Fellow roadrunner and Experiential Learning Expo runner up, Angela Humphries is currently in her first remote internship at H-E-B Digital as a Software Engineer Intern. As a Computer Science major, Angela was excited to attend the Fall 2019 STEM Career Fair. It was there that she met a recruiter from H-E-B Digital who encouraged her to apply for the internship. After two phone interviews and a video-chat interview, she accepted their offer to complete an internship and join the H-E-B Digital team.
As a member of the Customer Experience Engineering team, Angela benefited from getting to interact frequently with her team as she worked on various projects.
“I was blessed to be on a team that made me feel welcomed and involved from the get-go.” – Angela Humphries
She enjoyed working alongside other customer experience engineering interns and admired the collaboration amongst people from various backgrounds. Every employee had an abundance of knowledge over topics that piqued her interest. She felt that their wisdom provided her with excellent guidance, and they were very encouraging.
“The most exciting aspect of my internship was learning new professional and programming skills while having opportunities to share my knowledge with my team and fellow engineers.” – Angela Humphries
Some of her favorite experiences included:
- Participating in a variety of Digital Talks, Engineering Roundtables, and Town Halls
- Working directly with colleagues to solve the challenges that come with gateway migration
- Learning about the gateway’s architecture, identifying its problems, and creating documentation over possible solutions that was shared with engineers across H-E-B Digital
- Building a web application that would be used by various teams
Angela found this to be appealing because it conveyed how H-E-B partners value research and learning opportunities and how they use them to advance or achieve a similar goal. Overall, this idea translated one of the common themes, “because people matter”, across the work accomplished by partners at H-E-B.
The most challenging aspect of her internship was being tasked to transition from front-end engineer to a full-stack engineer and dealing with gateway and back-end engineering.
“This transformation happened fairly quickly, and I had to immerse myself in research and coding practice in order to better understand how all of these unfamiliar parts worked together.
My mentors and the dedication I had to research were my lifelines because they truly helped me untangle any confusion that I had.” – Angela Humphries
Angela felt that working alongside fellow interns helped her remain grounded. She was humbled, as well as inspired to tackle any obstacles in her path. It also motivated her to focus on her primary goal: learn as much as possible while making a positive impact.
Advice for Future Interns
For students who plan to pursue an internship, Angela shared the following words of wisdom:
- Be curious, confident in yourself, and willing to learn.
- If you’re on a team, take the time to get to know your colleagues and ask them how you can make a positive impact, not only on them but on the company as well.
- Always be open-minded and ask questions! This will showcase your thought process and how you approach problems.
- Fully engage in the internship and give it one hundred percent. If you do, I promise you will get the most out of it!
Preparation for Success
Angela’s dream job is to become a software engineer and collaborate on a team in a company that encourages learning, growth, and teaching opportunities. She believes her internship with H-E-B Digital has successfully prepared her to accomplish this goal.
“My internship has prepared me for a career by giving me the real-life experience I needed to boost my confidence as a software engineer.”
Angela is optimistic that she has the skills and experience necessary to make an impact in her field for a very long time. She also feels prepared and more excited about working on a team with engineers.
“As long as I’m gaining knowledge and I have the chance to share that with others, I will be happy for a long time!” – Angela Humphries
Angela left us with a quote that best defines her:
“Because once I’ve mastered it myself, I can teach them, too.” – Koyoharu Gotouge
