The Internship

The internship is officially over, I'm back in Detroit (Ann Arbor now), no longer in Chicago.  This post has been a long time coming but I just kept putting it off because I knew I was going to end up spending a lot of time deciding what to write.  I've always been bad with long goodbye's because I try and summarize my entire experience as accurately as possible and in the best light.  Anyway, from what I can remember, I'll start with how Las Vegas was. In an extremely generous move on Fulcrum's part, all* of the interns including myself were flown out to Las Vegas for ILTACON 2017, the largest law conference in the United States.  The trip was a one of kind experience because the projects that we had been working on all of the summer got a chance to be something more than just intern projects.  We got to show off the products we had been working on to the people who would actually  use them.  In addition to this we listened to speakers talk a...

                                                                                                   /  /  /   WARNING: INTROSPECTIVE POST AHEAD   /  /  / Just kidding, however I am feeling reflective at the time of writing this so I'm just gonna go with it.  But first, let get some of the fun stuff out of the way.  For starters, there were three new St. Peters Alumni in Chicago this weekend!  Caleb's sisters, Cara and Corrine, along with our day-one PAL Noah all made it up for visits, though not at the same time.  Caleb's family came up last weekend for a nice family trip and Noah was up this weekend to see his girlfriend (and us I guess).  It was great to catch up and hear Noah's *...

This weekend my friends Jake, Tyress, Nick and Taylor came up to visit (along with my brother who has been here) and it was a fun time!  Among the many things we got to do were visit the Chicago Institute of Art, eat deep dish pizza and explore the city.  I'm really glad made the trek all the way out here :) My Favorite part of the weekend was definitely the art museum.  The exhibit showcasing impressionist paintings, Van Gogh like paintings, really stood out to me.  The longer you stared at them the less they seemed like images from a dream and the more they seemed as if they were a part of reality.  This one of a woman playing the piano was one of my favorites.  It's creepy and inviting at the same time.  I also really enjoyed a lot of the medieval and renaissance art.  Much of the art representing religion was breathtaking and the ornate weapons they had on display, including a tri-barreled pistol.  There's so much I didn't get to see...

This week in Chicago was very special because I got to see my mom and brother for the first time in a long time.  It was also their first times being in the city and I had the responsibility of showing them around.  They took the train here on Friday from Detroit and arrived sometime in the afternoon but I would not see them until the next day due to a very busy day at work.  Overall it was a fun weekend full of good food and a few surprises.  It's not one I'll soon forget. So the Friday they were set to arrive, all of the interns were "surprised" with the fact that we would all be traveling an hour down to the main Fulcrum-gt office to give a presentation / demo of our projects thus far.  I say "surprised" because we had submitted our pitch slides the week before and knew something was coming soon.  Regardless, we all drove down there, clamored into a large presentation room that was completely full, about 30 interns and 30 others in total.  Aft...

Hey.  What's up.  Hello.  It's time for another blog post.   First I'd like to talk about how I finally cracked my phone screen.  See I was planning on having a relaxing afternoon with my friend Caleb and reading by the Buckingham fountain, but after getting there and fumbling around on my phone for twenty minutes trying to download the book, my phone fell on the ground and the touch screen shattered.  The interesting thing about this unfortunate event was that it forced me to go without my phone for about a week.  At first I was annoyed that I couldn't message my friends, check my apps, and take pictures.  But after a couple days I started to notice some small changes like how I had slightly better focus and tended to talk to others more.  It wasn't a night and day change, but just enough that I noticed it.  It doesn't surprise me either considering how frequently I check instagram, snapchat and all the other bullshit I don't re...

Food truck festival It's sparkling cider Techweek, a week long event consisting of networking events, special speakers and workshops all centered around the tech industry happened this week, and being an intern from Fulcrum gt, I was lucky enough to go.  The networking events were the main draw in my opinion.  It was fun to go with other interns after work and enjoy the free food, drinks and tech demos they had available.  The networking itself was hit or miss because about ninety percent of the people there were already well established in their careers and at least to me seemed like they wouldn't get too much benefit out of talking to a bunch of college aged interns.  Nevertheless I had a few decent conversations and met some people who were working on startups of their own. Earlier in the week on Monday I had a chance to go to the over 100 year old baseball stadium, Wrigley field and see a Cubs game.  The field itself was very different from T...

