As we head into the fifth week out of the seven total in the program, I am reflecting on the goals I had at the beginning as well as the progress that my group and I have made. This is my first summer in Houston coming out of my freshman year, and I am enjoying it so far! It is nice to meet new people such as the international students and even some of the Rice students.

I didn’t know what to expect at the beginning of this program. Of course, I knew we would be working on projects pitched to the OEDK, but the dynamics of everything were still a little fuzzy. However, we dived right into this experience and got to work. I appreciate that the structure of this was a little different from the typical fixed plan of the ENGI 120/EDES 120 class I was used to. We had some more autonomy which I liked in the internship. My goal at the start was to have a successful and completed prototype for our client. This may sound like a basic or obvious goal, but to me, it is very important. In a previous project I worked on, we got to our final prototype and made many iterations, but by the end, we weren’t 100% successful. Now I can’t make any excuses for the past, I can only use it as a learning opportunity and motivation for the future. So coming into this new project, I was inspired to make it to the end and complete our prototype, and right now my team and I seem to be on track for that.

Recently, we have been working heavily on our documentation. This may seem like something to do at the end, but doing it along the way makes it so much easier to compile decisions, justifications, and results. Since our client is also a company, we found it imperative to do this so that they can make an informed decision about moving forward with our prototype. We are documenting our brainstorming phase and the existing solutions that we researched. From there we divided into the creation of our solution and the many different iterations that we went through. Additionally, we listed out our testing procedures and the results that we collected from them. We still have some information left to put in, but we look forward to getting started on our presentation in this coming week.

Aside from work, I’m really enjoying working with my team because we can also have fun while doing our work, just joking around. Unfortunately this week there was no networking lunch, but I am looking forward to the one coming up. Also, on Thursday after work, some of use went for a bike ride in Buffalo Bayou after work! This was a lot of fun and a great bonding experience. To end our ride, we went to Post Houston and tried some paleta, which was delicious! Overall I enjoyed this past week and I am looking forward to the coming week because it is only three days!!!