Meet the TextNow 2022 interns: Kay

‍Editor's note: Every year we like to take time to introduce you to some of the incredible people who join TextNow as interns. We love to catch up and share how their time at TextNow is going with everyone. Stay tuned to meet more co-ops in the coming weeks!

Meet Kay!  

Hi! I’m Kay (she/her/hers) and I am a business analyst summer intern here at TextNow. I am located in Charlotte, NC and recently graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

As a student, you learn so many things in school and sometimes it’s hard to know what you will actually use in the workforce, versus what you’re never going to see again. Here’s how I’ve built on the things I learned in school while working at TextNow.

In the tech industry, it is very common for people to know more than one coding language. Which ones and how many depend on your major in school and/or the field you’re going into in the workforce. When I got to TextNow and joined the Business Analytics team, I was told that they primarily use two out of the three coding languages I know. I was so relieved to find out that all those hours I spent learning them for class hadn’t been a waste.

College did a good job of teaching me the basics but the amount of learning I have done while on the job is unmatched. I wasn’t aware that there was still so much I didn’t know about those programs yet. I’ve learned how to use new functions, packages, and new ways to combine the ones I already knew. My knowledge of each program I have worked with has doubled in these last few weeks!

I was taught many different programs in school, but I was never taught how they could be used together. During my internship, I have been working on a project that started as SQL code, went into Python, and ended up as a dashboard on Tableau. The entire process was so amazing to be a part of. Knowing how to use each of them individually is one thing but combining them all and seeing the end result gives you such a different feeling of satisfaction.  

In school, once your professor grades your project, it is very likely that it will never be used/seen again. At TextNow, you get to see how teams are using the information you’ve helped gather and all of the new projects that are going to stem from it. Knowing that something you spent a lot of time and effort on is actually being put to use is very fulfilling.

One of the most important things I have learned during this internship is that you are a student for life. You have an opportunity to learn something new every day. I never thought that I knew everything but getting a glimpse of just how much I don’t know makes me excited to learn it all in the future.