My second week at Sun Life was very good. The week started off very strong with my team's bi-weekly technical meeting, where I had the chance to actually meet and talk to most of the team for the first time. It was a tiny bit overwhelming, as quite literally everyone in the call was referencing technologies or terms that I had never even heard of before. I was warned in advance that everyone speaks in acronyms, but it was way more than I was expecting.
Waterloo Office, from the parking lot side
On Monday I was able to attend the orientation in Waterloo. The Waterloo orientation ended up being less exciting than the Toronto one, as there were less people and I didn't have the benefit of having met some people beforehand. It was pretty much a direct repeat of the Toronto orientation, with the addition of a talk from Laura Money, Executive Vice President & Chief Information and Technology Innovation Officer at Sun Life. We also got to play another Kahoot game, which me and my team won! It was very convienent that they used the same Kahoot (free $25 Uber Eats 😊). I also met Ervin Ungureanu, who seems to have worked on some pretty creative and fun stuff at his previous Christie Digital Systems co-op.
During the next couple days, I was able to finish setting up my local environment. According to the team, I was the fastest, in the history of the team, to finish the onboarding & local development setup process. This was pretty suprising, as I felt like I wasn't that quick, and I was worried that I might be seen as wasting time, or something like that. For the rest of the week, I spent some time talking with my manager & the team, figuring out what my first actual task will be. Turns out I will just be making some minor changes to an internal tool. Shouldn't be too hard, it's more-so a way to learn the basics to AEM (Adobe Experience Manager). According to everyone I've talked to at Sun Life, AEM is a very in-demand skill, which feels weird because I've never heard of it prior to this job.
AEM is confusing. I'm working on learning the basics, but it's very different than anything I've ever worked with before. I'm also sure that I will be able to get the hang of it sometime soon. Overall, there's just been a lot of learning and reading this week. Pretty excited to learn more.
Fall 2024 Goals Update
Not really sure how I want to format this part. For now, I'll just write some short notes below my goals from last week.
- Succeed at Sun Life. Be an actual useful member of the team has meaningful ideas & contributions.
I think I'm doing pretty well so far. I've been able to finish the onboarding process quickly, and I'm excited to start working on my first task.
- Climb at a V5 level consistently (higher if possible :D).
I went bouldering on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. The gym I go to (Gravity Climbing Gym - Niagara) had a couple of fun comp boulders set this week, which were super tough.
- Swim at least 1x a week (Brock has tuition included swimming a couple times a week).
Swam on Tuesday, immediately after bouldering. Suuuper exausting day.
- 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.
Went to the gym on Monday. Mostly pull/cardio day.
- Start some hardware-based (Raspberry Pi) projects.
My girlfriend got me a Raspberry Pi 5 (8gb) as an early anniversary gift. Now I just need to figure out what I want to do with it.
- Write a short blog post / weekly recap once a week. Maybe write something reflecting on my Caribou & research experience as well, we'll see.
😊