realized that they don't have the software structure that I wanted to learn more of. 

I'm still at that exploration stage and I'm glad that I kinda have something else that I can look forward to from another company. So, currently still hoping for a reply from some of my applications haha.

Despite the situation being very disheartening lately in Malaysia, I am very grateful that I am able to feel at ease from a personal level. I can only hope and pray better days will come, also days where I can meet my friends, have sleepovers and go karaoke cos damn, I miss singing my hearts out 😞


Side note: Please pray that I can get my internship report done so I can have more time for myself lol.

Dropping by,
Melynn.
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I saw someone posted on Twitter, where she was encouraging SPM students to further their studies in computer science because being in the tech industry could guarantee you really good salary in the future. 

Here's the tweet, in case you're curious to read the qrt.

Adik-adik kalau nak pilih course masuk uni, pilih lah course yang boleh kerja software/apps developers. Sejukk hati iolss tengok payslip depa. Baru kerja setahun pun dah boleh beli rumah

— chib (@chiccbi) May 6, 2021

Despite some kind of truth mentioned, seeing how the quote retweets mostly talked about the stress and that it isn't worth the money at all made me ponder upon it. A lot of them also said how hard coding is for them.

Throughout my secondary education, I remembered the subject that gave the greatest satisfaction to me was accounts. Funny thing was, I only felt it towards the final revision classes leading up to SPM. It was the time I successfully balanced out my Kunci Kira Kira for the first time by my own effort. 

Being in the extra class with top students, I was always behind. Those who take up accounts as an extra subject were mostly those who guaranteed an A from it. Me on the other hand, was the total opposite, yet I remembered being super happy after I got my SPM results and glad that I stick through with it (despite my teachers countlessly asked me to consider dropping the subject due to my poor trial results).

Accounts was the subject which I considered paling berjasa to discovering my career interest.

When I was finding my path after SPM, like everyone else, I had a lot of doubts. After crossing out what I disliked, I ended up with either IT or engineering diploma. And because I kinda hated formulas and physics, I listed IT as the higher option.

After enrolling in Computer Science, I expected myself to be able to write codes and create some cool apps once I graduate. 

IT or Computer Science is a challenging course but what course isn't tbh. Still to me, it is one of the simplest compared to other science and math courses.

Most importantly, Computer Science is the only STEM course that lets you be creative without needing any artistic skill. That's when I realize you don't need to be good at drawing and painting to be creative because with coding, website interface is literally your canvas.

So to answer that tweet and the quote retweets, yes I think computer science brings a lot of opportunities these days due to the high demand and you should consider it if it interests you. 

But from the perspective of someone who doesn't have negative ideas off of coding, just like accounts, coding is really rewarding for me. I don't mean in terms of money, instead in terms of work satisfaction. 

In every small task you're tryna complete, it requires some sort of problem solving. With coding, finding the solution is often visually present in the form of success or error. 

Like Kunci Kira Kira, balancing the sheets was rewarding because it shows that my calculation was right. In coding it feels rewarding every time I got to clear out an error.

When you're just starting out, it sucks to repeatedly face the same error and I think that's why a lot of people find it difficult. Problem solving in coding is not just about finding the missing puzzle, it's about identifying why it raised the error and the most efficient solution that won't disrupt the other code pieces. In order to do that, you have to think of 1001 ways and attempt them before finding the one that is most suitable to your current project.

Going through that 1001 ways is the tiring part and the part which feels like you will never get the right answer. Also, the part where you might get sleepless nights from. I learn after coding consistently on the job as a software developer intern that you gotta embrace every error you get. Each error introduce you to another way in improving your code solution. There is no better teacher than your errors. Honestly, it's why practice is crucial in this field and I finally see that now.

Also, I think the pressure given within the organization and the team matters a lot. The difference between healthy pressure and toxic pressure can really determine your job satisfaction.

But I disagree when people say "the pay is not worth your mental health" just because the course alone is hard. I think every course have its own set of struggles. Saying coding is hard is funny because as if any other course can get any easier.

At least in the place I intern - KPMG, software developers in my company have it easier than tax and audit departments especially in terms of work life balance. I think getting a good pay always comes with a price in whatever job you're in so it's not necessarily the job's fault.

Sure you might hate coding because it's hard to wrap your heads around it and I understand that. I struggle with logic thinking myself, but then again, it really comes down to how suitable you are with what you do.

