Just a Pause in the Grand Journey
Today represents my last day here at Mercer for my second co-op. It sure has been a wild ride since I started in the early fall. I have met a ton of new people who all play important and critical roles here at Mercer, and have made even more friendships and relationships with my team members. There is so much on my mind, so in this post I want to share some of my thoughts with you.
I walk away from Mercer with many, many new talents and memories. I picked up and became very competent in C# and the .NET framework with zero background in the C# language before working here. I was tasked with complex work from the very start, and helped start research into new product fields for the company. I supported development, testing, and release preparation on Mercer’s very own Benefits Monitor Asia application, version 1.5. I learned the great importance and application of software processes, methods, design paradigms, and life cycles first hand while working with my team.
I had plenty of time to listen to Mercer leadership and interact with said leadership to fully understand Mercer’s very own Corporate culture and how that plays into Mercer’s behaviors. I met many different people, who all played a different part in our grand play here. Every step of the way there was a new face, and each one was more than happy to help me get on my way towards our unified goal. Major people along the way included my direct supervisor Zane Thorn. I have to give a huge thank you to my mentor Zane Thorn who really kept me busy with challenging work and research during my stay here. Even when he was loaded down with work, he had no issue staying later or spending 10 minutes to explain a solution to me. He really made sure I understood what was going on, not just repeating back information to him. I worked alongside another developer, Daniel Hack, who was more than happy to help me out when Zane couldn’t with our ever increasing task list. The three of us worked really well together on Mercer Benefits Monitor Asia. Daniel is just a good old boy, and sticks to his word on all projects. Higher on up we have Dan Seewer, who was our project manager. He made sure that I had everything I needed to get the job done, and that I felt I had the right work load or tasks to keep me busy. Dan was great guy I could go to for administrative questions. Moving up further we have Mike Woertz who really supported the entire co-op program, and made sure that my general needs were met. Finally our group head Eric Hoffmann was easy to approach, and all the interactions I had with him were friendly and insightful.
Perhaps my biggest achievement here would be the application I finished development on. I made sure the application was debugged using input from QA testing, prepared documentation for every build along the way, and actually released the 1.0 version of the application onto six production servers in the Mercer software environment. The application is now in use by Mercer teams on the other side of the world in Australia. This had a local impact of being a new tool not only here in Louisville, but on a global scale for Mercer operations.
My desk is all cleaned out, and the “going away” lunch ended a little while back. I am sitting here, finish up some final tasks before my departure from this wonderful group here at Mercer. I leave behind a little bit of myself in all the code I have touched and written for Mercer, and I take away new view points and perspectives from other developers I have worked with in my time. For now this only temporary, as my third and final co-op will begin in the Summer. Upper management and the development team I worked on has already expressed great desire to bring me back for my final co-op.
So I sit here in this bittersweet moment reflecting on all the hard work I have put in during my time here. While it will be sad that I shall not be seeing my fellow coworkers this coming Monday, I have much to look forward to. I hope to come back with even more education and experience to hit the ground running wherever I land in the Summer.
It’s weird… You know the end of something great is coming, but you want to hold on, just for one more second… Just so it can hurt a little more.
-Author Unknown
This is just the beginning of another amazing chapter of my life.