adventures in atx

Sometimes, an experience has to marinate in your mind before you can fully appreciate it. That was the case with this past summer, which I spent in the sweltering, sun-baked desert that is Austin, Texas (as a person who is chronically cold, yes the heat was that bad).

I recently read a blog post by Ava where I learned about the three types of fun:

I'd categorize my overall experience as a Type II kind of fun. In the moment, it was busy, hectic, and full of sleepless nights. But now, I find myself really missing it. I also feel like I've reached the point where I can truly appreciate the time I had, so I wanted to write about it!

debugging irl

My experience began before I even boarded the plane. Around mid-March, one of the interns had coordinated a Discord server for all of the incoming Austin interns. Most people had already finalized housing plans, but luckily a couple people were looking for a third roommate – so I reached out!

Then, one week before I'd move in, my roommate, who had started a week before me, called me and my other roommate. She had just taken a first look at our apartment, and it was nothing like what we'd seen on the website. Wallpaper peeling, mold in the sink, and the quintessential Texas roaches crawling in every nook and cranny.

Huge shoutout to my roommate because for the next several days, she called up everyone she could get in contact with to find a 3-person sublease for us. By the end of the week, we had secured a 6-bedroom, 3-bathroom apartment in UT Austin for under $1K per month! We wouldn't be able to get the keys until a day after I started, but thankfully my roommate also put me in touch with another intern, and I was able to crash at her place.

For the next couple days, I ran on five hours of sleep as I juggled moving in, unpacking, onboarding at Apple, and starting my intern project. Since this was my first big tech internship, I also stressed myself out way more than I needed to make a good first impression on my team. This only added to my exhaustion, and I vented my frustrations to a couple friends.

Amid the chaos, I still had reasons to be optimistic. On the first day at Apple, I was assigned a conference room to work, which I'd be sharing with two other interns for the summer. Though I usually prefer having my own space to work, this conference room was the best thing that happened the whole summer. My conference-mates and I clicked instantly, and our silly conversations eventually became a source of relief throughout the summer during long working days. Along with sharing inside jokes and laughing at random things we found funny, we also established a routine of taking short walks around the campus to chat and decompress.

settling in

In that first week, I also set up a carpool group with my roommates and two other interns. We ultimately calculated that Ubering for the whole summer would be cheaper in the long run, and more convenient because we wouldn't need to worry about parking. One of our carpool members created an expense spreadsheet so we were able to track who was booking the Uber and for how much.

Spring semester had been incredibly draining, especially as I was taking the notoriously time-consuming 6.102 (Software Construction), which had long PSETs (~20 hours each) and difficult exams. Along with leading 3 projects for AppDev@MIT, I hardly had time to exercise (which happens every semester). So before the summer started, I vowed to focus more on my health and set a goal to run at least 3 times a week.

Another part of this goal was meal prepping, so I could save money on food while also being able to eat healthy. On Sundays, I would use my run to get to Trader Joe's (~30 minute run) then Uber back once I got my groceries. After a quick shower, I would spend 3-4 hours prepping breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

I really wanted to try cooking new recipes, but unfortunately, I got quite busy and didn't have the energy to experiment. Most of the time, I would grill chicken breast in a pan or with the air fryer and cook some kind of veggie (broccoli, cauliflower, or spinach) and add in some jasmine rice. Surprisingly, I don't get sick of eating the same foods every day, so overall, I had a good experience meal prepping! I found it really therapeutic to listen to music or a podcast while cooking.

in my free time

During my third weekend in Austin, I took a flight to San Francisco to attend the UC Berkeley AI hackathon! However, both my teammate and I had taken overnight flights on top of surviving a late-night work week, which meant we were already tired before we even started coding. Nevertheless, we trudged on, and spent the morning before the opening ceremony brainstorming an idea. At the time, I had been trial-running Sunsama, a task manager that integrates your Google Calendar, TODO list, and email inboxes all in one place. Our idea was to create a dev-tool version, where software engineers could integrate their Slack, Linear, Github issues, and Google accounts and use AI agents to automate workflows. For example, the app would detect when someone assigned you a task in Slack, automatically create the corresponding Linear ticket and GitHub issue, and block off time in your calendar to work on it.

