Samsung Internship: Last 3 Weeks

Woop woop last half of diary blurbs coming in! The internship is officially over, and it was great having a regular sleeping schedule because of the 8AM-5PM work shifts as well as eating pretty regularly. 

( read weeks 1-3 here: http://gloomy-home.blogspot.kr/2013/07/samsung-internship-first-3-weeks.html )

WEEK 4

Work has been pretty much the same. I feel bad that my reports are slowly getting shorter and shorter, but it's really that nothing new has been happening since I've been busy with work and have already settled. Everything is pretty much done in groups here, even without the unification of working on the same project. For example, our whole team goes eating together, and goes get dessert afterwards together, etc. The people in my team have phone apps to single people out on who will pay for the group's refreshments/treats afterwards (which I think I've mentioned actually.) So far the list includes:

• a deer racing app where you input the number of team members (that can pay) and number them off. The person with the number of the slowest deer gets to pay for everyone.
• a pirate barrel stabby game, where you stab at a barrel with swords, and whoever makes the barrel explode with their sword stab has to pay,
• a shark tooth pulling game where you pay if you pull out the wrong tooth of the shark and it bites down on you

My mentor also apparently got a mentor stipend, and was pretty insistent he spend it on me. So we all walked out of campus as a team and ate dinner together (the downside was that I missed out on an HR dinner due to them being planned on the same day. Koreans like to party on Wednesday and Thursday nights instead of Friday nights for some odd reason.). My mentor is also super nice to me, and likes talking to me about his work, his family, and other miscellaneous things. I'm actually starting to feel really welcome, if a bit awkward sine I can't always join in on conversations. My team always tries their best to include me, but they also get really shy about their English. Otherwise work is pretty great! I feel like HR doesn't tell us much (even though they're in charge of the internship program.) but whatever they send my boss in Korean, he always shows me and asks if I knew about this (I didn't, but now I did thanks to him.). 2 weeks to go, and I still don't really know what I'm supposed to present on my final week, but Korea has taught me to just roll with the punches.

WEEK 5

For this week, I've pretty much finished the project that my boss assigned me, so I have been working on a presentation for the final week. I'll be presenting in front my mentor, and two other people from my department. They're going to grade me on a rubric, and check to see how compatible I would be in Samsung life. If I pass their evaluation, I get offered a job at Samsung for when I graduate from UT. We also went on a field trip this weekend to Everland, an amusement park, with all the other interns, which was really fun but I ended up becoming sunburnt a bit haha. There's only one more week left! I'm nervous about my presentation, but my boss keeps on reassuring me my Powerpoint looks great so far.

(here's the picture version of the Everland trip: http://gloomy-home.blogspot.kr/2013/08/samsung-internship-weekend-5-everland.html )

WEEK 6

I have to make this short, but this week I basically just prepared for my final presentation and presented to three people. We'll hear back about job offers late August I think. I've been going to a lot of lunches with different people. For example, I ate out for lunch from Tuesday to Thursday with the HR representative of Logic TD, the Senior Vice President of Logic TD, and my team as a "going away" event respectively. We also had a meeting after work on Thursday detailing about the job benefits and prospects about working at Samsung. We got really loving gifts from the HR department that were really just amazing and had so much time and effort put into them.

I really loved my mentor, and I pretty much teared up at thinking about saying good bye. Thankfully, he was at a meeting (with the rest of my team) at the time, so I left without any embarrassing moments for me. However, my mentor and I still exchanged personal emails (since the company emails are only used for sending material within the company) and I also gave him my Texas number. He mentioned he might visit Austin soon (because of the semiconductor building we have there) which is pretty exciting to be honest! Also, even though it was the last day, we had to still check into work on the last day, and turn our laptops back in to our respective departments. I had to leave early to pack my things to lug them to our final destination.

We had a closing ceremony really far away from my dorms, and it's kind of a hassle to get my luggage around everywhere since we need to move out soon as well. Joy and I managed to get my luggage onto a bus that went all in and around and about campus before getting to CDI (the building we were supposed to meet, and the stop we almost missed except there was a really nice guy who told the bus driver to stop and let us off). The speeches and performances were great as well, and the movies HR had put together of all the different interns and their departments were also amusing. We got beautiful looking certificates of enrollment completion (hence why it is called a completion ceremony) and now we're free to roam Korea!

It really was a great experience, and everyone really did try to make everything as smooth as possible. However, there were still some bumps and issues along the way, but I'd like to think that I'll look fondly back upon these and laugh at myself.

I'll still update this blog with other Korea adventures, like Jeju Island with Windter, Ryan, and Joy! Joy and I will also be hitting up other monumental places we missed due to no time (looking at you, Namsan Tower and Gyeongbokgung Palace), so expect pictures of that soon!