Optum Internship Blog #10

Post #10
Date(s): 8/8/19 - 8/9/19
Activities: Final Goodbyes, Reflections and Presentation Feedback
Technical Information: Unplugging Laptops, Resetting Work spaces
Reflection: Overall my internship experience was one I will cherish for the rest of my life, as it was one of the first instances where I realized the path that I was to take upon, once I enter adult life and how I would manage my life.

Optum showed that a company could keep you on task, make you do the best possible work of your life while at the same time having fun, relaxing with your friends and in general just having a good time, with an incentive to work hard. The managers, supervisors and everyone there, immensely helped when giving us advice on how to chart our path forward in our quest to win the judges over with our application.

The friends I meet at Optum, will always stay with me and hold a special place. Once college starts I plan to work at Optum once again, through their college internship program, so I can once again experience what it was like the first time, and relive the great moments that I shared with the company.

I am immensely thankful for Ms Robinson, Ms Tanya and everyone that it possible that I could work for such a wonderful company, that really changed my life in many ways and certainly helped push me to my current career pathway of Biomedical Engineering.

Optum Internship Blog #9

Post #9
Date(s): 8/5/19 - 8/7/19
Activities: Reflection, Group Networking
Technical Information: None
Reflection: Some of the major frustrations that were felt throughout the process was the fact, that due to not being able to meet with our supervisors all the time( due to their busy schedule ), there were lots of times where we could work on a project, thinking this was what our plan was, before it getting rejected a couple of days by the supervisors for certain factors that we didn't think of before. It happened so many times, that it became quiet depressing at times, since there would be days where we wouldn't know what to do.

Moreover, our supervisor had taken a break for a week, and this was during the week after our first presentation, where we really needed to reorganize, correct our flaws as pointed by the judges and continuing from there. This week was one where we felt purposelessness, and a massive setback as we didn't progress much without any oversight to guide us, since we were still relatively inexperienced.

It was only once, our supervisor/manager Janet came back, did she guide us and help us find a perfect pathway that we could work on. Once she was able to go through our presentation with us once again, we were able to sort through our flaws, and then decide roles for who would work on what particular task in order to meet the deadline we had, which was coming very soon. Janet took out of her work, almost every single day and helped us with our presentation and application, giving us a sense of comfort and confidence even though we had none at the time. Her work helped inspire us, and work harder when it came to making sure our application was as good as it could possibly be.

Optum Internship Blog #8

Post #8
Date(s): 8/1/19 - 8/2/19
Activities: Final Presentation
Technical Information: PowerPoint
Reflection: Working for Optum essentially changed most of my perception of what skills I brought to the the table, and gave me a close insight to both what I want in my career as well as the skills that I would need to improve upon in my future and succeed in whatever job pathway I chose.

I learned that despite my weaknesses as a test-taker, I shine in more interactive environments where the goal of any task is creative and more tangible. Working with a professional team, made me realize I was born for this kind of group work, and that there was no better way to solve tasks then when working together, and incorporating all the skills each one on your team has. I learn't that I was confident, and had the skills to talk to almost any crowd whether it be teachers, students or even professionals.

Moreover, I realized that this kind of what I wanted for my future, somewhere to work that feels comfortable, where you don't feel like leaving and you get a sense of enjoyment/passion for what you are doing. It was made imperative that the only way to truly get work done, was if you enjoyed the work you were doing, not for how much they pay, but for what you are learning from that experience to take on with you on your future endeavors.

Optum Internship Blog #7

Post #7
Date(s): 7/29/19 - 7/31/19
Activities: Networking Sessions
Technical Information: Optum Presentation Format
Reflection: For the most part of my high school life, I was always split between the career path I wanted to take for my life, my parents wanted me to take a direction more towards either IT or Healthcare, with options of becoming either software engineer or a doctor. Neither of those careers, particularly interested me since I didn’t really have an interest in these pathways primarily because it felt like the standard, and most of my peers were following this path. I wanted something more unique, they may not be as high paying but is fulfilling and has immense growth potential, that's how I found the career path of Biomedical Engineering which is something I latched onto and my experience working for Optum only further solidified my belief, that this would be the way. 

