Roman Gavula
Computer Science
I became interested in participating in a co-op on a whim after receiving e-mail about an upcoming job fair. I’d have to say that that whim ended up being one of the best decisions I’ve made so far in my college career. Not only did my co-op help me gain much needed experience in my field of study, but it also gave me the experience of working in a large corporation and seeing first hand how big business is carried out. Not to mention that this co-op helped tremendously in earning the income that is imperative for a college student living in Oakland.
As a Pitt co-op I worked three semesters and have since continued to work part time. The U.S. Steel co-op department requires two back-to-back rotations to start with, this allows for the student to receive enough training, and become comfortable enough in his position, to become a valuable asset to the assigned department. I started my first rotation in January 2002 and continued throughout the end of the summer semester to count as my second rotation. My third rotation was completed in the following summer of 2003. This allowed for me to take only one semester off from school while completing my three-rotation co-op.
For my first rotation I was placed in the technical support department. Most of this rotation I spent getting up to speed on the procedures and helping other technical support representatives with issues that they were working on. I spent a lot of time with the more simple tasks of the department such as preparing new computers with the required software and hardware and then installing the computers for the users. Even with this simple task however, there was a lot of responsibility placed on me. The computers that I was installing were more often than not replacing old computers for the same user. This meant that I had to transfer any and all important data from the users old computer to the new one. I think that some of my most challenging times during this rotation were when applications, that were imperative to the user, were hardware or OS specific and I had to figure out how to get the application working on the new machine. There was always help available from the other technicians if I needed it, but the fun came from the freedom and the challenge to come up with a solution on my own.
Also, since this was my first office job, this rotation was when I learned the most about the inner workings of business and being part of a specialized group. I always found it amazing to attend meetings and to have a say in departmental decisions. My co-workers never seemed to think of me as “just an intern” but instead took into consideration my thoughts and ideas.
During my second rotation I was still working as part the technical support group. By this time I had learned the procedures and workings of the group and was beginning to receive more and more independent projects. I became less of a helper and more of another technical support representative. When I say this I mean that I was no longer just helping with installations and co-workers problems, but I was assigned my own help-requests from users throughout the company for which I would have to find a solution. This rotation was also the time when I met the most people and made the most contacts. Working as technical support I was constantly working with other people and other departments. Throughout my time there I ended up knowing various people in almost every department of the building.
This rotation also helped me gain a lot more experience as far as computer science is concerned. Because of the fact that problem tickets were being assigned to me to solve, I had to do a lot of research into the Windows operating systems, computer viruses, anti-virus software, virus removal, networking, and computer hardware. I would never have been taught these things so thoroughly in school, or researched so deeply into them on my own, however doing this job well required that I know about them. Because of this I have become a much more well rounded student of computer science.
My final rotation as an intern was a whole new and different experience. For this rotation I transferred into the Telecommunications and Datacommunications department. I had the opportunity to work with both technical and business aspects that I did not have in my previous department. On the technical side, I got to work with networking equipment and learn the theories of networking infrastructure. This was the first time that I've dealt with such things and I learned a lot about using routers and switches, and controlling and monitoring network activity. Since this department also dealt with the telecommunications side of things, I also got to work with the phone system that was in place. Also, I was able to participate in the transformation to a voice over IP phone system. All of these things were very new to me because most of my schooling has been focused on programming. Again I was able to become a more well rounded student. I was however, able to incorporate my programming abilities into my job as well. One of my favorite assignments was writing web scripts and background server scripts to create a more friendly user interface for a couple of the network monitoring tools that we had in place. It was exciting to have some of my own programs being used by the department.
As I mentioned before I was also exposed to the new business aspects of this department. For example, I was able to attend meetings with product vendors when we were looking to upgrade current products or just find new technology to add to the corporation. This was exciting because I got to see first hand how the processes went choosing between various companies offering similar products, and I was able to participate in incorporating new products into our system.
As I mentioned before, participating in the co-op program was one of my best and most consequential decisions of my college career. I strongly recommend for any student to take advantage of this program. I feel that I have gained extremely valuable knowledge and experience over the three rotations, and I believe that it will give me an upper hand after graduation when I begin to look for a full time job.