Joanna Folk talks life as a summer CodeLabs intern
By: Andy Orr
Tags: Diversity In Tech, Project Based Learning, Applied Baccalaureate, Student Success, Community College

From left, Green River College students Joanna Folk and Eleanor Carl

COVID-19 disrupted the lives of college students in many ways. One especially troublesome consequence of the global pandemic? Canceled summer internships. Enter CodeLabs, CodeDay’s 100% online tech internship program, which stepped up to provide college students with opportunities for an alternative internship experience.

Several Software Development students from Green River College placed into a summer CodeLabs internship, among them, third-year applied baccalaureate student Joanna Folk. In the Q and A below, Folk talks about her CodeLabs experience, describes a PetID Machine Learning project her team worked on, and offers practical careers tips for college students.

First thing’s first. What led you to Green River College’s Software Development program?

JOANNA: Milling around a bunch of low-wage jobs has been an interesting experience. I’ve gained a lot of great friends and good stories but caring for myself has been a struggle financially. My health failed, and the safety net just wasn’t there. Oddly enough, I received an email from Green River. I took it as a sign and gave it a go. I was completely green going in. I hadn’t been in a classroom in over ten years.

I was walking around the campus parking lot one day, unaware of its layout and absolutely lost, when I ran into Marsha Medgard of the Workforce Education office. Marsha brought me into her office, and we talked over some things. I called up my girlfriend, Eleanor, and she came up to see Marsha. By the end of that week we both were on track to getting our Bachelor’s. Which, prior to that point, I had no awareness was even offered at Green River. This has been a life changing series of events. I tell everyone, even total strangers, as an attempt to get them to join me. You don’t have to keep struggling. There are other doors out there and Green River is one of them. Let’s do this together!

How did you first learn about opportunities at CodeLabs?

JOANNA: My fantastic instructor Ken Hang passed on the word about CodeLabs. Eleanor and I met him when we started a Women in Technology meetup. I loved the fact that he was from the DMV area (DC, MD, VA) like me. I took my first class with him last quarter, during Covid. Prior to that, I am not sure if he ever taught anyone online, and my own experiences with online classes were pretty thin. In my eyes, he is the epitome of what an instructor can be during a crisis. He constantly checked in with us as the classes went on. He managed to cultivate a feeling of community in a classroom with a single smiling face. I cannot say enough about this man, I really look up to him.

Prior to that, I had another internship lined up. To be honest, it started to feel as if I was walking on uneven ground. I decided to leave it and felt as if I were in shallow water for this summer. I got fortunate though and was picked as one of the CodeLab interns for 2020. They sent out a series of projects, split between advanced and beginner tracks. I had been accidentally placed on the advanced track, although by this point I had little under a year of coding experience. I talked with them about getting myself bumped down but ended up staying on the advance track. It was a fantastic experience! I learned a lot and not just through the project I completed but the variety of resources and talks they had. I’ve since connected with a slew of intelligent and kind individuals.