Jaimy Schatteman
Landing an internship at the right company isn’t a given in most cases. In this blog, I will share how I experienced the search for one and how my first weeks at the internship went from very stressful to “better than expected”. ✅
During my last year of college, I had to pick a company to serve my internship. Being overwhelmed by the possibilities, I did not know what to choose. A lot of questions raced through my head. What kind of company do I want to work at? Do I want to be a front-end, back-end, or full-stack developer? Do I want to be a consultant or keep working on the same project? I knew I had to narrow down my search so I would end up with an internship I was fully satisfied with.
Due to my background in graphic design, I’m not only interested in writing great applications, but I also like to think about how an application is interpreted by a user. An internship where I’m regularly confronted by this aspect of development is right in my wheelhouse (sorry, not sorry for the pun). My decision was clear. Front-end it was!
During my search, I stumbled upon an internship assignment at Wheelhouse in collaboration with Brainjar. This assignment consisted of developing the redesign of Klassif.ai’s new front-end in React.
When I started my internship, I didn’t possess the knowledge nor skills for developing a React application. But nevertheless, Wheelhouse was prepared to guide me through the learning process, provided that I would learn the basics before I started. So I did.
The first few weeks were tough. I got bombarded with new information I had to process. But I do like a challenge, so I muddled through. Luckily, I had a very helpful team that would set up a call whenever I had an issue.
During the first week of my internship, I was ready to merge my first feature branch. However, before I was allowed to merge my branch into the main branch, my technical mentors Daren and Maarten had to review my code. So, I created my first pull request. And it was ehm... something. I think they still wake up at night drenched in sweat because they have nightmares about my first pull request.
Some time went by and I had to merge another branch. After meticulously checking each line of code, I finally dared to create my second pull request. With fear in my heart, I waited for the review and was pleasantly surprised by the outcome, because my pull request was better than expected (Daren Malfait, February 2021, Retrospective Sprint 1). This is where they baptized me Jaimy ‘better than expected’ Schatteman. 😜
As the weeks went by, I started to know the ins and outs of React. Although I still had a lot to learn, development went smoother and smoother. The weeks flew by like it was nothing and before I knew it, the internship was over.
When Wheelhouse asked if I would consider working for them, I didn’t have to give it a second thought. I had a lot of fun working on the Klassifai redesign project. Moreover, the core values of Wheelhouse and Raccoons, in general, are in line with my own. To conclude this blog post, I want to give a special thanks to everyone working on the Klassif.ai redesign project.
Oh, and if you’re interested in a similar Brainjar x Wheelhouse project, we have an interesting one in store for you. Check out Brainhouse, our internship squad that will work on an AI application to help ALS patients. 💪🏼
Written by
Jaimy Schatteman
Want to know more?
