My experience moving towards an Intel internship

My first corporate intern experience is now, at Intel corporation. It feels nice to have all your work and effort go into technology that you've been studying for years, that for every night you stayed up working on your Software Design or Digital Design course there now is a day you can meaningfully be a part of a talented, intelligent team who shares the same passion as you. The truth is I've been working for this even before college, back when I didn't know whether I wanted to grow up as a game developer or make graphics cards but I knew for sure I wanted to do something in Computer Engineering. And I was able to make it happen, I was accepted to the flagship University of Texas at Austin in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Leaving my home state and being by myself taught me important independence skills, and I learned how much harder it was to do everything myself and juggle studying at the same time. That too, I was attending a difficult institution with a difficult major. I had slip ups along the way, a class I really did bad on, being rejected from many companies and their internship programs for low grades and not having the experience they wanted. Career wise it was a difficult time.

Fast forward to today and it's almost like a miracle that I'm at Intel. I say almost because through failure I learned how to believe in myself and so I knew where I wanted to go, what I could do and why I wanted to do it. I improved my grades by working harder on my classes, I studied harder, made well use of my time, took up research in deep learning. But not having a high GPA isn't an impressive factor when applying for internships. Luckily, I had one thing on my side and that was experience. I had previous internships, I had AI experience, I had class projects under my belt, I had certifications from Rice University and Research experience and I even designed my own video game on an embedded system (man that project was really hard). And in an Intel interview for the Media team, I let it shine. My interviewer talked with me about my experience, we talked about my class slip up, we talked about my future career prospects and what I wanted to do, we talked about my skill-set and what the role required. We talked about my certifications and what I contributed in my prior internships. And to say the least, it was really exciting when I got an offer from Intel as a Software Application Engineer Intern.

Each day I work a job I like, a job with a team full of kind, helpful, and smart individuals who propel new technologies and findings through hard work and creativity. And now, I get to be a part of that. I get to wake up in the morning and work on things that impact real life current and upcoming technologies. Now #IAmIntel is reality and not a dream, it's a proud achievement I list on my LinkedIn, it's a day by day adventure. The younger me reading about hardware specifications and being fascinated at cores, threads, GPUs, RAM and the lot now works in a profession where all of that matters.

Thank you Intel, I look forward to making great contributions to my team!

-Viraj