Day 17... the last

And our final day had finally arrived... It definitely wasn't real that it was our last day at Google. Even after our presentations when we turned in our badges and could no longer access the minikitchens... it was still very strange. So Friday morning we got to class like usual and spent the entire morning signing certificate sleeves, writing thank you notes to Charles, and working out any remaining bugs in our programs. We were having trouble getting our program to show its functionality because it kept track of calories per day, and in order to demonstrate some of our features, we needed multiple days built into our database. Well, manually populating the database just caused problems. We tried doing it several different ways and ended up with so many frustrating little bugs, and when we finally thought that it was working, it wasn't. So we went to lunch anyway, figuring we'd have another 90 minutes or so to perfect the program before we presented, and finally realized that, after tricking the database into thinking we had multiple day entries, it was sorting the dates in the wrong order. That required several minor changes which led to tedious debugging, and finally we were finished. With only 5 minutes to spare before the presentations began. But our presentation as a whole went well, even though we may've had to use dummy data in our chart feature.. we of course figured out how to fix that about 5 minutes before we were supposed to present.. since i wasn't willing to deal with any more bugs, we left it as it and presented it. Everyone's project was really interesting. It was so neat to see the different talents within computer science that everyone had, and to see how cool their ideas were.

After presentations, we had to turn in our laptops and badges, and we picked up our resumes with Jessica's comments, and then came the real treat of the day. We went out into the lobby of the building in which we gave presentations and Charles sang to us! He sang one of the pieces he sings as the pirate king in the show he's in right now.. and it was pretttty awesome. Then he had us all join in and sing the chorus line along with him. It was worth the wait.

Then we began our walk to the Computer Science History Museum where we had our final party. We presented the certificate to our assigned person and read something nice about them, and Google had one more surprise for us. Jessica announced that we were each receiving $1,000 scholarships to help pay for books, tuition, or whatever school-related item we needed it for. Wmhile everyone was still in awe, we turned on the music, watched the slideshow of pictures and danced. Naturally there was more breakdancing.. i think i successfully learned a few moves, haha.. but very few moves. After taking one last group picture, we got on one last shuttle back to SJSU for one last night. We got back around 1030, and changed, packed a little, and met up in the lounge to go out to play ultimate frisbee. We played two really intense games, like usual, and afterwards headed over to 7/11 to get something to eat for the night and the flights the next day. We played some pool in the lounge, and after showers, we ended up hanging out in someone's room with a bunch of people. As it got later, more and more people started falling asleep and going to bed, and Kofi dragged his mattress into the common area. We talked and laughed, and watched people sleep, and by 5:30 AM, everyone was pretty ready to go to sleep. We returned to our respective rooms and slept for a couple of hours, and got up to finish packing and have our exit interviews. We turned in the last of our things and said some really hard goodbyes.. or rather.. until next times. We're all invited back to FUSE, a weekend conference next summer, so most of us will be going back to that. It was a long ride to the San Francisco airport, but I had a really nice neighbor on my flight from San Francisco to Chicago. He told me about his job in operations research and systems engineering after I solved my rubik's cube to pass the time. We ended up talking when I wasn't sleeping.. which ended up being longer than expected since our landing was delayed when we got near Chicago due to weather. After the original takeoff delayed by almost 30 minutes, and being delayed up in the air for 45, we finally landed, rather roughly, in Chicago.

I turned on my phone to a voicemail from United saying that my flight from Chicago back to Louisville have been cancelled, and I'd been rebooked to fly out at 8:11 the next morning, and to report to the desk for my boarding pass. So I got off the plane, walked from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2 (not a short walk), waited in line at the desk, got my boarding pass, walked alllll the way back to Terminal 3 to find the cots. I ended up sleeping on a cot that was set up in the middle of one of the Terminals. There was a big open space down in Terminal 3 where they set up about 100, 150 cots. I slept a little, mostly because I was so tired, but they started clearing the cots at 4 AM, so I was up again and walking to find my gate. I grabbed some breakfast and ended up falling asleep in multiple uncomfortable positions, realized my gate had changed sometime between 4 AM and 7:30, changed gates, and finally boarded my flight home =)

It was a short, easy flight, and I came home to find my dad and two sisters waiting for me!

Its really strange to be back in my own room finishing up this blog post. I miss all of my friends a whole lot already, but I must admit.. it is nice to be home.

over and out,

Lynn