Summer, 2015, Charleston, SC


I really had three expectations going into Boeing.

I wanted to have strong relations with people on my team. I wanted to be able to communicate with my team and have ongoing dialogue to make progress on our projects. I wanted to take ownership of challenging projects that will make real contributions to Boeing. I wanted to be able to experience the depth of an entire project cycle and produce tangible deliverables that I learn a lot from. Mentorship is quite important in a team environment. I worked best when I have an active mentor who wants me to learn, grow, and give back to the community.

I had communicated these three expectations to my recruiting focal and managers at my matching event very clearly. Finally, I got matched to the IT Asset Management and Order Fulfillment team.

Keeping that in mind, I moved forward into my very own project.

Although I can't say the specifics, I did take complete ownership of my project - the Master MSR Form. This cloud-based application handled internal asset requests within Boeing. I set up informational interviews, finished all Boeing trainings, and learned to use SharePoint Designer and InfoPath Designer in just two weeks. I finished my first iteration of the Master MSR Form by the end of the third week of the internship. After that, it was continuously iterating through testing and debugging from user feedback using Value Stream Mapping techniques. I was able to present a demo of the product by the middle of the internship, pitch to the team that would take this project on, and see the results happen. The team ended up using the Master MSR Form. From our efficiency projections, we estimated that using the Master MSR form increased efficiency (in terms of time) by 12%. 

Because of my involvement in the nonprofit, the Global Leadership Organization (GLO), I went on a trip to Taiwan in the middle of my internship to coach high school students in leadership management. Once I came back, my manager asked me to do a report-out on my experiences as a GLO Counselor in Taiwan. I gave my presentation, and the staff team loved it. They loved it so much that they asked me to presented in three separate meeting rooms for smaller groups. Then, my manager asked me to present at the All-Hands Managers Meeting. Instead, the event got changed so that I would present for the entire IT department in the building. I was ecstatic.

Since I finished my project a little early, I had time to take on another one. I became a Project Management intern part of the IT Innovation team. I coordinated virtual meetings with the third place Hack the Factory hackathon team to help them move forward to meet project deadlines, to create a Lean Canvas, and to pool in resources to help in the execution process. 

I had a ton of fun at my internship at Boeing, but I also had a ton of meetings. Just for fun, I put together a graph of how many meetings I had per week.

That's a lot of meetings scheduled on my Outlook Calendar! Aside from that, I had a summer full of memorable experiences. Let's take a walk down memory lane.

During the first week that I arrived, the team set up a luncheon and Jim-n-Nick's BBQ to welcome my arrival. It was such a great start to the internship!

A weekend later, I drove up to North Carolina to visit my friend Howard, who is a current medical student at Duke University. I met up Roger, my significant other, and we all went out with Howard's friends to Charlotte. We spent time going to the National White Waters Park, playing Exit Strategy, and having a hearty pancake meal. 

A couple of weeks later, I flew to Taiwan to coach high school students in leadership management for non-profits and other passion-driven leadership. I also got to visit my extended family and ate great food!

Later on in the internship, Boeing allowed interns to go on the DreamLifter and to finally take pictures! We're usually not allowed to take photos on the Boeing campus unless we have a photo permit, which is off-limits for interns. I was so excited to be able to share what I saw that day.

The HR team that managed the intern community put on a lot of baseball events. I don't particularly enjoy baseball events, so I didn't attend those. However, there was a social at the Basico, which seemed like a clubhouse with games, a pool, and good food. That was the night I got to meet a lot of other interns I don't normally meet. It also started an entire series of dinners and downtown hangouts that lasted until the end of my internship.

Because a coworker wanted to build the IT community to become more close-knit, he set up a payday social at the Southside 17 bar nearby. It was great to see IT members from all ages (21+) come together.

Yes, this was one of those downtown hangouts I was talking about!

At the end of July, I flew to Yale to celebrate my 2-year anniversary with Roger. I was delighted to see my GLO advisor, Michael, there! We all hung out together and had sushi and desserts. Roger was a sweetie and took to me a fancy dinner and bought a fancy dress for me! It was a relaxing weekend indeed.

Throughout the internship, my mentor, LaDonna, and I kept talking about how much we love noodles. We just had to find some ramen or pho. We found a nearby pho places and many of the team members took a lunch break together to get pho noodle soup! It was a first time experience for many people.

This was another downtown hangout!

And another one...

