Summers have been when I try the most new things. The first one that comes to mind is from middle school, and the most recent two have been about seeing how real teams work.
Where it started: Rutgers, in middle school
In middle school I got into the Rutgers SLAAM Engineering Summer Program through a competitive selection. We worked with Solidworks, Python and Arduino. Building something physical that had to work was a great change from mostly writing code, and it's still the program that made me curious about engineering.
The last two summers
Over this summer and last, I joined the BMM North America YUVA program as a software intern. It was my first taste of how a real team divides up work, reviews it, and keeps going when something breaks.
I also spent a day at Bank of America in New York through Girls Who Code, at an industry immersion event where I heard from cybersecurity executives about what their work looks like. On the web side, I hold a Girls Who Code certificate in HTML and CSS.
What stuck
Most of what I learned wasn't technical. It was how people ask for help, how they explain a problem clearly, and how they stay calm when something goes wrong. I'm still taking notes on all of it.