Reflection Paper 2

This second paper will cover the second 50 hours of my time, while interning at the Newport News Shipyard, as a part of the PPPY squad. My second week was very rewarding and challenging, as I worked hard to complete the procedure, I had started working on in week 1. I worked long hours and hard days, but I was able to get off early Friday to go down to North Carolina or Memorial Day weekend. I was able to meet Ray, a coworker I had not met the first week, and get to know Broderick better, a coworker who works mostly from home. I learned a lot, accomplished a lot, and had a good time while doing so. Let me tell you about it.

My objective for my second week was to complete the STIG procedure I had been tasked to create. This proved to be very difficult. It started out as a 20-page document, and quickly grew to 30, then 38, then 43, and now has over 2300 words and 100 steps. That process was not easy, as I had to learn how to write in a technical way and not in an essay format. I also had to learn how to make a procedure extremely specific and easy to follow, so that an 80-year-old grandmother could follow it. Also, I had to use figures and reference steps throughout the procedure, which meant I kept having to change the references and figure numbers as I added to or took away. This became annoying at times, but I knew how useful it would be when I completed it.

My goal was to get it to the place where my other coworkers who had little experience with the procedure, could use my document to walk through it and be able to do it efficiently and successfully I then used their comments to further revise my procedure. Besides learning more about the procedures within the PPPY squad, I also learned a lot about how nuclear power works, how our systems interact with the ship, and how to do different scans on images that I had only heard about in college. I was also given a tour of the VASAC, the corporate HII office, and was able to see our new cyber lab in progress. This excited me greatly, because the lab will hold the work that I am more familiar with and enjoy doing, such as pen-testing and hacking. My boss made it clear that I needed to learn more about those topics, so I could be useful in the lab. That became my newest learning objective, and I read books and studied, and having continued to do so, to be the man for the job.

While learning so much and doing so much, working 9.5-hour days at times, I also got to learn more about my coworkers. Apparently, I work with a former secret service guy, 5 former Navy sailors, a former naval nuclear sailor, and a former FBI intern. They are all very interesting, very talented, and very funny. We also had two cakes, both for a girl named Alex, who had a birthday. I learned about the funny stories, inside jokes, and about the interesting diets of everyone at the office. This might seem like personal stuff and not work related, but when such an atmosphere is created, employees are a lot more motivated to perform well for the group and for the company. My boss does not want to be a boss, but he sure is the best I ever had.

I learned a lot this week. I gained a better grasp and understanding about what we do at the Shipyard, I learned more about my coworkers, more about ships, and more about cybersecurity. I loved this week. The week ended off with me getting a rundown about my main task for the Summer. I was to change the code, the add more information, in order for some of our software to run better and include the information we need. Once again, I took notes, I studied, and I prepared. Hopefully during the third week, I will be able to start my major project, but I can already tell it is going to be difficult.