In this post, I will reflect on my achievements in 2023 and journal my thoughts for 2024. Note that this is not where I showcase my achievements in the most effective way; rather, it’s just where I reflect on myself in an honest way. Hope it brings some joy to those who have similar backgrounds.
Went through three internships in 2023
In 2023, I had the opportunity to complete three internships, two of which were at Google and the other at Woven by Toyota. I also participated in Facing the Ocean in Jeju, Korea, where I met people from South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan!
a group photo of about 50 people from Facing the Ocean:
Reflecting on it, this year provided me numerous opportunities to engage with people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Remarkably some of them made me re-realize how much privilege I have from my Japanese citizenship. Growing up in Japan and being surrounded by liberal people, it is hard to have an objective view on how much freedom I actually have in my life.
Another program I participated in was Mercari’s Build program 2023 in June. This is a coding bootcamp targeting underrepresented groups in Tech including women. I remember those busy weeks, attending classes on just a few hours of sleep.
Yet, the program was pretty interesting and can be one of the most memorable experiences that highlight this year. The program culminated in a hackathon, where my team won the top prize. I learned quite a bit about teamwork from that, especially from how we assigned our responsibility to each other. I was responsible for implementing a new feature that we wanted to showcase in our final product as well as for bridging the frontend and the backend. The other team members also had a scoped responsibility like I did and I believe that greatly contributed to our workflow during the hackathon.
As a prize, I received an Amazon gift card and used it to buy Sony’s WH-1000XM4 headphones, which later significantly enhanced my music experience :).
Speaking of music, this year marked my re-engagement with it, a passion that was previously dampened by COVID.
a capture of my most frequently played songs on Spotify:
In November, I went to Satoko Shibata’s concert in November with one of the friends who I met at Facing the Ocean. Her performance was absolutely amazing; just so amazing!! I feel like her recent artwork has reached the level where there’s a kind of pressure that pushes her to jump on to a new field/genre. Regardless, I love her for not making a sharp shift in her style but not staying the same.
Also, it was absolutely incredible that I met up with my teacher from junior-high school for the first time in like 7 years. I was happy to see him still playing in a band with the same guitar that I remember seeing 7 years ago.
That was interesting in terms of the comparison with me doing completely different things from what I used to do back then. I made up my mind to make a living from coding and stuff when I was at the end of the second year of university, which is just like 2 years ago. Since then, my life has been a lot about programming and computer science, which replaced the time that I would spent on music.
I am planning to write about my Chromium internship once I finish it in another post, so I am not going to write about it here!
Goals for 2024
My goal for 2024 is to establish myself as an experienced developer, which includes, but is not limited to:
- Release an app and get actual users
- Contribute to open source projects
- Become a Chromium Committer!
- Make contributions to projects that I personally like to use
- Make substantial impact in internships
These goals might sound a little weird considering I’m supposed to hunt for jobs for being the third year university student. Yet, I intentionally avoided making those goals related to job hunting, for example which companies I want to get an offer from. This is because I want to put effort into what I have control over, not the things that are vulnerable to luck. I think this mindset is getting more important now where the Tech industry has reduced their headcounts significantly for many reasons. New grad hiring is not an exception that was affected by the trend, and I see a lot less job openings than before for new grads.
While I do hope that I will be working for a good company after graduation, I want to focus on the broader goal of establishing myself as an experienced software engineer this year. I believe this will benefit me in the long run.
Relocation to North America
Due to my personal situations, I have been considering relocating to Toronto, Canada. It’s not like I have specific 憧れ/ambitions for the country; rather, my partner is based in Toronto, and I hope to be together with him there eventually.
Moving to Toronto is one of my near-future goals, but I don’t want to relocate for nothing; I’m seeking an engaging job opportunity there. Therefore, my aim for the next couple of years is to gain meaningful experience here in Japan to prepare myself for future job hunting in Toronto.
Thank you for reading my post. If you have any questions to me, you’re always welcomed.
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