Elona Selenica
By Zoë Eitel
Elona Selenica’s second internship with Google worked a bit differently than her first. Not only was she interning in a different area—as a software engineering intern as opposed to her previous work as an engineering practicum intern—but she wasn’t able to take advantage of some of the “in person perks” of interning at Google this time around.
However, Elona was excited to return to Google for another internship even if it was going to be remote.
“I kept my expectations very low through the whole process,” Elona says. “When I got the news that I had an offer, I was pretty shocked, but also super excited! It was very surreal.”
It was hard for Elona to meet new interns as she had the year before, but she was able to reconnect with some friends she had met through the internship before and attended a couple internship events that helped her connect with others.
Software Engineering Intern at Google
BS Computer Science 2020
It was announced fairly early that the internship would be running remotely this year, so Google had the chance to figure out how that would alter their internship program. Though, Elona notes that like everywhere else, there were some things they had to figure out as time went on.
“Google was very active in making sure that their employees maintain a work life balance. In the beginning, it was easy for me to spend most of the day coding. I changed that quickly by taking breaks at certain hours. I even set a reminder on my phone to get myself up and active!”
“Google was very active in making sure that their employees maintain a work life balance,” she says. “In the beginning, it was easy for me to spend most of the day coding. I changed that quickly by taking breaks at certain hours. I even set a reminder on my phone to get myself up and active!”
For this internship, Elona worked on implementing a Google Adwords feature for which she had to write documentation, test the program, work with other teams, demo the product and then release it into production.
“In both of my internship experiences, I had to use technology that I’ve never worked with before,” she says. “It can be intimidating but you learn a lot about yourself as a programmer. The more exposure I got to various tools, the more confident I felt in my skills as a programmer.”
Elona has been happy to work on challenging projects and looks forward to doing that more in a full-time career. From her internships, Elona has noticed that the dynamics of her team really matters to her.
“Having support, but also enough freedom to work on your own was something I was looking for,” Elona says. “The social environment is just as important as having the technical skills for the team.”
Since freshman year, Elona has been utilizing the Career Center’s services frequently, like having her resume reviewed, doing mock interviews and attending career fairs.