Natalie, one of the greatest coworkers anyone can have, hosted a pizza-making session at her beautiful home! It was such a lovely, chill event with the yummiest homemade pizza I've ever had.

Rachel, LaDonna, and I swore we'd go have some noodles again. We found this restaurant on Yelp that had really great ratings, but I'm just going to be honest, the restaurant did not meet my expectations. Next time though!

During my last weekend in Charleston, Natalie and Anjelica decided to take me out to experience Charleston's downtown night life. I didn't think there would be much going on, but downtown Charleston is amazing! I loved the vibe. It felt very safe, fun, and exciting! I'm not much of a bar person, but I had a fantastic time with Natalie and Anjelica. :) 

So at the end of the internship, I reflected upon my 3 months of work, fun, and new life experiences. Did my time meet my expectations? Well, I'd say yes!

I had a great team that cared about me and my future! There were so many times that my team members set up one-on-ones with me to ask me how my summer was going, whether they can help in any way, and what I think I want to do in the future.
There was no doubt that I had complete ownership in my project. It was my summer baby. I'm so thankful to have gone through an entire project cycle in its entirety. It felt very fulfilling.
My manager constantly introduced me to Leadership at Boeing. Because of those introductions, I was able to set up one-on-ones to ask for career advice and technical informational interviews to further my abilities in certain software platforms.
In the end, my summer internship had been an amazing experience that hit all three of my expectations!

Through these life experiences, there were three lessons I learned.

As for this last lesson, I thought it would be appropriate to make it more self-reflective. I asked other interns what their biggest take-away was for the summer, and the above was what they responded. I thought it was so great.

In the end, I realized that I put forth my 110% in everything I did this summer. The lesson above was actually from an anime I was watching, but I felt it was so relevant to how I approached my summer. 

Thank you for the great summer, Boeing!

I met the best suite mates in college - Kevin and Briton (and partner-in-crime, Abbie). Now, I'm off to the next stage of my life, so I decided to build this friendship photoset for Kevin and Briton to remember our golden era. We called ourselves: "The Suite Bros".

This project is actually an extension of the "Voice Activated Arduino (Bluetooth + Android) by ASCAS. I highly advise you guys to read his project first! ASCAS really simplified the fundamentals of the project down super well.

It's been a little more than a year since the last time (and the first time) I took Electronics at Pomona College and learned to use the Arduino. I thought ASCAS's project was fun and easy-to-learn. He has great project. Check him out when you can!

HOW PROJECT SUITE BROS WORKS

It's a DIY photoset that has LEDs inserted in the frame and in the back of photos that are activated by your voice commands via an Android's speech recognition app. The app is called "Android Meets Robots: Voice" by SimpleLabsIN. This app converts your voice commands to data strings and sends them to your Arduino via Bluetooth. You can build the photoset in any way you want. I just want to show you how I built mine in this Instructable.

PROJECT SUITE BROS VIDEO DEMO:

Click Here for the Instructables Post

The dream was 30, but our goal was really 10 students. Last year, the SoCal District team of the Intercollegiate Taiwanese American Student Association hosted a college seminar, inviting local high school students to learn about the college application process and student experiences. After a significant amount of preparation, guess how many showed up? One.

Kids a hosts at brunch!

I mean, the program last year was probably fantastic. I think the problem was that it was planned on an SAT date. This year, our team learned our lesson and made sure not to repeat history.

64 high school students, around 35 hosts, 32 mock interviewers, 8 tour guides, and about 10 panelists later, I sit here pondering about what happened these past few months.

I, Chloe Shih, am the 2013-2014 ITASA National Board Representative of the Claremont Colleges. I serve on the SoCal District team along with representatives from UCSB, UCSD, UCI, UCLA, and USC. Although it has its many perks and merits, the position of an ITASA rep isn't very clearly defined. Coming from the service, leadership, fellowship organization, Circle K International, I had an immense background in project managing and community engagement. I thought joining ITASA would be my next step in reaching my dreams in youth empowerment. 

After a number of okay-ish events that our district put together, I couldn't just let my term end without doing anything particularly memorable. I recall sending several messages to our National President and Vice President that I felt very lost and useless on the National Board. I kept reading ITASA's mission statement: "...to inspire, empower, and activate its community." How on earth am I doing this if all I'm doing is sending e-mails and setting up socials? I had to change something. 

