Wow, it is already two years into my degree, it just feels like yesterday when I turned 17 right before flying 19-hours to come to the USA and join UC. My sophomore year was a journey I needed to progress as a student, an engineer, a professional, and a person. I made many new friends, several professional connections, and an incredible amount of memories.

The fall semester was pretty much me balancing schoolwork and coop search. My routine was to attend lectures in the morning and apply to companies in the evening. Surprisingly, I managed to do an excellent job with that. I said "surprisingly" because I have heard and seen that it's difficult for an international student to get a great first co-op. I landed up with an offer from the Chamberlain Group in the middle of October. Chamberlain Group, an industry leader in access solutions, is based in a suburb near Chicago. The job was in the innovation group of the company, giving me a chance to develop a new product from scratch. Once I accepted the offer, the rest of the semester went by in anticipation of being in Chicago. I was both excited and nervous, excited because it was a new opportunity, nervous because it was going to be insanely cold in Chicago *facepalm*. I come from a tropical country, the lowest temperature in my city used to be 50 degrees. Spoiler alert: it was not too bad.

Fall semester got over on a good note- I had a coop offer and received good grades in my class. I went to my aunt's place in Maryland for the winter break. It was a nice break I got time to relax and shop for some office attire. Maryland was fun but was missing my parents in India. It had been a year and a half since I saw them. Thanks to technology tho, I was video calling them every day to lose some of the homesickness I was feeling.

*Drum Rolls* Spring semester was here, time to start the co-op. I am not going to lie, but my heart was beating super fast when I was on the flight to Chicago. I was going to live with three other UC students- one fellow computer engineer and two UI/UX designers. We all were going to work on the same team, so it is no surprise that we became good friends. I was living the 9-to-5 life, and actually, it wasn't bad. Unlike school, you get done at 5. I had a lot more time to cook in the evenings, I and Sim, my roommate, were planning to start Cast Iron Kitchen. Our specialty, you may ask, was Sesame Tofu.

The work-life was great as well. The office environment was positive and pushed me to learn something new every day. My team was working on a brand new product to solve a problem in the construction industry. Everyone on my team was a student from UC, so that helped us get along quickly. Although we were interns, our managers gave us full creative freedom to design the product. The first month was not very coding heavy. We did a lot of research, interviews, and ideation to understand the problem. Once we had a solid idea, we started the development process for the prototype. I worked on an Android App and multiple Python scripts to build a LoRa network, program PyCom boards, and connecting to AWS IoT. Alongside coding, I also got the opportunity to do market research and come up with financial models and business cases for the product. I enjoyed doing business cases because I know, later on, I want to join a business school.

Yes, I have to address the elephant in the room, "What about Covid-19?" So, around halfway through my co-op, Chamberlain started work from home. I moved to my aunt's place to continue my co-op as Chicago was going under lockdown. Although we were working from home, we kept in touch through Teams and continued working on the development process. Few things changed like- the final presentation and demo had to be online now. We had to change some of our requirements to accommodate the demo's online nature. As the famous saying goes, "All's well that ends well." Our final presentation and demo went well. Our Executive Leadership Team loved our product solution. Answering the questions of CEO and CTO of such a big company was nerve-wracking for sure, but it also boosted my confidence. They have proceeded with the development of the product we designed to add to the LiftMaster portfolio. Overall, it was all I could ask for my first co-op experience.

Currently, I am staying at my aunt's place for the summer semester as well. Taking six classes online is a different feel. I miss being back in Cincinnati and collaborating with my peers in person.

The sophomore year helped me a lot in being self-reliant and self-dependent. This year I became more confident about my skills and myself. The co-op has helped me to be financially independent for the rest of my college life. I evolved as a person as well as a professional. I am planning to return to Chamberlain again next fall. The goals for the next academic year is to keep adding more skills and accomplishments under my belt. The year 2020 has been super chaotic so far. I am hopeful that things will get better all around the world. I am both excited and scared about what the rest of the year holds for me!