Jessica Ngai

College: Queens College

Education Level: Graduate

Career Interest: Education (Early, Elementary, and Special Education)

Hello! I'm an Asian American who was born and raised in New York City. I have never really traveled abroad or out of the state, so I hope that my future includes traveling the world. I graduated with a BA in Queens College in Elementary Education and Math and will return to Queens College for my master's in special education. I have a passion for teaching our future and love learning new strategies and ways to help support them in any way I possibly can. I am nervous, but also extremely excited that I will have my own classroom one day.

What was your role?

I am on the Design Team for the Intern’s Page. On this team, we want to highlight and showcase interns who have worked and helped improve Unadat. We updated, designed, and coded the new intern’s page.

What did you work on?

In my first week, I was on the Design Team. I helped the team create a PowerPoint tutorial on how to use Unadat. Then, we edited it to make the slides more actionable instead of only having descriptions of what can be used. After that, we moved on to creating tutorial screens on 3-5 of the most important features of Unadat. When I moved onto the Interns Page Team, I researched other companies for elements that can be used on Unadat’s own intern pages. After approval of features and seeing it coded, I worked on filling in the content. Then, I worked on creating the individual intern page layout and creating questions that interns needed to answer so we could add them to their page. In addition, I have also done research for information we could add to the Education and For Youth pages.

What was the impact of your project?

The intern’s page may not directly contribute to what Unadat does to help users, instead, it is a place to highlight all the interns who have contributed to Unadat. Through the intern’s page and their individual intern’s page, we can learn more about them and showcase all their hard work during their time at Unadat.

What did you learn or improve on from this internship or from your teammates?

My biggest advice to the next crop of interns is to not be afraid of asking for feedback. Feedback is always helpful to us because it gives us a clearer vision of what the manager wants and may also allow us to see things we did not initially think of ourselves. Through my teammate, I was able to get more insight on how to code. I already had a basic knowledge of HTML, but through this internship, I was also able to watch one of my teammates code and I thought that it was very helpful in learning a little more about how to code. He talked through what he was doing so I was also able to learn more about the reasoning of what he was doing.

What skills have you gained?

I have definitely learned how to make my writing more concise and to the point. A lot of editing has gone into creating content for the intern’s page so I have learned to include having the important information while keeping it short and simple.

What was the biggest roadblock you've overcome?

The biggest roadblock I’ve overcome is trying to come up with ideas for something new. For example, coming up with value propositions or trying to design the interns page. What helped me with this is researching and looking at what other companies have. I used other companies’ designs as examples and ideas we can create on our own page.

How has company culture guided your work?

Company culture has guided my work as it allowed me to learn new things and meet new people I would not have otherwise. They have given me feedback and their opinions on the work I have done, but I was also able to see their new opinions and ideas.

What was your experience at Unadat?

So far, my experience has been pretty positive. I love how all my coworkers and I can work really well together and we are always in constant communication about what we’re doing and any updates that we have. As for the work, researching can get pretty tiring, but I know it is something that is necessary.

What was one big project you worked on during the internship? Can you walk me through the process?

The biggest project was creating the intern page. Before starting, I told Sean and Dan that I would like to work on coding a little, but would also be happy to be on the Design Team. Because I did not know enough coding to be put on the Tech team, they created this project for me to be able to practice both. I was given open-ended tasks so that I could populate the page with my ideas and there were many different ideas that I wanted to add, but I was also given feedback on what was more doable and plausible so I was able to make edits based on that.