After the opening ceremony, we got lunch at Zhangliang Malatang! Malatang is like a mini spicy hot pot where you can pick your own ingredients like meats, veggies, noodles, and tofu. I don't think my spice tolerance was good enough for this :/

Then, we settled down in one of the hacking areas and got to work. By the 3 AM mark, had completed the core integrations part, but struggled to get the AI automation working. We decided to take a nap in shifts because the caffeine from our coffees had begun to wear off. Our bodies got the best of us, though, and we both fell asleep and woke up around 8 AM. With only three hours left before submission, we agreed it wasn't worth scrambling to eventually present a half-baked project.

Though I was initially reluctant to abandon the project, my teammate convinced me to spend our remaining time touring SF instead. I don't regret it at all - in the hours before our flights home, we:

• Went to Chinatown and ate dim sum
• Rode our first Waymo
• Walked around Pier 39 and watched the seals
• Devoured chocolate fudge sundaes at Ghirardelli Square
• Toured the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park
• Ate ice cream mochi at the Japanese Tea Garden
• Climbed the stairs to the top of the Twin Peaks
• Explored Japantown and ate ramen at Hinodeya and matcha ice cream at Matcha Cafe Maiko

When I got back to Austin, I told a coworker about how we ditched the hackathon, and he said that when we grow older, what we'll cherish is not the work we did but the people we spent time with, which really stuck with me!

Another goal I set for myself before entering the summer was to get back into my hobbies again! My closest friend was just graduating from high school, so I wanted to make a short video montage with all of their photos and videos they shared with me as a small congratulations but also a way for me to get better at video editing.

I also wanted to get more into photography - I felt limited only being able to use my iPhone, so after getting my first paycheck, I got my first camera: a used Fujifilm X100V off eBay! I did some research into what accessories to get, so I ended up also getting a Tiffen Glimmerglass filter (which diffuses the light to make it look softer in the photo), a lens hood to prevent glare, a screen protector, box to store the camera, and a cheap camera strap off of Amazon.

I finally got the chance to use it as two of the interns were hosting a Barge, which is a type of event where you rent a party boat. I learned that it's a pretty popular Austin activity, especially for student orgs at UT Austin. The boat, which held over 100 interns, cruised along Lake Travis and stopped at a small island where my friends and I climbed up on the rocks! The boat also had a small dock and a tube slide, so between exploring the island and taking photos, we cooled off by jumping into the lake.

crunch time

Midway through the summer, the I began to spend more and more time on my intern project in preparation for the final presentation. For some background, I was working on building AI agents to automate data analysis tasks for petabyte-large datasets. Our main customers were internal like the retail and ads teams, who wanted to be able to ask questions about their datasets and generate visualizations in natural language. The main challenge I faced was managing the context effectively so that the model would 1) not hallucinate and 2) learn from and match how a human analyst would actually work.

The workload finally lightened as we reached the last 2 weeks of the internship. I was surprised by how much the intern program managers emphasized the final presentation - notably, they had to feel "Apple", in that they should look like and be delivered like a WWDC keynote. Thus, the other interns and I spent a solid week refining, pitching, and rehearsing our presentations while wrapping up the code.

Before I knew it, I had reached the final week of my internship! I finished my final presentation and felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. I could finally enjoy myself! My friends and I went to the Apple intern send-off and spent the whole afternoon sampling the food and desserts and checking out every activity station. We also squeezed in a visit to Barton Springs, an Indian restaurant we'd been eyeing all summer, and tried as many Caffe Macs (Apple's in-office cafeteria chain) desserts as possible.

takeaways

Halfway through the summer, I would've told you I was barely surviving. Looking back though, I'm grateful for so much: the plethora of outdoor activities Austin had to offer, my amazing team who advocated for me and my project, and the Apple intern class that was always organizing ways for us to hang out.

Having explored the city, worked on a meaningful project, and made close friends, I've learned a lot more about the kind of work I enjoy and the types of people I want to surround myself with. Excited for more summers like this one!