Yash at the play So this post is coming a little late and because of that I might have a little trouble remembering everything that happened.  However I do remember one thing quite clearly.  It was a Thursday afternoon at work near the end of the work day.  People were lively, talking among themselves and then some of us saw the CEO, Ahmed, stop by for a visit.  He was In a pretty good mood, going around talking to all of the groups, checking up on people ect.  And then he came over to where my group was sitting and asked us about our plans for the weekend.  I told him we were going to have a get together with the new interns who just finished school and see their apartment Friday night. View from the new apartment We talked about that for a bit and then my teammate Yash mentioned that he had been meaning to see Hamilton because he new it was in town.  As soon as he said that, Ahmed said "Hold on I'll be right back."  Well, he shows ...

This has been my favorite week in Chicago thus far.   To start, I have to talk about the Fulcrum branded gear that we received.  And when I say branded I mean branded.  We were lucky enough to receive Backpacks, Nike hats, shirts, and even Starbucks gift cards.   Here is a picture of the apartment bear modeling everything.  Looking good (kind of creepy actually). The weekend kicked off a group of the interns heading up towards the North side to see visit Chicago's laugh factory.  There were three shows we could have gone to, the 8:00, 10:00, and the Midnight show.  We were told that as the night went on, the shows were less polit ically correct and filtered and therefore a little better.  Buuut we still ended up going to the 8:00 show which was still really funny.  Also, as we were leaving the venue, we were lucky enough to walk right into the world naked bike ride which is basically just a bunch of white people riding their bikes ...

Week three is officially over so let's just jump right into it.  Monday I got to Chinatown.  It didn't have as much personality as I imagined it would have.  Most of it was dirty and unkept, but still different enough that you would have known you were in some kind of Chinatown-esque area.  Myself and most of the interns ate at MingHin Cuisine, one of the local Chinese restaurants.  The food was unique in that every dish looked different and had some unique texture or combination of ingredients.  It was very fun to try a little bit of everything. However my stomach did not feel well afterwards.  I would not go back anytime soon.  The work week was pretty standard.  We spent a lot of time refining and focusing our idea.  Caleb spent a lot of time organizing meetings with people within the company as well as with lawyers he knew from previous internships to get feedback on our idea.  The rest of the team including myself spent ti...

Man what a week.  The soles of my feet are sore from walking, the back of my neck is sore from staring at my computer and my abs are sore from working out so much.  Just kidding about that last one haha.  But in all seriousness this week was a lot of work. Front of the office Monday  The first day was exciting.  Getting to meet the other interns (about 20 of us in total), some of the workers as well as the CIO was really cool.  Did I mention that one of the other interns is my friend Caleb who I've known since the third grade?  Fate keeps pulling us together haha.  Nothing too extraordinary happened, just a lot of paperwork and tax forms. Tuesday Tuesday started out with Fulcrum giving us a crash course in what they do, why they do it, and the major problems they are currently facing.  During these presentations, we asked questions and took notes quickly as we tried to absorb and make sense of everything they were saying. ...

     As some of you already know, I'm going to be spending my Summer in Chicago working as an intern for Fulcrum gt, a company that provides consulting and software services for law firms.  I am still unsure exactly what it is I'll be working on, but the "start-up program" that I am in will consist of working with a small team of 4-5 engineering and business students to brainstorm an idea and develop it from start to finish.      I was hesitant to accept the offer at first because I had never lived in a big city like Chicago before and I had another offer in Detroit, but I thought the amount of experience I would gain coming to Chicago would be worthwhile and something I might not get the chance to do again.  After arriving here yesterday, I felt like I no doubt made the right decision.           I flew in with my friend Caleb on Saturday and after taking the subway from the airport we arrived at our apartment...