At the end of the day, no job is ever easy. Everyone would want that job if that is the case.

Lastly, I kinda agree with this piece of advice, especially the logical and creative thinking. So Imma just leave it here too.

While the cash seems tempting but please avoid if you

-not enough passion
-can't mix logical and creative thinking
-weak mental health
-can't work under constant heavy pressure

Saw a lot of friends either abandoning/regrets/giving up taking this course. https://t.co/ocrrWYN4dE

— jane🌸⚡️🐉💎 (@gwyneverechest) May 10, 2021

Dropping by,
Melynn.

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Here's My Plan or "목표가 생겼다" (literally "I Found A Goal"), is a 4-episode MBC mini-series starring some of our small rising stars, Kim Hwan Hee and Kim Do Hoon. 

It was released pretty recently on May 19, 2021 and I'm surprised how little attention this drama got. Even I happen to found it by chance through another web drama.

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I felt a bit burdened when people ask for my opinion. I appreciate if people think my input could be some sort of help but it always gets to me that the advice probably was a good advice for myself but not to the person I'm advising.

Being an opiniated person, putting myself in a selfless position when giving other people advice is hard. When I told others to have self-control when I am struggling with it myself. Or when I advised to avoid impulse purchase but later proceed to do so myself. Or when I said it's doable but proceed to fail doing it myself. 

I felt worse for giving those advice than to fail doing the thing itself. It's as if I declared to people that I'm prone to be successful doing it, when in reality, there's so many variables to consider as well.

Sometimes I hardly remember the failures I had bcos it was never considered as failures. I only see the progresses and aim higher thinking there's never anything to lose. Then when someone came to me and ask me how did I do it, I... don't quite know. I can't recall how much I struggled achieving it and thus, I don't have an answer to that.

That is why I probably suck at teaching and explaining. Even in my current intern job, whenever I solve the issue and move on to a new one, I always almost never remember how I managed to solve it. All I remember is how complicated it was and how long it took me to figure out one small fix. So when my team leader asked me, what exactly did the code do, I will always freeze in silence. It's not that I didn't know because duh, I fixed it. But it's just that it was hard for me to explain because the whole process is so complicated in my head.

I tried to be quick on my feet for a simplified explanation but often times ended up with my team leader just reading line by line of code himself.

I guess that's how it is in life too. When there's so many variables to consider and an advice isn't just a lengthy yes or no, but instead an entire lifestyle to put into picture, things will probably be easier to show than explained.

Like self-control isn't only about avoiding instant gratification and opting for delayed gratification, but it should be about finding out why does it have to be later and not now.

When I wanted to buy a PENTAGON lightstick while I was in Korea and even had that in the top of my wishlist. I found out that it was out of stock in all the kpop stores there so the planned purchase didn't happen. When I went to their concert in 2019 without a lightstick, I thought I might as well buy it some other time as there wasn't a reason to buy it in the nearest future.

You can tell I've been eyeing it for a long time since. Even the Shopee store that I wanted to buy from later not only marked up the price after a couple of months, but they also turned into an official store recently. Which means that from not being able to use the Shopee coins, to now being able to save more using them. Despite not having a budget for it, I immediately bought it during Shopee's 6.6 opening sale because of how good the deal was. I thought it was an impulse purchase at first, but then I realized how much I've been waiting for a good reason to buy and I guess, the right time just happen.


To me, that was how my self-control looks like. It's not something you would want to hear when asking for an opinion whether or not you should buy something, right?

But even so, there's no obligation for you to take the advice. We're too different to have a one answer fits all. I guess what I'm trying to say is, no external validation should be more defining than your own opinion. At the end of the day, the best choice is the choice you made for yourself.

Dropping by,
Melynn.
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Growing up as the only girl in the family is really nice. It indirectly means that there are no comparison between the prettier daughter, the nicer daughter, the cleverer daughter etc. Literally a blessing.

Gladly, I have 2 brothers who aren't any better than me in the aspects that I'm good at - which means I'm the better one in academic and rather at par with my brother in terms of our extracurricular. Heck I even entered a public speaking competition representing my school once while my brother represented his, and I won 3rd place while he didn't. Idk how that miraculously happened but in my eyes, I'm confident that what he can do, I can do better.

*cues Paint's Vine vs YouTube song*

Sadly, my family really don't see me being the "better child". 

