Intern Takeover: Digerati LXP Edition
This past Fall, we were a part of the Digerati Leadership Experience (LXP) at Life.Church. It was an amazingly rich experience for all of us. We answered a few questions to encapsulate our time here!
What is your role/team? What have you been able to work on?
Allen George | Network Engineer for IT
I have been able to work on many things related to making sure every campus’ network is running smoothly every weekend. I worked on different switches and routers for most of the campuses and cleaned up our server room. Another awesome opportunity was to work with the Tech Team on LynTec. Even though I was an intern for IT, I was able to grow my experience with web development by helping the YouVersion team with their 2018 Year in Review website.
Daria Logoutine | Software Engineer for Open Network
I am a Software Engineer for the Open Network team. When I joined the team we were about a month away from the alpha release of a completely rebuilt Church Online Platform (ChOP). I jumped into finishing up the client side of the application which involved building out features and connecting existing features to the application’s backend. Alpha is now launched, and my team is working on getting beta out the door.
Ezrah Nyanat | Web developer for YouVersion
During my time here, I worked on updating and refactoring the YouVersion Events Admin codebase. I have also fixed styling issues and bugs on the YouVersion landing page and the Bible web app.
Natalie Trinidad | Designer for YouVersion
I have taken on a variety of projects that have helped me understand the different aspects of design for YouVersion. To name a few I have designed the YouVersion volunteer t-shirt, the 2018 Year in Review website, and created some Bible Lens templates.
Dayo Adepoju | User Support for YouVersion
I have enjoyed my time learning and working with User support. I had the opportunity to interact with millions of users from different walks of life around the world attempting to solve their issues as efficiently as possible. I have also worked on redesigning the YouVersion volunteer portal.
What was your favorite thing about the internship?
Allen: My favorite thing about the internship was making friendships while gaining work experience. Everything we worked throughout each week was mind-blowing. Not once did I ever think of not coming to work. I was most proud of using my skills that God has given me to move the mission forward. Every day I was reminded that the mission is always first and to know the why before the what.
Ezrah: The LXP internship was my first full-time developer job since graduating coding boot camp. My favorite thing was simply getting to observe and experience what it is like to work in a full-fledged software development team environment. We were broken up into smaller feature teams and worked in two-week sprint cycles that required intentional planning and clear communication with each other. I also loved getting to experience the organization’s culture. Everyone who works here believes in the mission of the products they are working on and know the life-changing impact they have. This core belief drives the team to bring their best and work together to improve and innovate during each sprint. That being said, the culture also values and has a vested interest in how we work! It values celebrating and encouraging each other in big and small things, sharing knowledge with each other to get better, developing in our leadership, and learning how to healthily manage time, healthily communicate, receive and give feedback, and prioritize patterns of rest even while we work.
Daria: My favorite thing about interning at Life.Church was definitely the culture the organization has developed. On my first day, I could tell this job was going to be different from any job I had previously held because everyone valued faith and family above all else. Knowing that my team cared about me personally was really encouraging during difficult and stressful periods. I also loved the level of responsibility I was given from day one. At the end of my first week, I was pushing code and creating merge requests… the coolest thing was seeing the features I built in production being used by thousands of attendees.
Natalie: I really enjoyed how evident it was that the axioms were truly a part of the culture. One axiom that I noticed play out through the entire organization and especially within YouVersion was “We are spiritual contributors, not spiritual consumers. The church does not exist for us. We are the church and we exist for the world.” YouVersion is always creating content for the people they are reaching to have a closer relationship with Christ by connecting with scripture. Another thing I appreciated was how welcoming the whole team is to new ideas.
What was a challenge and how did you overcome it?
Daria: The biggest challenge for me was balancing school and work. I was a full-time student and part-time LXP, but I often found myself reversing the two which ended up costing me sleeping hours. When this happened, I became sleep deprived and I did not bring my best to either school or work. I had to learn to say no to some things, like attending certain social events, so I can say yes to more important things, like taking tasks off my team’s plate so we can get the Church Online Platform out the door sooner. Even though there was sacrifice involved, I am thankful that Life.Church worked with my schedule so that I could be an intern and grow in experience while getting my diploma.
Allen: From my previous experiences working at different organizations, it was common to assume the opinions of interns are not as meaningful or respected as longer-tenured employees. During the start of the LXP internship, I was quiet during team meetings because I was afraid my opinions were not going to be valued or listened to. My coach and team leader talked with me about speaking up and after that conversation gave me consistent reminders. From their feedback, I felt more confident to give my input during team meetings.
Ezrah: A challenge for me was overcoming feelings of inadequacy. The YouVersion/Digerati team is comprised of amazingly talented and intelligent programmers and developers. It would have been so easy for me to stay stuck in those feelings of inferiority and allow them to paralyze me throughout my internship. I shared with my mentor on the first day how I was struggling with ‘imposter syndrome’, and he explained that he could relate to how I was feeling. It was encouraging to know that even a seasoned professional programmer like him wrestled with those feelings. It comes with the territory. The job is to learn things we have never learned before (or apply our knowledge in different ways) to solve problems we have never solved before.
“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” — John Wayne
The feeling never went away, but I learned how to work with it. I asked lots of questions, learned how to approach debugging a problem during pair programming sessions, and continued to get better at learning how to learn.
What advice would you give to a future intern?
Dayo: Always come into work ready to give 102% and to remember that you are here to learn and grow. Communicate effectively with your coach. They are there to help you develop spiritually and professionally.
Natalie: Have a good communication ethic with your coach, do not be afraid to ask questions and know that it is okay to not know how to do everything at first. Give yourself the time to cultivate your skills.
Ezrah: Be patient with yourself! Play the long game. Treat this short internship opportunity as an investment in your career as a whole.
Throughout the internship, we also had weekly development calls with various high-level leaders in the organization going over topics related to time-management, processing/giving feedback, and communication. We were gaining valuable wisdom applicable to our professional life and leadership skills while growing in our technical experience. If you are just about to start out in your professional career, we recommend looking into the LXP Internship Program at Life.Church to see if it would be a good opportunity for you! https://www.life.church/techinternship/
