My first week at Sun Life has honestly really opened my eyes towards how it is working at a large company. I've never had the chance to commute to an office-type job, so even just commuting on the train to Toronto has been somewhat exciting.
I had the chance to meet my manager, Michael Pereira, in-person in Waterloo on the first day of my term. He showed me the type of stuff that his previous co-op students worked on, as well as some of the projects that I could spend the term working on. They all seem very interesting and I am excited to get started on whatever I will be doing. I also got a bit of a tour around the office, my laptop, and any questions I had answered. It seems that a lot of my team has worked with Michael previously, from other companies. I honestly find that pretty awesome and hope I can get the chance to have an opportunity like that in the future.
This week, I've had the chance to visit both the Toronto York St office and the Waterloo King St S Office. Both offices are incredible. It's my first time working from an actual office setting, and despite what a lot of people say, I really didn't mind it (although, it was only for about 2 days total). I definitely prefer working from home, but it is nice to have the option available.
Despite not having any other co-op students on my team, it's been super nice getting the chance to meet interns from other departments/teams. The Toronto co-op orientation ran by the campus recruiting team was a great experience, and honestly more fun than I was expecting it to be. I met a bunch of great people, like Reon Pyne, Alan Li, Ben Hudson, and Rachel Dietrich. During the networking part of the event, we had a pretty good conversation about how different the bigger, more STEM-y schools (U of Waterloo, pretty much) are from smaller schools like Brock. I hope I get the chance to meet them again in person before the term ends. The Kahoot game was much more fun than I was expecting, despite our quite lackluster placement (9th/18). It was honestly hilarious how the winning team was named "W=return offer", hopefully they actually do get one. I would not be surprised at all if the Kahoot game ends up being the most fun I have this entire term.
So far, the actual work has just been training videos & setting up my local development enviroment. The videos have been incredibly boring, and I hope to not be assigned any more. I am very excited to get to doing some actual work.
This upcoming week, all I know is that I am going to be attending the orientation in the Waterloo office. Other than that, I have no idea. I believe I should be completely done the boring onboarding training videos by now, so hopefully I can start getting to work and showing what I can do.
Moving on from all this boring work stuff, I've been bouldering a couple times this week. I haven't been going as much over the last week or two, so I have felt much weaker than I usually do. I'm at a ~V4 level currently, though I have completed some V5's and have felt that some V3's are nearly impossible.
Fall 2024 Goals
I almost never set specific goals for myself, and usually just accept things as they are. The following things are not considered "must-do's", but I do want to hold myself to some sort of high-ish standard.
I want to:
- Succeed at Sun Life. Be an actual useful member of the team has meaningful ideas & contributions.
- Climb at a V5 level consistently (higher if possible :D).
- Swim at least 1x a week (Brock has tuition included swimming a couple times a week).
- Go to the gym at least 1x a week. No specific weightlifting goals, since I have no idea what I can lift now. I basically just want to build muscle and lose weight.
- Start some hardware-based (Raspberry Pi) projects.
- Write a short blog post / weekly recap once a week. Maybe write something reflecting on my Caribou & research experience as well, we'll see.