A Weekend In Atlanta

A little under a week has gone by since I traveled to Atlanta to attend the SASE National Convention, a multi-day event where numerous companies come together to set up networking events, workshops, and potentially hire attendees for internships or full-time positions.

Even though the trip was only a few days, I had tons of fun!

I was able to land an internship offer from L3Harris, and I unexpectedly landed an interview for a research position at MIT (more on that later).

Outside of the convention, I had lots of fun spending time with the people who went on the trip, about 20 in total, and we were able to explore a good amount of Atlanta.

Before this trip fades away into my memory, I wanted to take the time to write about my experience, mainly so that I can look back at this years down the line, but also to serve as a testimonial for those who are interested in going.

The Drive Up

The drive up to Atlanta from Tallahassee is about four hours, so it's safe to say that there would have inevitably been some interesting moments along the way.

I vividly remember at the beginning of our ride, the people I was driving with requested that I set the volume of the radio to the max and queue a ton of nostalgic 2010s songs by artists such as Bruno Mars, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, etc.

After an hour or so, the energy eventually died down and we switched back to my Spotify playlist, which consisted mainly of rap and R&B. There were the occasional K-pop songs and house music thrown in there, but for the most part, I didn't have anything too hyper.

Of course, when my playlist was on, everybody fell asleep, so I was on my own for a bit.

On the way, we stopped at a completely empty gas station. What made this interesting was that the majority of the lights were off, so from a distance, it looked like it was completely closed. But because I was desperate for gas, I had to stop by and check to see if the pumps were still on.


Thankfully, the gas pumps were still on, and we continued on with the drive.

Towards the end of the ride, our group was starting to get a little bit hungry, so we decided to grab some food before we arrived at the Airbnb. After some discussion, we eventually decided to stop by Checkers to order food.

Not much happened after that. It was pretty late at night, and the convention started early in the morning, so after reaching the place and socializing for a bit, most of us went to bed.

Pre-Convention

The first day of the convention mostly consisted of networking panels and workshops. It gave people an opportunity to reach out to recruiters, learn about a company's culture, or improve on certain soft skills.

This was an all-day event, so we didn't necessarily have to be there the whole time, but it was a great chance to meet a lot of new people.

My group was the first to arrive, and the first thing we did when we walked in was collect our name tags and go straight to the opening ceremony.

We were a little bit late, but we were able to hear a few talks from some of the speakers and watch the award ceremony at the end.


I would say the funniest thing about this was watching the number of students from UF who walked on the stage after receiving an award and comparing it to the number from other schools who won a different award. There were easily 100+ students from UF, while other schools maybe had 20-30 at most.

My group hadn't eaten breakfast at the time, so after watching the ceremony, we walked across the street to the CNN Center to grab Chick-fil-A. To be honest, we were a bit lost since we didn't know the street we had to cross to get to the CNN Center, but we eventually found our way and ordered food.

While there, we were able to meet up with a few more of our members. We all had Chick-fil-A together and just started talking about the event and our plans for later that night.

Something that I distinctly remember happening while we were having breakfast was that a group of recruiters from Northrop Grumman came up to our table and started talking about their company.

They were going over how they were an aerospace defense company and they were looking for people to hire for full-time jobs and internship roles.

One of the recruiters started going around the table and asking each of us what our major was, and she eventually started having a really long conversation with one of our members at the table. She started asking them about his experience and his interests, and after a while, they were able to receive an interview offer on the spot.

A big takeaway that I had was that the recruiters at conventions are really trying to hire, or at least interview, as many people as possible, so going to these events is a great way of trying to land an internship or a full-time offer.


After eating, all of us walked back to the Georgia World Congress Center to continue with the SASE convention.

We eventually met up with the rest of our members to talk for a little bit, but then we split up to go around and meet people and attend different workshops.

To be honest, the first day of the event felt pretty slow because it lasted the whole day, so there were many points where my group was walking around trying to find different things to do.

An Unexpected Conversation

At some point, I was talking with one of my friends near the entrance of the building, and we started going over what we were trying to get out of this convention. Personally, I was really trying hard not to go for another defense company for this upcoming summer.

I started cracking a few jokes with him about defense companies but made it clear that I did not enjoy my last internship, so I was really trying to work for a different company.

We didn't notice at the time, but there was a lady standing right behind us. It became clear that she was listening in on our conversation when she asked, 'So, are you guys fans of defense companies?' She looked fairly young, so I assumed she was a college student.

