Summer’s finally over and school is starting again, so I thought I’d take the time to share about one of the best summers of my life!
During my spring semester, I took AI Product Engineering and Tooling with Professor Bennett Li, who referred me to a company he was consulting at called Bumo. I ended up joining Bumo as an AI intern and since Bumo’s office was in Pasadena, I stuck around in LA for the summer instead of going home to the Bay Area.
Interning at a startup was such a unique experience. Nearly every day brought a completely different project. I could be architecting the AI assistant one day and then creating the search page from scratch the next. It was so exciting to be able to experience the chaos and high speed of startup culture and work on projects across so many facets of software engineering. I even travelled to San Francisco to an AI conference hosted by TrueVentures, one of Bumo’s investors, where founders and CEOs (including my CEO!) discussed their experiences building AI startups and where they saw the industry heading.
Every year, it’s been a goal of mine to learn something completely outside of my known interests, and this year I chose art history. As a city filled with culture and history, LA practically has a museum in every corner, so I compiled a list and dragged my friend Stuti (also Viterbi engineering!) along with me. We visited museums everywhere from the California African American Museum across the street from USC in Exposition Park or all the way up to the Pacific Palisades to see Greek and Roman sculptures at the Getty Villa. One of the lesser known perks about going to school in LA!
This was also the summer where I truly explored LA in all its touristy glory. I went to Griffith Observatory, hiked the Hollywood sign, tried my first ever Erewhon smoothie, and went to the beach every single week (Manhattan Beach is the best one confirmed).
Looking back, I had a perfect summer. I had plenty of computer science and career experience while also being able to explore my interests outside of tech and see more of my new home. I can’t wait to see where this next semester takes me!