In fact, me winning a competition alone < my brother participating in a team competition, or 
me getting better CGPA and dean's list for 4 sem < my brother with 1 dean's list on the 1 semester I did badly on. Yeah, I get compared to and things I am proud of are degraded instead.

But I'm always told that they love us equally, yet they don't act like they do. Are parents always this hypocritical?

I didn't even realize it hurts my self-esteem as much as it did until years later. I always thought I should do better and show more impressive results then maybe, they'll see my capability and acknowledge it one day. And honestly, in my 23 years of life, that almost never happened. Yet I never stopped trying my best anyway, bcos I reap what I sow. What I do today is for future me to gain, not for my parents or anyone else.

It's when I realize that my parents will never celebrate my achievements with me despite how big or small it is, that makes me stop hoping. It's nice when people tell me that my parents are so supportive when they let me do whatever I want, but little do people know, they really don't care what I do. And I get hurt by that too.

The bright side is that I'm forced to grow up faster knowing that they aren't an option for me to turn back to. 

It's funny how families don't have to have a constant argument or even be broken, for it to be hopeless. But at the end of the day, they are always our biggest weakness and I genuinely despise that.

Dropping by,
Melynn.
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This post isn't to sound like I'm bragging nor it's meant to sound like I'm romanticizing my job. It's just my personal takeaway after 2 months undergoing the internship. I know my past few posts has just been all about my internship lol but bear with me. 
Fun fact: This drama is my first actual kdrama in almost 2 months bcos I was so busy with internship 😓 
My first month went by pretty fast, maybe bcos it was WFH since the beginning of my time here. But everyone in my team is very welcoming and helpful. It was easy to connect with them so I never felt like I was struggling alone. The work style of my team also really suit my personal work style - fast response, frequent update and easy to ask questions with little to no misunderstanding. I just really like how everyone is always quick on their feet. I always hated when people don't take their work seriously (*cough* uni assignment group *cough*) and I'm glad everyone is so professional with their work here.

Despite being in a developer team, my company (KPMG), isn't a full-fledge software house. We are just a small software team and I can tell my seniors are also learning as they go through each project. To me, I really like that. I like how I don't have to be perfect and that we are all in the same boat despite our experiences. It helps to know that they can understand me if I'm stuck anywhere with my task considering I'm new to both the project and the programming language.

Another thing I'm grateful to my team is how they give me a lot of flexibility with my work. They seem to always understand me being a little slow bcos I'm still inexperience and they never push me too hard to complete my work. Of course, I also try my best to get it done ASAP so that I can do other work but it's the fact that I don't feel pressured, which makes it more enjoyable. There isn't too much of unrealistic expectation which is also good. The most they expect is for us to get the job done within the time given and that honestly goes without saying lol.

I'm also pretty blessed to start off with the tasks that I'm most familiar with. This is pure coincidence that I am assigned to do front-end and ended up continuing doing so for awhile. Then after that only am I assigned to the more complicated back-end. But even so, everything happen in small steps and I can really feel things are naturally making more sense as I go. It makes things less overwhelming and more interesting the more I do it.

But one thing about this job that may make or break it for some people is the little guidance you are expected to receive. I guess coding a project in a team forces you to not only understand other people's code but also requires you to straight away implement what you've learn without much time to go in-depth. Your knowledge is bound to be in small patches and you should be okay with not knowing everything. If you dwell too long on fully understanding one thing, you'll end up delaying the team and nobody wants that.

The key to cope with this kind of work environment is to jot down all terms and hints the seniors throw at you. You are kinda expected to understand the complicated terms they are using but there is no wrong with not knowing them too. I get that it gets reaaally overwhelming when you hear a bunch of new words and different complicated ways to solve something you thought was simple, but it helps if you take it all in first without questioning everything and slowly Google things one at a time. Don't stress yourself with all the new terms - worse come to worse, you'll just end up asking your senior again and again. But naturally, you'll come across the terms again and it'll make a lot more sense for you to figure it out that way.

The last reason why I enjoy it here is because of the never-ending task they have. This is one of the things that scares me initially. Like am I able to cope with working on multiple projects and all? But I guess they're manageable as long as you are discipline and work on your time management. It definitely isn't impossible. It just requires some sacrifices like having to study and make up to your time being slow at work, during non-work hours. As an intern, the worse thing that can happen to you is either not learning anything or not having anything to do. But out of  45 days at work, I don't have anything to do for only 4-5 days and the rest of the days, I'm literally grinding. I like that the culture is fast pace and it really sets the expectation high on my future career path.