From this point on, this is how our conversation went:

'Uhh, not really. I had a pretty bad time over the summer working at a defense company. I just think that the work environment was boring and I felt like a zombie since I was sitting in front of a computer all day. Oh, by the way, what school do you go to?'

'Oh, I'm not actually a student. I'm a recruiter for MIT.'

Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. My friend and I literally freaked out right in front of her. We were both talking trash about working in defense, and a recruiter basically overheard everything we were saying. In my mind, I figured the chance of getting an offer was down to zero percent.

However, she seemed very nice, and she actually started asking me about my past internship and dug a bit deeper as to why I didn't have a good time. She also started asking me if there were any specific roles I was looking for. I told her that, because I'm still early in my undergrad, I was open to exploring positions outside of software engineering. After a bit, she offered me an interview.

I was trying my hardest not to freak out. This was so spontaneous and unexpected. No way in a million years would I have thought that I had a chance to go to MIT for a summer.

She told me to follow her to find a table for our interview. What was a bit funny about this was that every single table we tried to find was completely filled, so we resorted to grabbing two chairs and just sitting in a corner of the building.


After settling down, the interview started, and it would be an understatement to say that I was nervous. My heart was beating rapidly in the first few minutes, but it eventually started to slow down.

The questions she asked me were your average behavioral interview questions, such as 'Tell me about yourself' and 'Tell me about a time where you had to work with someone difficult.'

Because of our conversation prior to the interview, I felt very comfortable talking to her, and I didn't feel as nervous as I did before the interview started. It honestly felt like I was having a conversation with one of my friends, so I was confident that I did well.

It turns out, I actually did very well in the interview!

The recruiter told me that I would be moving on to the final round, where I would be interviewing with one of the researchers at MIT at a later date.

I was so shocked to hear this because, in a span of one hour, I went from complaining about my past internship to having the opportunity to get another one.

The Rest of Day One

Nothing too interesting happened throughout the rest of the event.

I attended a few workshops with a couple of my friends that were hosted by some of the companies hiring at the convention.

Most of them talked about goal-setting and developing soft skills that can be utilized on the job, and each of the workshops had a fun activity.

Overall, it was a decent learning experience that provided a lot of useful resources for people interested.


After the workshops was lunch/snack time.

On the lowest level of the building, the convention volunteers set up three tables with a ton of Asian snacks, which included Pocky, shrimp chips, seaweed chips, and more. They were also serving tea and coffee.

Apparently, you were only supposed to grab one item since there were so many people, but I didn't know that until one of my friends pointed it out to me. However, I had already grabbed at least three bags of food, so personally, I felt like there was no point in going back.


After a couple more workshops, our entire group decided to call it a day. There was an event being held a little later that night that some of us planned to come back for, but we had plans to grab dinner at Ponce City Market.

After a short break at the Airbnb, we drove over to Ponce to meet up with our other members and walk around the area to see what was around.


After ordering food, we all gathered together to eat with each other. It was honestly a really great bonding experience with everyone and a nice break after staying at the convention for several hours.

Career Fair Day

The next day was the main event of the whole convention: the Career Fair.

It was a tabling event where a ton of different companies set up tables across a large room, giving people the opportunity to have a conversation with the recruiters who were tabling.

This was a big deal because it is well-known across the community that getting an interview or offer from the career fair is considerably easier than going to your school's career fair, so it was important to go in prepared and talk to as many companies as possible.

Most of us arrived at the event on time, and it was important to be there for as long as possible since it was only lasting four hours.

After we all went through the main entrance of the career fair, we all split up to talk to the companies that we wanted to.

Personally, I can't remember exactly how many companies I talked to, but I know that it was at least 10. For me, when it comes to career fairs, I try to 'shotgun' and talk to as many people as possible rather than talking to only a handful, to increase my chances of landing an interview offer.

Even though there were a ton of companies to talk to, what made the career fair a bit boring was waiting in the long lines for 10+ minutes just to have maybe a 1- or 2-minute conversation with the recruiter.

The company that I stood in line for the longest was L3Harris, where I was waiting for at least 30 minutes. The reason why I wanted to stay committed was because there was a word going around that it was really easy to get an offer from them, so I thought that I might as well wait for as long as possible.

While I was waiting in line for L3Harris, there was a girl behind me who tapped me on the shoulder and asked if the line I was standing in was for computer science students. I told her that I wasn't really sure and I kind of just picked a random line to stand in.