An opportunity came forth. Our district is required to put together a college seminar to fulfill the philanthropy requirement. I insisted on hosting the event at the Claremont Colleges. Most of our events were held near the LA area. Claremont rarely gets representation or recognition from the other schools. It was time to change that. Although the event began as the district's committee project, I just had to take the reigns to make this a quality event. The result - nothing less than successful. 

The ITASA SoCal District Key to College Seminar and Overnight Stay Program was perhaps the most sophisticated event I helped put together. I've done service events with over 200 volunteers and numerous student groups, conferences with hundreds of attendees, a banquet of banquets with nearly 200 attendees and a 6-hour dinner program, PR after PR and after more PR work, and I even founded my own scholarship. This time, however, I finally dunked myself in something that was very directly and personally impacting for my greater community.

I mean, at the Claremonts, you always see those prospective student programs and college tours for high school students. Out of all respect, these programs are outstanding, but I rarely see people of color, especially from underprivileged backgrounds, being represented. Where are the people from underfunded schools? Where are the students who don't have legacies and who've never had the chance to learn about these resourceful and unique places in the nation? Where are the students who look like...me?

This was the mission behind my Key to College Seminar: to enrich, enable, and empower those students from those communities who don't get many chances to realize their potential. Figuring out every nut and bolt to get this project running was no joke. We're talking about liability and waiver forms, parent authorizations, reserving several buildings on different campuses, one-on-one mock interviews, overnight hosting, inviting a professional guest artist, providing funds for substantial expenses, and just so many more logistics. 

I really wanted a very personalized experience for the kids. I didn't want to throw them in a one-size-fits-all program where they feel very out of tune. I need fit. And so, with the best of my abilities, I matched kids with hosts and interviewers with similar interests. 

Interviewers!

To promote, our committee sent out invitation e-mails to SAT prep schools, after schools, TA junior divisions (TACL-LID & JTASA), Key Clubs and KIWIN'S  Clubs, and academic counselors of public high schools from the San Gabriel Valley to Rancho Cucamonga. Initially, we had very few sign ups. By our last week, we got up to around 20 to 30 registrants. This was outstanding. We literally reached our dreams in terms of attendance. Before the last day of early registration, our numbers doubled. I was not prepared. 

Two weekends before, I made personal announcements at almost all of our Asian American sponsor groups (APAC, AAMP, APISPAM, and APAM) for help. When our attendance numbers doubled, I scrambled. Although I did have a committee of 4 people, there was definitely a substantial amount of work on my shoulders. I spammed everyone I knew to be a mock interviewer, a host, or a donor (to flex students into the dining hall). I just didn't have enough. It sounds like somewhat of a small, doable problem now, but at the time, it seemed impossible. Keep in mind that TASA is a cultural club that's in its second year at the 5Cs. We've only put on some food fundraisers and casual socials. This was finally a time our organization can invest in something that directly makes a difference in our community. Although it was really difficult to get the 5C student body to help out, we eventually got enough people to take care of the 64 kids.  

Objectively and subjectively speaking, the event was a huge success. It panned out like a mini-conference. I got donations from the 5C Hack-a-thon (since I am on the planning committee). We were able to give the kids these huge Google tote bags filled with admissions pamphlets and info booklets from every school. We gave out little Google gifts (like pens, sunglasses, and car phone chargers) and Hack-a-thon t-shirts. We got 30 free meal tickets from Harvey Mudd admissions (thank goodness for Terrence), we got $140 fee waived from maintenance (thank goodness for Arthur), and a few hundred dollars in funding from sponsors. 

Here's what the schedule looked like:

Friday:

6 PM - 8 PM TASA Benefit Night Market & Overnight Stay Registration

8:30 PM - 9 PM Welcome Icebreakers for students and Host Debrief

9 PM - 10 PM Welcome Meeting, Introductions, Schedule Debrief, Host Assignments

10 PM ~ Free time with hosts and students

Saturday: 

9 AM - 9:30 AM Key to College Registration Opens

9:30 AM - 10 AM Tour of Scripps College

10 AM - 10:30 AM Tour of Harvey Mudd College

10:30 AM - 11:15 AM Complimentary Brunch at the Hoch Dining Commons

11:30 AM - 12:20 PM Workshop #1: The College Application Process, College Resources/Programs, & Personal Statements

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM Workshop #2: Mock Interviews for College Admissions

