I attended a coffee chat with HR specialists from John Deere, and he provided many valuable insights on how the recruitment process goes from the employers’ perspective. One of the questions was “Which one do recruiters value more when hiring candidates for an internship, personal projects, or past internship experiences?” It has been a common myth among engineering students that personal projects help a lot when trying to get an internship. Another interesting fact I observed was that some students took an offer to an internship that they didn’t think they would enjoy because they were afraid that having no internship during summer would leave them “behind” in the competitive job market. Before I attended the coffee chat, I had a very similar mindset that missing an internship during the summer would leave me behind, and seeing my friends already getting offers gave me a bit of stress and anxiety. However, I came up with a different mindset after hearing his perspective on this question.

Here is his answer to this question: “You need to be aware of the picture you are painting for your resume. We want to see the “authentic” you and see you being passionate about what you do.” Skills, of course, are one of the most important qualifications for a position, but skills can be learned in several different ways. It has been a busy semester as I took a few time-consuming technical courses. For the first half of the semester, I was tangled in my classwork and did not have much time to think for the long run. So, like most other people, I was stressing over finding an internship, any internship. I already had my return offer from my previous internship, but it was not where my interest lies. I was afraid that if I were to reject my return offer, I would be at risk of not finding a position for the summer, leaving me “behind” all my peers. The words from the John Deere representative did open up many other opportunities for me. Even if I don’t find one position suitable for me this summer, I still have a lot of ideas that I want to try and projects I want to do. I want to 3D print an electric guitar and make a quad-leg robot starting by designing PCB boards myself, and there are so many other ideas that I want to try. Learning through hands-on work, I believe, is the best way to acquire skills for an engineering student. I also want to make video logs and reports of those projects to include on my personal website. All of my ideas above would represent me as someone who enjoys learning and is passionate about what I do.

We are limited by what we see and hear most of the time, so it is crucial to communicate with more people and get different perspectives on the same thing. I got a very similar answer from a panel of recruitment specialists from the Research Park when attending a similar event, showing this idea is shared among many recruiters. I really appreciate the networking opportunities that the Technology & Management Seminar gave me as I enjoy learning from others and hearing different opinions, and the coffee chat I went to helped me set a clear goal to work towards in the future.

MediaStorm is a Chinese startup focusing on the filming industry. Inefficiency in meetings arose as a natural problem as the team got larger. Some people could be underprepared for the meeting, forgetting to mention specific things they had in mind while going on a tangent about unimportant things. Two people could be arguing about something completely irrelevant to half of other people. After hearing the updates from all participants, the meeting would usually run over or worse, having to set up a follow-up meeting. As a young and innovative company, MediaStorm adopted a meeting structure proposed by Lark who makes apps for team management.

This method contains three major steps,

First, all participants put their updates, needs, and blockers on a shared document before the meeting. This step ensures enough preparation as putting the items down on a document makes it easier to think of other things that need attention.

Secondly, for the first fifteen minutes of the meeting, the participants should stay quiet, read all updates from the document, and put comments where they have questions or need discussion. Such action ensures parallelism for going through the action items and enables the participants to discuss different topics simultaneously. Naturally, every participant is only interested in discussions on certain topics. For example, two members of the engineering team could discuss technical details in one comment section of the document, while members in the marketing department could talk about a completely different topic in different sections of the document. Additionally, discussions through comments eliminate the need for meeting minutes as the discussion process records itself through comments.

Lastly, verbal discussions should only happen when unresolvable items exist in the document after the first two steps. Doing so greatly eliminates the possibility of having unimportant or tangent topics and ensures the most efficient use of meeting time.

As a relentless learner, I enjoy learning from others and trying to come up with innovative approaches to solve real-life problems. I came across this method when hearing a talk from the founder of MediaStorm, and his insight instantly reminded me of the problems I had with RSOs that I am a part of the executive board of - long and inefficient meeting times. In the next meeting, I proposed the Lark Method as a new meeting structure, and this resulted in improved involvement and participation in the executive meeting and much better efficiency of the weekly meetings. As a result, the meeting almost never ran over and we finish more action items on average compared to the past.

Management is about magnifying your impact. A good leader will always take care of the team, enabling the team to deliver the most while focusing on the personal development of the team members. I want to become a better leader through the Technology and Management Program at the University of Illinois, helping myself to grow while contributing to the program and the people around me.

{::nomarkdown}
{% assign jupyter_path = "assets/jupyter/blog.ipynb" | relative_url %}
{% capture notebook_exists %}{% file_exists assets/jupyter/blog.ipynb %}{% endcapture %}
{% if notebook_exists == "true" %}
    {% jupyter_notebook jupyter_path %}
{% else %}
    <p>Sorry, the notebook you are looking for does not exist.</p>
{% endif %}
{:/nomarkdown}

Let’s break it down: this is possible thanks to Jekyll Jupyter Notebook plugin that allows you to embed jupyter notebooks in your posts. It basically calls jupyter nbconvert --to html to convert the notebook to an html page and then includes it in the post. Since Kramdown is the default Markdown renderer for Jekyll, we need to surround the call to the plugin with the ::nomarkdown tag so that it stops processing this part with Kramdown and outputs the content as-is.

The plugin takes as input the path to the notebook, but it assumes the file exists. If you want to check if the file exists before calling the plugin, you can use the file_exists filter. This avoids getting a 404 error from the plugin and ending up displaying the main page inside of it instead. If the file does not exist, you can output a message to the user. The code displayed above outputs the following:

Note that the jupyter notebook supports both light and dark themes.