The Internship at Optum, helped further my belief that the Biomedical Engineering pathway was the perfect combination of the Engineering/IT Field alongside the Healthcare field, to the extent that it would personally interest me, and I also wouldn’t be essentially following the herd mentality of most of my peers. 

In fact, I asked my manager, Janet Saldana, who is a Biomedical Engineer major, about her experience and advise for me, when I told her that this was the path I would pursue. Moreover, the fact that Optum was mostly filled with a variety of engineers, but a heavy number being Biomedical, inspired me since my experience at Optum made me want to work at a company similar to this, and I knew that pursuing this path would take me to a more satisfying and fulfilling place in my life.  

Optum Internship Blog #6

Post #6
Date(s): 7/25/19 - 7/26/19
Activities: Live User Testing, Target Mark Demographics
Technical Information: PowerPoint and Word
Reflection: Initially my duties alongside the duties of my partners, was just to research and find out everything we could about the healthcare system alongside combining them with some of our preexisting ideas and personal experiences regarding the american healthcare system. For the first week, we were almost entirely just on our computer gathering all the data we could, alongside discussing/brainstorming our ideas on rooms/boards all over the office, trying to come up with an idea for us to latch onto. 

As the weeks came along, we evolved to do more specific tasks, I worked extensively during the 3rd and 4th week on our application, helping program our software alongside Kathleen, who was someone with far more programming experience than me, and she was someone who had done programming competitions and knew many of the important details beforehand, I was able to assist her alongside organizing our group to make sure we met our deadlines and eventually putting my hands in our graphics as well as designing our final presentation that we vetted over a dozen times to suit the templates that the company required us to follow, as well as creating something unique out of what we had. 

Later on, as the project went along, all of our teammates were given more responsibility, but for the most part most of the tasks were evenly divided between everyone, since our manager didn’t want to overload any one of us knowing our nervousness and lack of experience. So almost every part of our project, had even hands. The only thing that each of us felt individual responsibility for was the presentation, where each of us knew that this was it, when it came to how far we came along and what we accomplished. 

Optum Internship Blog #5

Post #5
Date(s): 8/22/19 - 8/24/19
Activities: User Testing, Hospital Callings
Technical Information: C++ Programming
Reflection: My primary contribution to my internship was the collective group experience that I had alongside my other teammates, where I wasn’t given such one task to accomplish, but rather alongside my teammates we were malleable enough to work with whatever was needed to work with to help further are project and accomplish our goals.

There were times where I would work alongside one teammate with the graphics to help come up with designs for our application software that we designed to help usher in a higher rate of accuracy in regards to the communication between the medical administrators from the primary care physicians to the specialized departments. I also helped program the application, alongside Kathleen, making our application super interactive and user friendly with as easy to use a system as possible, to take away the complexities that we believe plagued the system beforehand. 

My most proudest moment in my internship, has to be the final presentation we did, I was so nervous, even though I had done presentations before, mainly because unlike school I would be presenting in front of real professionals and it was my chance to help create a positive first impression and especially not mess up my group who had trusted me. I was tasked with doing the last ¼ of the slides in our presentation, alongside helping conclude/summarize our entire project. I was especially nervous, since even if all my group did their presentation well, if I messed up in my presentation, then the entire deck of cards holding up our pitch would fall, since that is the only thing the judges would remember. Thankfully I was able to nail my presentation, without any hesitations or fears. 

Optum Internship Blog #4

Post #4
Date(s): 7/18/19 - 7/19/19
Activities: First Presentation, System Flaws
Technical Information: Quip, Powerpoint, User Testing
Reflection: When I first heard the news that I would be interning at Optum, given my experience having job shadowed at Cisco beforehand where I was exposed to a sort of confined office space with a lot of cubicles, I was nervous and somewhat dreading how my next 5 weeks would be. But thankfully, Optum exceeded almost all the expectations I had.

Optum with their open office spaces, lax rules, leisure activities, alongside being able to meet and interact with so many new people who were all thorough professionals who guided me and my team in helping us achieve our goals that we had planned. 

This was one of the things that I was really grateful, as this was something I didn’t have of control off, since most of the factors involved here were external as I could only control how I act but how other people would respond. The managers, the employees alongside the other interns all made my internship experience, one of a lifetime, as I made lifelong connections beyond belief, and gained experience I would never have gained withouth this opportunity.