Admittedly, this is the kind of environment that really suits me. It's weird to say but I really do feel like I belong working here. There are some imposter syndrome going on but I just consider it as a normal thing to feel and that everyone is bound to feel that at some point in their working life.

Last tip: Get involve in a local community of programmers! I learnt so much after joining a Telegram group consisting of programmers in the languages that I use. It's a good place to know the people in your industry.

P.S. I broke my '2021 Resolutions' of posting at least one blog post each month bcos I forgot to post one last month 😖


Dropping by,
Melynn.
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Warning: Wordy post ahead. 

Yesterday, I hanged out with my uni friends and it had been so long since we met that we straight talked about how internship has been for us. To think that we are already on our own separate path instead of just separate classes is such a weird feeling. Reminded me of how strange it felt when my high school friends are doing totally different things after graduating high school. Technically, I did spend an entire 5 years with these friends since my diploma, like it did with my high school friends, so the feelings were very deja-vu to me.

What was more amusing is that, we took different courses in degree but we somehow ended up interning in the same job position. My internship is literally the exact one for my course. Therefore, my other 2 friends, ended up in the same position bcos unlike me, their skillset really suit this job as a developer. Previously, these friends of mine represented my university for a software competition so everybody around us knew that they really would suit developer jobs despite their respective courses. Which really makes me feel like I don't belong due to my lack of skills, but at the same time I'm really grateful as this is like a dream job of mine and I didn't had to try as hard as them to get it.

One common thing about us is that we enjoy learning about coding and have somewhat complicated logical thinking, which makes this job very fun for us. And I really like how all of us can relate with the job that we're doing although our company's software structure are very different from one another. 

IT is a really interesting subject bcos you can never really know too much. There's always different kinds of frameworks and software and practices that you have never even heard of before. There's so much experimenting and new ways to do stuff, which both scares but excites me at the same time.

My friends and I have very different style and approach to our working life. For example, I'm mostly working from home and so far it has been fine for me. I think I've learnt to adapt and structure my life around it ever since online classes. My recent semester's results have definitely convinced me that I can manage. The diploma internship that I had was also enough for me to feel how working in office should feel like so I don't really crave much for it.

However, my friends have yet to experience working at an actual company because previously their internship were only within university settings, so this is a totally new experience for them and they like it more working in the office. There are still lots of setbacks from all of our experiences like having half of the team working in the office and another half at home, or having no team and just one superior, or having difficulty in getting enough guidance bcos everything is done virtually. I think there's gonna be some gain and some loss anywhere you ended up in.

The thing that makes me so glad is how I'm happy despite how confusing things are and I get to challenge myself while doing a job that I'm so scared of. I also really appreciate my team leader bcos despite having so many meetings and calls, he still took the time to teach me the little things and spend time answering personal calls bcos I'm just always lost and confuse with how things work - coding or not. I think having a helpful leader is important to ensure this online thing works well and I can tell from first hand experience that people who guide you well are the one who would give better result to your growth, given you allow yourself to be guided. 

It's better to be the stupid one who don't know what to ask because you don't know almost anything yet willing to learn, than act smart when you are just as clueless, bcos at least you're opening more eyes to different ways of thinking and approaching things. The more experienced you are, the more you don't realize how newbies sees things so people tend to assume they'll understand it all. But it's your job to let these experienced people know that you don't understand and ask for extra guidance bcos being quiet isn't what's gonna make you grow but being uncomfortable is. Although I always felt uncomfortable to disturb my team leader over petty things these past 3 weeks, I also know that he needs to know where I'm at to help me, so raising my concern becomes my responsibility in determining my own growth.

It's always faster to ask help than dwell on the problem longer than you should. A lecturer of mine used to tell me, "If you dwell on the question for more than 5 minutes, you are in a big trouble". I used to think that it was so stupid to just give myself 5 minutes to have things figured out especially when they're unfamiliar, but if I take that advice with a grain of salt, it does make sense. I shouldn't dwell too much alone bcos asking for help will not only solve it faster but there might also be things you misunderstood earlier and would never realize that unless you speak up. I think that's what makes asking questions a great piece of advice.

Tips to be less scared when asking question: Everybody starts with not knowing everything. It's okay to be at the start.

Dropping by,
Melynn.
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I started my first day of internship with the hope that I am gonna be doing something IT-related yet far from coding and all those stressful moments trying to debug errors... only to find out that I am doing exactly that. For the next 6 months!

If you've read my Internship Application Story, you'd know that I am an intern, or Vacation Trainee as they call it, at KPMG Malaysia.

Stepping into the company (even though virtually), I can really feel the sense of belonging and very friendly working environment at this place. One of my favourite things about this company is how structured things are, but some might say otherwise because even though they might tell you the things you need to know early, this company sure doesn't tell you a lot.

It's my first time working in an MNC company and a firm as big as this so I'm both impressed and weirded to know that they really go all out to take care of their image. I won't go into detail bcos that'll be a little P&C but just know that the security and branding is their top priority. Like they really value those. There's even few assessments we have to pass for them to ensure that.

Moving on to what I do here. After meeting with the Head of Department on my first day, I was then assigned to a team. Basically it's a team of software developers and testers. So obviously, now I will be trained to do just that.

It's both interesting and scary to me bcos I really am not confident in my programming skills. Like it's the one thing I'm most insecure about. But I don't particularly hate it. In fact, I enjoy coding - granted I understand what I'm doing. And what's more fascinating is that I'll be working on a project that does not even use the programming language that I am familiar with haa

Instead of the good ol' PHP, I'm now forced to learn to program in Python. I'm actually really scared when I heard of Python because it's such a new and advanced language... while I'm just here being basic. It's one of the languages that I find difficult to approach at my current newbie level but now I don't really have a choice.

Frankly speaking, this current situation felt like a dream to me. It's weird that I was hired without them actually knowing my exact skills, but I am actually very thankful for that. It means that I have been given the opportunity of life to try out the one career I've always been very scared to try. I'm actually very excited to see how much I can grow through this internship because I can already feel myself making a little progress after just a week.

As a CS or IT student, one thing that your university (at least for me) don't teach is how the people in industry setup their working environment. I feel like this should be a class of its own. How can nobody ever teach me about Git? I've heard of Github a lot but how come nobody ever tell me properly what it is and how it works? It's such an important tool to collaborate when you code with a team. I've always been curious to know how people "compile" their codes especially when there's more than 4-5 people in a group (like it is in university) so it was very interesting to find out that Git was the answer.

On top of that, I am currently working from home unless told otherwise and it seems that it's gonna stay that way for sometime (or even til the end of internship, who knows). Surprisingly after getting my life back in the last sem, I don't feel too stressed out about it. In fact, I really like wfh.

For example, I'm usually very sleepy by noon and I remembered how I used to sleep in the toilet at my previous internship bcos I couldn't keep my eyes open in front of my laptop and was too embarrassed to sleep at my desk. Then at lunch, I used to worry a lot on where to eat and how much I'm gonna spend on food for the day bcos eating out will cost a lot and I don't want to spend too much of my already-limited-internship-allowance. And when it was time to go home, I used to always feel weird if I go home earlier than the permanent employees bcos it seems that interns need to stay longer every time (even when we literally have nothing else to do lol). Lastly, commuting to work. Commuting is one of the most tiring part of working. Not only does it take a lot of your time doing nothing, it also means that you have to leave your house way earlier which equals to less sleep time. Personally, that is my least favourite thing about working in the office!

I am very blessed to start my internship at home. Some might say it's a bit of a loss bcos internship is usually the best time to build connection with the people in the office and they're not wrong. However, not having to worry about the reality of things like transportation, lunch and getting tired at work, also allows me to focus and enjoy my skill-based work more, which is the main reason of doing internship. 

Having done an internship before makes me see things in a different light and it might not be the case for everyone, but so far it's been good for me. Also a different work field might require more presence in the office than others, and fortunately my line of work suits wfh a lot.

The only bummer is that you can't see how busy your seniors really are and thus, you tend to expect a quick reply like how they would give if you were to ask them face to face. But they're already helpful and responsive enough for me, so it's not a huge deal and I appreciate them for that. 

I'm expecting a lot out of myself during this internship and I hope I can get somewhere with my programming skills. Gotta let myself be as dumb as possible yet still sounding somewhat favorable so that I won't annoy my seniors too much 😅

Dropping by,
Melynn.
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Aye! The name's Amelynn.

98 liner and a sucker for kpop & kdramas. I write as I think. Hope you're able to gain something from me ❤️️

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