We decided to support the same custom blockquotes as in jekyll-gitbook, which are also found in a lot of other sites’ styles. The styles definitions can be found on the _base.scss file, more specifically:

/* Tips, warnings, and dangers */
.post .post-content blockquote {
    &.block-tip {
    border-color: var(--global-tip-block);
    background-color: var(--global-tip-block-bg);

    p {
      color: var(--global-tip-block-text);
    }

    h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
      color: var(--global-tip-block-title);
    }
  }

  &.block-warning {
    border-color: var(--global-warning-block);
    background-color: var(--global-warning-block-bg);

    p {
      color: var(--global-warning-block-text);
    }

    h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
      color: var(--global-warning-block-title);
    }
  }

  &.block-danger {
    border-color: var(--global-danger-block);
    background-color: var(--global-danger-block-bg);

    p {
      color: var(--global-danger-block-text);
    }

    h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
      color: var(--global-danger-block-title);
    }
  }
}

A regular blockquote can be used as following:

> This is a regular blockquote
> and it can be used as usual

This is a regular blockquote and it can be used as usual

These custom styles can be used by adding the specific class to the blockquote, as follows:

> ##### TIP
>
> A tip can be used when you want to give advice
> related to a certain content.
{: .block-tip }

TIP

A tip can be used when you want to give advice related to a certain content.

> ##### WARNING
>
> This is a warning, and thus should
> be used when you want to warn the user
{: .block-warning }

WARNING

This is a warning, and thus should be used when you want to warn the user

> ##### DANGER
>
> This is a danger zone, and thus should
> be used carefully
{: .block-danger }

DANGER

This is a danger zone, and thus should be used carefully

Adding a Table of Contents

To add a table of contents to a post as a sidebar, simply add

toc:
  sidebar: left

to the front matter of the post. The table of contents will be automatically generated from the headings in the post. If you wish to display the sidebar to the right, simply change left to right.

Example of Sub-Heading 1

Jean shorts raw denim Vice normcore, art party High Life PBR skateboard stumptown vinyl kitsch. Four loko meh 8-bit, tousled banh mi tilde forage Schlitz dreamcatcher twee 3 wolf moon. Chambray asymmetrical paleo salvia, sartorial umami four loko master cleanse drinking vinegar brunch. Pinterest DIY authentic Schlitz, hoodie Intelligentsia butcher trust fund brunch shabby chic Kickstarter forage flexitarian. Direct trade cold-pressed meggings stumptown plaid, pop-up taxidermy. Hoodie XOXO fingerstache scenester Echo Park. Plaid ugh Wes Anderson, freegan pug selvage fanny pack leggings pickled food truck DIY irony Banksy.

Example of another Sub-Heading 1

Jean shorts raw denim Vice normcore, art party High Life PBR skateboard stumptown vinyl kitsch. Four loko meh 8-bit, tousled banh mi tilde forage Schlitz dreamcatcher twee 3 wolf moon. Chambray asymmetrical paleo salvia, sartorial umami four loko master cleanse drinking vinegar brunch. Pinterest DIY authentic Schlitz, hoodie Intelligentsia butcher trust fund brunch shabby chic Kickstarter forage flexitarian. Direct trade cold-pressed meggings stumptown plaid, pop-up taxidermy. Hoodie XOXO fingerstache scenester Echo Park. Plaid ugh Wes Anderson, freegan pug selvage fanny pack leggings pickled food truck DIY irony Banksy.

Customizing Your Table of Contents

If you want to learn more about how to customize the table of contents of your sidebar, you can check the bootstrap-toc documentation. Notice that you can even customize the text of the heading that will be displayed on the sidebar.

Example of Sub-Heading 2

Jean shorts raw denim Vice normcore, art party High Life PBR skateboard stumptown vinyl kitsch. Four loko meh 8-bit, tousled banh mi tilde forage Schlitz dreamcatcher twee 3 wolf moon. Chambray asymmetrical paleo salvia, sartorial umami four loko master cleanse drinking vinegar brunch. Pinterest DIY authentic Schlitz, hoodie Intelligentsia butcher trust fund brunch shabby chic Kickstarter forage flexitarian. Direct trade cold-pressed meggings stumptown plaid, pop-up taxidermy. Hoodie XOXO fingerstache scenester Echo Park. Plaid ugh Wes Anderson, freegan pug selvage fanny pack leggings pickled food truck DIY irony Banksy.

Example of another Sub-Heading 2

Jean shorts raw denim Vice normcore, art party High Life PBR skateboard stumptown vinyl kitsch. Four loko meh 8-bit, tousled banh mi tilde forage Schlitz dreamcatcher twee 3 wolf moon. Chambray asymmetrical paleo salvia, sartorial umami four loko master cleanse drinking vinegar brunch. Pinterest DIY authentic Schlitz, hoodie Intelligentsia butcher trust fund brunch shabby chic Kickstarter forage flexitarian. Direct trade cold-pressed meggings stumptown plaid, pop-up taxidermy. Hoodie XOXO fingerstache scenester Echo Park. Plaid ugh Wes Anderson, freegan pug selvage fanny pack leggings pickled food truck DIY irony Banksy.

It does also support embedding videos from different sources. Here are some examples: