I haven’t been posting for the past few weeks because I’ve been enormously busy. I’ve worked on two separate projects and have had to learn a lot just to get started. Frameworks, infrastructure, query languages, and semi-obscure aspects of C# have all come into play, as well as some irritating issues with my apartment’s router, xml files, security groups, and a certain database that intermittantly refuse to give up its data.

The next two weeks are a wind down from this frantic ramp up. I’ll be presenting my projects at a hiring fair. I need to work on my demo, update my resume, and study DSA.

Some of my colleagues know they’re not getting jobs with their teams. They’re pretty upset, but all you can do in this situation is try with another team, and hope your hard work will impress them. I haven’t heard a hard “no” yet, but I went into this never expecting a “yes”.

Everything about this experience has seemed so far out of the range of possibility for me that it’s been dreamlike. To get a fulltime job from it would be absolutely unreal, not because I don’t deserve it, but because I never imagined it to be truly possible for someone like me.

When people ask me what I want, I say things about front-end work, and building new kinds of user experience with AI, but honestly, it feels like an abstract conversation. If I really got in on those things, I’d be over the moon. I’ve already gotten to work on things that help people from all over the world – keeping VM’s up and running – and that’s pretty incredible. I try not to think too hard about it.

I’m going to try my best to stay, but if I don’t, I’ll be able to move on with an amazing amount of knowledge and the Microsoft name on my resume. If that’s the worst case scenario, I really can’t complain.