This blog was meant to be an SOS for my internship in case I’m in deep misery. It turns out to be completely different from my pessimistic assumptions and I had a great time sharing and noting down my experiences this summer. I’m grateful that I had this SOS idea that forced me into writing and reflecting. It adds a lot to my growth and who I am as a person. And now since it’s over, I need to move on with life.

Looking back at this summer, I accomplished a lot of goals for my internship: I got to work on an exciting and meaningful project; I got to learn (a little bit more) about finance and investment; I got to be (a little bit) better at coding and engineering; I got to meet many cool, talented and motivated people; I got to see myself more objectively.

There are unexpected side effects as well: I became more introspective (or went back to how introspective I was); I am more comfortable with logical reasoning; I am slightly better at holding others accountable (in a logical way) and perceiving and pointing out badness. I had a good time living a quite “extravagant” lifestyle with all the big house parties and private this and that. I like CT with all the green and realized that I want to make cocktails for friends. I became really close friends with a lot of interns and some of the full times (Linan :))

There’s a long way to go. 10 weeks is too short to change too much. I’m sad to leave the people and I hope that I can extract the good stuffs and wisdom (and none of the bw slangs) from this summer and apply them as “way of being” (oops did it again).

It’s funny how Linan mentioned “People often forget that it’s pain + reflection = growth” so now I’m even more into my blog title because it shows “pain” (not really) and “growth” through reflection. Although what I am doing is trying to learn from pain and eventually grow, I am using reflection to achieve my goal and it’s the implicit ingredient that made it possible.

So although I’m closing this narrative of growth pain in the context of my summer internship, growth (and pain) will continue through reflection in other forms just not this particular blog.

Good bye.