May 11th, 2026

Going into Co-op, I could not figure out a growth question. Every time I tried to come up with something it felt disingenuous, like something I was saying to fill in the requirements and not to actually consider doing. Which had me thinking: What even is a good growth question? In eighth grade we were told to make SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, reasonable, and time-sensitive) goals. I can't see anything within myself that I can reasonably progress towards in the month we're allotted. I personally have always struggled with measuring personal growth and can never really "notice" when I've changed. It's just a continuous experience that never really takes time to notice when a part of me is gone or has grown. I guess my growth question is How can I lay the groundwork for my future understanding of myself and the field of IT.

I'm working at San Diego Vision Academy with my mentor being Brett Alder. I chose this place to intern at because I wanted to step out of the high-tech system, an opportunity I didn't get before due to my own mistakes. What drew me here was a gentle push from Kurt to look around for other places to work and a general interest in diversifying my work experience. 

The outreach process was nerve racking due to the nature of contacting out of network but once I had an email chain going I was able to handle it pretty well. The only issue was remembering to check my emails and fill out the forms i needed to. I asked for help as I needed it. I'm writing this weeks after the intended due-date but I did forget to fill out all the required forms on a regular basis, but I eventually got it done.

SDGVA is a very laid back and relaxed working environment, the staff are friendly, the kids are pretty well behaved, and generally its a nice slow paced job. Despite my role being "IT", I was more often than not helping out with odd-jobs around the campus, a cable assessment here, a gum delivery there, hauling empty boxes to the recycling bins. the pace of the workplace, and anything that surprised you. Despite mostly being grade schoolers, these kids take better care of their computers than people MY age. Which either shows how well disciplined they are, or how irresponsible we are. It made my life easier of course but it was a shock to see how well maintained most computers were. Then again they haven't been operating 3 schools in one building over the last decade or so.

My growth question was honestly a bit of a hail mary, "How can I lay the groundwork for my future understanding of myself and the field of IT." It was the only thing I could think of, and I think part of the reason I chose it was because most of the tasks I was doing at my internship with the HTHMA IT team were repairs and installations. Not that those were negative experiences, its just that the breadth of my experience is geared towards fixing things but not necessarily the back-end networking stuff. I think in the next four weeks the most I can do to make visible progress towards this goal is just trying my hand at the networking end. My mentor has talked about it at length but I still feel like I don't fully understand it, so by the end of this I want to have a slightly more refined idea of how this field works beyond grafting computer parts together until they work, because presently all I really know is the hardware but not the software. 

The only moment I can really tie back to my growth question was the talk I had with Brett about how the school network actually works which helped me understand past the vague surface level understandings I had developed during my time with Kurt and Tony (No offense to them, I was just struggling to wrap my head around things without a visual aid). The only tangible evidence I can give is an explanation on how VLANs work and generally how we get from the company providing wi-fi to the school having wifi. 

SO: The WiFi starts with an internet service provider or ISP, these are companies like COX or AT&T or Frontier. The school pays for an internet plan from one of these companies, but not all the way. Depending on the amount of students below the poverty line or other socioeconomic factors, the federal government subsidizes the cost of the plan by anywhere from 5% to almost 66% depending on the school's demographics. Anyways, once this plan is purchased, the company sends over a aggregation router, which is in charge of distributing the connection across several smaller aggregation switches. These switches distribute the connection across many even smaller access switches, which people can directly connect to using their devices via wireless or hardwiring via ethernet cable. But there is a security risk in doing this, if someone further down the line got access to a device connected to the network they could easily move back up the chain and start messing with the internet as well as every other connected device.

The solution to this potential risk is V-LANs, or Virtual Local area networks. Basically devices never connect directly to the access switch, they connect to a VLAN made by the access switch, and in those VLANs they can't really go anywhere. So even in a worst case scenario someone with malicious intent can only access the other devices in the VLAN and not anything else.

I feel like I've been making progress but also stagnating in some ways. I'm working as hard as I can but the tasks being provided can't keep up. I was given a pretty simple job on Friday, go room to room, making sure all the tables and desks weren't loose or wobbly and to tighten them as needed with an Allen key. It sounded like a multi-day job but it was done half an hour before the school day ended. I feel like the only regression in habits is how often I use my phone, I keep off it most of the day and only go on during designated breaks, but I've started to use it more frequently since there's nobody around to really do anything about it. I'm left to my own vices and I'm trying to manage my screen time especially while at work. 

I'm not really being asked for much. Just to do my job, learn from my mentor, and clean up after myself. It's not a very demanding workspace, especially at this time of year for a school. The only difficult part about being there at the present moment is how much down time I have and my ability to stay focused and alert during those periods. I'm not sure how much this reflects on either part of my growth question because there really isn't anything to reflect on in that regard.

Also I could not for the life of me figure out what to take pictures of this week. So here's a photo of my work badge, a destroyed iPad, and a hard drive I disassembled and broke the motherboard of for security reasons. 

I really don't know what you want me to say here because being honest, I've made like no progress towards my growth question. The most networking-y thing I've done was being taught how the internet connection process for large organizations actually works. But that aside? nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. I honestly blame myself because again: I GET EVERYTHING DONE TOO FAST. I am my own worst enemy, my mentor has to fish around for potential sidequests for me to go on in my downtime from other school staff because I've done everything. I know this sounds like humble bragging but I promise it isn't. It's genuinely disheartening to have nothing to do at work. It's why I have no photos for this week, because there was genuinely nothing that stood out or I felt was relevant to put here. I've just been getting odd job after odd job to help wrap things up after the school year has ended. I have no proof that I've made progress beyond like, a slightly expanded knowledge base.

The hardest part of this job is staying busy. I WANT an increased workload, I WANT more responsibilities. I WANT ZERO DOWNTIME. The most "out of my comfort zone" thing I've done is going classroom to classroom basically interrupting whatever was happening there to ask if the teachers need anything or to go through a computer cart or headphone bin. It was uncomfortable for like a brief period but not that bad to be honest. I honestly cannot think of a revision to my growth question that could possibly make it more achievable without just scrapping the whole thing. I've definitely learned SOMETHING and I can use that as a foundation to further my understanding of a field, but there hasn't been any additional knowledge gained aside from the procedural issues of operating network equipment in a large organization. I honestly forgot to ask my mentor what he saw differently about me this week so that's my bad.

My growth question was "How can I lay the groundwork for understanding the field of IT and networking" and I have been transparent in saying I have 0 clue how to actually show that or in this case: ANSWER THE QUESTION. I cannot say "I improved" because I have no tangible evidence of improvement beyond a simple explanation I gave in entry 2. The only growth that happened here was my understanding of the responsibilities of an IT worker in an educational setting. At my internship I was wearing many hats, performing odd jobs, regular checkups, and doing things outside the purview of my expertise because they needed to get done. And that broadly seems to apply to IT workers in schools, as I witnessed my mentor doing similar things, helping out in small ways in fields that aren't directly related to his specialization. 

The only thing I want to work on really is maintaining my dedication to my work and managing downtime in a productive way that keeps me from reverting to old, often self-harming habits (not physical harm I mean like, bad unhealthy things that don't directly hurt me). I had alot of downtime between tasks and I think figuring out something to do with that downtime that is productive and enriching would be extremely valuable. That's all from me. Thank you for reading. This is all. Goodbye.