During the summer of 2018, I interned at Worldpay Inc., which was then in a transition phase from Vantiv now Worldpay. This company mainly focuses on the eCommerce business where they are basically the bridge between their client's eCommerce platform and a credit card company.

At Worldpay, I mainly worked on two different projects. The first of which was programming SDKs (Software Development Kits) that the company would send to clients so they could build their eCommerce platforms. SDKs were programmed in several different languages, such as Java, Python, Ruby, and PHP which are all programmed by interns from scratch. I was also tasked with updating information on the intern team's github pages website (vantiv.github.io). Mainly doing web development in HTML/CSS and Bootstrap I documented the "starting guide" for some of the SDKs and improving on the functionality of the website. Going into the internship, I had not idea how to create a SDK or even use HTML/CSS, but now I understand the importance of aspects of an SDK as well as how to create a web application.

Worldpay's two month internship taught me a different form of coding that I solidified what I wanted to do in the future. I learned about the REST API when I was programming SDKs, something that was practically a foreign language to me coming into the internship, along with how to operate Postman. Additionally, I learned about the Agile system of working. As this was my first experience in the field, I didn't know how code could be communicated across several people, but through Agile I was able to learn about teamwork and collaboration in Software Engineering, a field that I believed to be very independent.

Working at Worldpay, was my first experience with technology in the industry. I am truly thankful for everyone at Worldpay who taught me something that summer (pretty much everyone), because I could not have loved programming and Computer Science without all of you!

My second experience in the industry is related to research. I've always been very invested in doing research, and in 2017, after my Sophomore year in High School, I got my chance to do research at one of the most premier physics laboratories in the entire world, Fermilab National Particle Accelerator.

I was presented with an opportunity to work with physicists at both Fermilab and CERN to research of one of the most important questions after the discovery of the Higgs Boson. My group and I were tasked with researching the existence of a Preon, a particle that has been hypothesized to be smaller than an electron and/or proton.

For about 1 semester, I learned quantum physics and relativity along with C++ and linux based systems, before being able to work in the lab. In the lab, my main role was to pull Monte-Carlo data (fake simulations between two particle's colliding) and analyze the data to see if there are any significant results between the collisions. To model the data, we used a C++ library called ROOT from which we could create plots and get information about particles that would aid us in our research.

Doing research for two years, was a an enlightening experience. Physics was never something that I saw as important, or even exciting, but after doing research with physicists around the world, I learned that there is much more to physics than Newtons' Laws and Energy. Every week, I looked forward to working with my mentors and mining through large datasets in hopes of finding more information about Preons.

There is no way this project would be completed in the span of two years, as sometimes it take generations for physicists to get significant results, however, I know that all of the knowledge I gained from the past two years working with physicists from CERN and Fermilab will stick with me for the next several years!