Tong Lin

College: College of Staten Island

Education Level: Sophomore

Career Interest: Software Engineer

I am a sophomore and currently majoring in Computer Science. I started coding in my freshmen year since I didn't know what career to choose in my high school year. Ironically, I have never thought I would want to become a software engineer since I thought I could never imagine myself dealing with computer coding. However, I'm here now, and I actually enjoy it. Even though I only have short coding experience, I'm trying my best to catch up. I have experience in React.js, Bootstrap, C++, Python, Javascript, SQL, and PHP. In addition, I'm currently trying to learn web development and considering learning machine learning and AI in the summer. I believe openness is essential in a team since it promotes an excellent atmosphere for everyone to ask questions. Moreover, I'm also working on asking more questions and having more openness in my team. Therefore, as a teammate, I will always try my best to support my team and reach our goals, and please don't hesitate to reach out to me. One weird habit I have during coding is to have my dog near me. Whenever I get anxious about coding, I pull my dog from his sleep and start staring at him, eye to eye, until I don't feel anxious. At first, my dog will be surprised, but eventually, he will fall asleep again... Although it might sound like a weird action to do during coding, it does help on releasing stress. Throughout the internship, you might suddenly see my dog popping out on my screen, but I will try to let him stay calm. At last, I'm looking forward to learning and improving my hard and soft skills throughout this unique opportunity at Unadat with my teammates. I wish good luck to all of us.

What was your role?

CS (SWE)

What did you work on?

What was the impact of your project?

I`m currently on the Goal and Milestone team, where our tasks are to help customers to achieve their goals and clarify their milestones; where we will show all their information and the status of their current situation to the customers to help them to have a complete understanding to their economic situation. Another impact we will have is to motivate our customers better to achieve their goals. Completing each milestone provides customers with a straightforward view of their progress and therefore motivates them to continue. Also, clarifying milestones can better organize customers` thought processes and be more determined. Moreover, we develop features to help our customers to get unstuck on a milestone. At last, another impact we will have is to build connections among users. One of our goals is to integrate fundraising stories with the goals system. Therefore, users can connect their stories to their goals and milestones and view them by other users. One of the benefits will be giving other users some successful examples of using our tools, which will determine users` minds to keep using our tools. Moreover, connecting the goal system with the fundraising stories gives users a sense of accomplishment in their progress. My team`s impact on Unadat can improve user experience and increase customer loyalty.

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

What skills have you gained?

One new skills that I learned is learning more on a coding language based on other people`s code source. By looking and testing the source code of the Unadat website, I have learned a lot about how to use a certain keyword and the overall website.

What was the biggest roadblock you've overcome?

One biggest roadblock for now will be understanding the roles of my group. The team I am on is Goal and Milestone. At first, by looking at the name and the description given, I was confused about what our team is going to be working on. However, after attending the GM session on Friday and doing research, I was able to understand the functions of my teams.