She then saw my name tag and noticed that I went to FSU and told me that she had a friend who went there, to which I asked her what her friend's name was. After telling me her friend's name and talking about her for a bit, we eventually realized that we actually went to the same high school together.

In the moment, I just thought it was so crazy to have met someone who went to the same high school as me two years after graduation. I later asked if I could take a selfie with her and sent it to our friend that she had mentioned previously.

After a huge amount of time had passed, I eventually reached the recruiter for L3Harris. To be honest, our conversation was relatively short. She mainly asked me about my past experience and the projects that I had worked on.

However, after talking to her for a bit, she actually ended up giving me an offer to work as a software engineer intern in Salt Lake City!

Hearing this gave me so much relief because now I don't have to worry about not having a job for this upcoming summer. I can essentially go through my second year of college without having to stress about not getting any internships.

In celebration, I was able to ring the gong that was in the center of the room. SASE has it so that if a person receives a job offer from any of the companies, they get to ring a gong to signal to everyone that they had been offered a job/internship.

After hearing the gong ring at least 20 times, it was finally my turn!


Throughout the rest of the career fair, a few more of our members were able to receive offers from different companies. In total, five of us received either an internship or a full-time offer at the event.

After I had received my offer, I regrouped with a couple of my friends near the entrance of the building to relax for a bit and tell them the news.

Since this was near the end of the career fair, most of us were just chilling and talking to each other about our plans for after the event.


An hour or so passed by, and the career fair officially ended. To be honest, I think getting an offer was a little bit harder compared to last year due to the fact that there were so many more people than last year. It's probable that word had spread around that getting an offer was incredibly easy, so more people attended.

For me, I had a decent amount of fun at the career fair, although there were plenty of times when I felt like I was just standing around for way too long and often thought about whether or not it was worth it to stay in a certain line.

After the Convention

The convention ended sometime around the afternoon, so most of us were pretty exhausted. We all went back to the Airbnb to take a decent break.

We had made plans to go to H Mart to grab dinner there, so we all drove in our groups over to the supermarket.

Whenever I go to Atlanta, I always make plans to at least visit one H Mart, so I was really glad to hear that everyone in our group wanted to go. This is mainly because Tallahassee doesn't have any large Asian supermarkets, so this would be a chance for me to buy something and bring it back to my apartment if I saw anything I liked.

Once we arrived at H Mart, we walked around the store for a bit, then all came together in the food area to eat together. There were a lot of options to choose from, but I personally chose to order jajangmyeon, a Chinese-style Korean noodle dish that has slices of pork and is covered in a black bean sauce.


After being there for a bit and hanging out, we all drove back to the Airbnb to relax for the rest of the night.

It turns out a lot of us had homework assignments that we needed to finish up, so pretty much all of us were in the living and dining room with our laptops out, working on something for school.

It was both fun and a bit stressful since the assignment I was working on was a little difficult, but luckily, I was working on it with a friend, so we were able to breeze through the assignment relatively quickly.


The next day, we decided as a group to grab breakfast before making the drive back down to Tallahassee. We had a bit of trouble deciding where to go, but we eventually settled on a place called West Egg Café.

I would easily rate this place a 10/10. I ordered the Fried Chicken Hash, which had eggs (I chose over-medium), potatoes, portabella mushrooms, and small pieces of ricotta cheese.

Once we all finished eating, my group and I drove back to Tallahassee, which concludes our Atlanta trip.

Reflection

My experience at the convention and in Atlanta in general was overall incredibly fun!

I was able to come out with an internship offer from L3Harris and a final round interview offer from MIT (really hoping for the best with this one).

Alongside that, I really enjoyed meeting new people who went on the trip and getting a bit closer to those I was already friends with before going on the trip.

Compared to last year, however, I will say that it wasn't as fun mostly because I have gone through a lot of the same experiences, so I didn't get the 'first time' feeling, but that's not to take away from my enjoyment of the trip.

If you're reading this and are interested in going, I highly recommend it if you're looking to explore places outside of Tallahassee and are looking to potentially land a job offer. I will say, though, the companies tend to appeal more to those who major in computer science, computer engineering, mechanical engineering, and anything related to that.

Other than that, if you made it this far, thanks for reading my super long blog post. I had so much to talk about, and I'll try to not make my future posts as long.

Looking forward to next year! :)