12th September: SoDA coding competition
I, along with my team, attended the SoDA coding competition hosted by Google on campus today. It was precisely for software engineering. It was an hour-long session of coding challenges, and I was not even able to solve one problem, to my defense, I must say they were very tough challenges. The 2nd round was not related to coding, it was related to guessing games, we had to guess nodes in a graph, where some clues nodes are placed to help you.
Later that noon, I had an appointment with my Career Coach Mary for a resume review. I got my resume approved in WPC Connect. WPC Connect is a dedicated online tool for W.P.Carey students, which showcases dedicated business events, competitions, and even contacts from local and international firms for recruitment opportunities.
In the evening, I attended the event ‘Deep Learning for AI and GPU Computing in the Enterprise’ at Galvanize, Phoenix. Nvidia organized it, and they presented their technology for Machine Learning and AI. They explained how Nvidia has transformed from a hardware company to a hardware+software company with its latest offering in GPUs. Also, they described how GPUs improve performance in Machine Learning algorithms. It was easy for me to relate because of my understanding of the Coursera Deep Learning course. There was free pizza at the event as well. Also, there were some machine learning developers over there attending the talk and available for networking.
13th September: W.P.Carey Student Ambassador
W.P.Carey School of Business has a Student Ambassador program in which a few selected students represent the school and its graduate programs to prospective students and recruiters. This program provides you with opportunities to be the face of W.P.Carey School of Business for prospective students. It’s ideal for people who like to network with people and help them.
I applied for the Student Ambassador position as I wanted to help some prospective students by sharing my ASU experience.
In the evening, I attended the IBCC (Investing Banking and Consulting Club) meeting. It’s focused on undergrads in Finance and Economics who want to make a career in Banking/Finance. The committee members were Undergrad intern students from top investment banking firms. They arrange free lectures to discuss the investment banking theme. Since I have an interest in Finance, I liked this idea and decided to attend the meetings every Wednesday.
14th September: Career Fair preparation
We were asked to prepare a 30-second elevator pitch to advertise yourself to the prospective employer. We already knew that Career fairs are incredibly crowded, and most employers do not hire international students. Time to get ready for the MSIM/MSBA Career Fair on 19th September. The list of the companies included Deloitte, DHL, Cognizant, HoneyWell, and much more, but only Deloitte and DHL were accepting international students as per the information on the website. As per our Career Coach, we can still talk to employers who don’t accept international students.
15th September: Student Ambassador Selection Result
I received an email that I have been selected to represent W.P.Carey School’s MS in Business Analytics program to prospective students. There are around 10 Student Ambassadors every year for the MSBA program, who answer queries of all prospective students. It’s a voluntary activity and hence, unpaid responsibility, but it does look good on the resume.
16th September: LUG (Linux Users Group) Club Meetup
LUG Install-Fest was scheduled at 11:00 AM in the engineering college at ASU. I was trying to get my Linux Mint installed in my system since the last two weeks but was not able to due to UEFI. Finally, after the end of the session, I got a live persistence running on my flash drive. But it’s too slow, which I believe is due to the USB 2.0 bottleneck. I will need to buy a USB 3 Flash drive just for Linux.