Tatum Tricarico
Recently an internship opportunity arose for a few select MC students. It is through an organization called Northrop Grumman, which is a large industry focusing on technology and global security systems, products and solutions.
“Right now, I am in the department of business and engineering as a lab assistant,” senior Jamie Cheu said. “I help with labs and I work for UCAS which is an unmanned system. Sooner or later, we are going to get projects and we can work on specific things, but that all depends who your mentor is and what they think is best for you.”
As part of this program, each student is assigned a mentor in which they work under. They help to develop real things that the mentors will use in their feild of word.
“We are given a mentor and he or she presides over us,” Cheu said. “He or she is there to teach us and gives us a very in depth experience so that we get to feel what it’s like to be in [the career fields].”
Cheu’s internship started in January and is going until May. Fellow senior Sally Yen is just about to begin her internship journey and is anticipating the experience.
“What I am most looking forward to is seeing my work actually used by my mentors, because [in coding] at the end it says ‘one succeeded, zero failed, and zero skipped’,” senior Sally Yen said. “That means that your program works, so seeing that will be my end goal.”
After the process of getting selected for this position, Yen learned which field she will be interning for and is looking forward to the experience.
“We are assigned to different internships,” Yen said. “I am in software engineering, so that means that I am going to learn C++ and I will eventually be helping them with programs and [the mentors] will be integrating that into their projects.”
Each girl had to go through an interview process to obtain this position.
To be eligible for this position, students need to attend a school meeting where they are informed on the commitments of the internship. There, the students receive their application. After filling that out, they must be interviewed by the company.
“They just really wanted to get to know you, and have you placed in the right programs so that you are doing something that you are enjoying,” Yen said.
Yen wants to use this experience to explore future job and college opportunities.
“In college I am probably going to be majoring in computer science for two years,” Yen said. “I am looking to do computer science as well as business, so that is my plan.”
Along with Yen, Cheu also is looking into a career in the field that she is interning in, and she will use this experience to explore the route that she may take.
“I hope to get the college internship at Northrop over the summer ” Cheu said. “I joined it so that I could choose which [career] path I would like to take.”
Both Sundevils have a bright future and are going to use this interesting opportunity to get there.
