SWE National Conference - Long Beach, CA

Northeastern SWE!

This year I went to my second SWE National Conference in Long Beach California. I was so happy to see some of my friends I haven't seen since I've been living out here, especially my roommate Kate! I miss her so much.

My flight down to Long Beach was really short, and I did a lot of waiting around in the hotel lobby for the rest of the girls to show up.

This year I was pretty ready for the conference. I had my sessions I wanted to attend (What do I want to do with my Life?, How to prepare for your first Interview, Why products are popular, and so on...), knew what booths I wanted to visit when it was time for the career fair, and had plenty of free time to hang out with my friends.

All dressed up after a first day at the conference.

The sessions were okay; If you've been to one SWE Conference, you've seen all the sessions you need to see. Basically they are very similar every year.

The career fair was different this year. Last year I wasn't too concerned because I was only looking for a co-op, but this time I was putting myself out there for a full time position. I did my research of the career fair before I went, so I could know for sure what companies I wanted to talk to. Most of the companies that show up to the fair are defense contracting, which is not a job I am really interested in looking into. I really only wanted to hang out with my manager from Intel, talk to ON Semiconductors, and Whirlpool.

Kate and I dressed up for the career fair.


A few of us after a day at the career fair. Time for happy hour!

The last day was pretty relaxed. More sessions that were boring as always, but we also had the SME bowl. The SME bowl is a competition between regions (We're in Region F), where members of SWE have to answer technical questions, or questions about SWE. The Region F team came in 3rd place! It was very exciting to watch, and we were so happy because we had 2 girls on the team from Northeastern!

I miss my girls so much! I can't wait to get back and see them in January!

13,000 feet and falling fast!

Finally my skidiving post! It was amazing and took my breath away. I went with my roommates, Carrie, and her friend Vanessa.

We had to do a lot of waiting around before the jump, and we were pretty tired just hanging around on all the couches. We were all so happy before our jump, with a hint of nervousness!

John and I had front row seats; we were able to see right out of the airplane through the clear door! John was the first to go and I was a quick second.

And here's the best part: my video of my jump! I was waving my hands the entire time, it was the only thing I could think of doing while falling from the sky! It was hard to breath the first few seconds of my fall; I almost felt like I was choking on the air. It was the most relaxing time once the chute was open and we were floating around in the sky. My tandem partner pulled some spins for me and made it a very enjoyable ride on the way down. I will do this again at some point in my life: such an amazing experience.

Here's my skydiving video! I love watching it

Peace, Love, Unity, Respect.

Last weekend Greta and her friend Brian flew all the way up from San Diego to join us for LovEvolution in San Francisco on October 3rd. It was hard to round up my roommates to get them to go to this event, but they were eventually excited for it.

We all drove down Saturday morning to take the train into San Francisco. On the way into the city, more and more people in ridiculous, bright, and barely there outfits were getting on the train. I was happy that we didn't have to drive into San Francisco; the traffic and parking is always terrible in that city.

We had to wait in line with hundreds of other crazy people, because it was a 10 dollar charge - but we somehow managed to get in for free!

Greta and I relaxing in line - drinking a little and getting ready to enjoy LovEvolution!

Greta is good making friends. On our way to the lines of porta-potties, we walked through the grassy patches where tons of people were chilling and hanging out.

LovEvolution was mainly a bunch of stages set up in front of the capital building. At each of these stages were multiple DJ's playing all sorts of house/techno music. We all stayed at the main stage for most of the night. This was just me and Max goofing off while watching the shows.

My lovely roommates, from left to right: Max, John, and Stephen.

This was an experience like no other. I learned that there are definitely some free spirits living out in California. None of us knew what to expect, but we had the best time listening to some mind-numbing house music and dancing the night away. I love San Francisco.

Whitewater Rafting - Class IV rapids!

Last weekend, my friend Eric Gaertner, who currently is co-oping at Apple, came up to Folsom to hang out with me and my roommates. His brilliant plan for an exciting weekend was going whitewater rafting on the Middle Fork American river up near Tahoe.

I was not too excited over going white water rafting for an entire day (the whole trip was about 9 hours), and the price was a lot higher than I expected, but it was well worth it.

Eric booked the trip through All Outdoors California Whitewater Rafting. It was a full day excursion, starting bright and early at around 5:30am to drive up to the site to be there around 8am. We got there a little early, so we went into town for a few Redbulls. I was actually pretty nervous for this rafting trip. I'm not the best swimmer, and I was sure that I would have popped right out of the raft.

We went through some initial training with our guide, Kelly, who was quite the free spirit. She was a lot of fun to talk to through the rafting trip - she sounded like she had quite an adventurous life.

We made it through some pretty intense rapids throughout the day, especially during the beginning of the trip. We went through one chute that was definitely frightening...we spun completely around - even our Kelly had to get down in the raft with us to keep from flying out!

Entering the chute.


Getting down into the raft as Kelly navigates through the chute.

Everyone's settled in with paddles up to go down the chute!

We accidentally hit the rocks in the chute and it spun us around! I am the second person from the right, we are all trying to get away from being sucked into the water!


Definitely spun around, trying to stay in the raft.


Getting sucked into the rapids.


I don't remember going completely underwater!


Kelly to the rescue to turn us back around.


Time to get back up and navigate the raft again.


Heading towards a tunnel that was dug out by miners during the gold rush.

There were a lot of historic sights along the rafting trip that had to do with the gold rush. It was interesting to see all the old machinery and hear the stories of the river.

We were given a delicious lunch by the raft guides as we relaxed for an hour on a beach. It was nice to take some time off from rowing, and to get some good food in the belly. It was a little hot, so we tried to stay in the shade and stand in the water as much as we could.

The rapids towards the end of the day were pretty exciting too; it was cool because the guide told us all the names and the stories to each of the rapids. We were able to surf some of the rapids too, which involved us paddling towards some rapids and getting caught in them.

Towards the end of the trip, we all decided to jump off a sweet rock into the freezing cold water. Only one person in our raft didn't jump in, Bruno, but he was a boring kid anyways. He won the Pocahontas award for the day!

I was so happy that Eric came to visit! I know he had a blast staying with us in Folsom.