1:40 PM - 2:20 PM Workshop #3: College Student Panel

2:30 PM - 3 PM Tour of Pitzer College

3 PM - 4 PM Jason Chu SPEAKS!

4 PM - 4:30 PM Tour of Claremont McKenna College

4:30 PM - 5:15 PM Tour of Pomona College

5:30 PM Dinner & Small Group Discussions

6 PM - 7 PM Kids are picked up!

A few key items that led to the success of our program included the following:

• Keeping a 24/7 mentality and tracking or actually completing tasks that came to mind immediately.
• Never say, "Oh, we'll figure that out in the next meeting." I mean, you can say it, but I tried my best to minimize postponing.
• I assigned zero actual jobs to myself during the actual event. I wasn't an interviewer, presenter, tour guide, host, or a panelist. I did, however, try to be a photographer...which wasn't that great of an idea. The point is, as the director of an event, you need to always be available for people with questions in need of directions. You can't be occupied because, more often than not, you are the one who can give the final say. People shouldn't wait on that. 
• I didn't have to lead every group to the next destination. I delegated other people to take our group to the next session while I stayed behind to do quick scans (for lost items) and cleaned up. This really helped keep things on schedule. I highly emphasized to start even without me. I think, for many events, people tend to be reluctant to carry on a program when the main director isn't there. If every program item began and end with me, we would be hours behind schedule. 
• Using my resources. I had no idea I could get so much funding. All I did was to ask. Paying for the 64 kids to eat at a dining hall was no small issue. I would have had to come up with nearly $900 of funding just to cover that. Thankfully, I reached out to Harvey Mudd admissions to ask for support. They provided 30 free meal tickets. That saved us $375. I also asked all of the other admission offices for support. Although they couldn't help us must with finding hosts (because nearly each college had some sort of prospective student host program going on at the same time), they provided with tons of pamphlets and info packets. The Google goodie bags given to the kids seemed very legitimate. It was cool. Further, requesting to set up each workshop are from maintenance helped a lot. Once we arrived to the next workshop destination, all chairs, tables, and AV support were set up. HMC admissions actually told us that if we had asked earlier, they could have supplied us with more meal tickets and brought in professional speakers with streamlined presentations and guidebooks to help with our program. I was so surprised how much they were willing to help us. The take-away from this is that student clubs can get so much support from campus departments (you know, from experienced people who are actually paid to provide professional services).
• Personal network. 
• Minimize the question-asking. In other words, minimize the time people ask you questions that can easily be answered. If 64 kids went up to you to ask where they're supposed to do next, there's clearly some miscommunication. I went through the program as if I were an attendee and a volunteer host/interviewer/panelist and so forth. I provided master schedules and assignments for everyone else. One mock interviewer asked me why he needed to have the interview assignments of the rest of the crew. My response: "If 64 kids don't know who their interviewer and they ask you, you'll know what to do instead of wasting the next half hour to find me to figure it out." Everyone was to be a master of everyone else's schedule. That way, anyone can find answers from anyone else. I can only direct so many people at a time. 
• Don't be afraid to ask people you know and you don't know for help. I admit, nearly all of the 50 + people I asked to help me were people I knew, many others were ones I met on-site. People I didn't know included all the sponsoring programs, admissions office, maintenance, campus program directors, and friends of friends. This is an event with a greater cause. Bringing people together to make things happen really united my 5C network and community. It was very satisfying to see all of these people who've never met each other to come together for our  community. I've been called "common denominator", bringing unrelated people together for great memories. 

I literally worked nonstop for weeks to flush out an engaging and memorable program and to keep on top of my academic work. It was not easy, but completely worth it. At the end of Saturday, it really was just me (and my partner in crime) waiting for all of the parents to arrive. When students were leaving, many of them went up to me to ask if they could shake my hand, give me a hug, or take a picture with me. They said they genuinely enjoyed the program. The feeling - fulfilling. 

I came back to my desk at night and received messages like this one below: 

Hi Chloe,

On behalf of (another parent's name) and I, we would like to say thank you so much for the GREAT opportunity you had given to our boys to see the campus. The boys had a good time. They say it was a good experience, fun and meeting new people. They all especially like Pomona college and said it was really big, nice and clean.

Once again thank you!

Things like these make me really feel that my time spent was worth it. My efforts directly impacted parents and youths from the community. I am one step further in my journey for youth empowerment.

Sleeping bags and heavy carry-on items that the kids put in the SOCA (Students of Color Alliance) lounge.

--

April 21, 2014

Chloe Shih