It has been a long time coming, but I am finally finishing my co-op this week at Target Freight Management! Although it was 3 months, it seemed to go a lot quicker with all the work and learning that I have been doing. I have accomplished more than I thought I would when I started. It was so exciting to see the project that I worked on get put into production so our clients could finally start using it! With the help of my coworkers, I was able to learn so much about programming, databases, and working in a team that I would not have learned otherwise. Everyone at TFM has been so friendly and helpful, I couldn’t ask for a better work environment to be able to learn and grow in.

The final week was relatively easy since it was mostly just checking everything worked right and doing some housekeeping. I just had to add permission checks for our users and clean up some of the code in our model. My supervisor helped me set up the cron job which would automate the process of running our program every 15 minutes on the server. We also put in a few checks in the code that would prevent two jobs from running at the same time. Even with a relatively simple task I gained a bit of knowledge in checking for running processes and learning a way to prevent them from overlapping. To finish the week, I had an exit review with my supervisor Dave where we discussed how the program went and possibly a full-time role at the company, so we will keep in touch.

Being a relatively easy week, I would give myself a grade of 4 since there wasn’t much work that needed to be completed. My last day was wonderful with going out to lunch with the team and even receiving a small gift basket from the company! I got everything I was hoping for and more out of this co-op and I recommend any students wishing to enhance their skills to try and complete a co-op in the future. I would like to thank Professor Voortman for making all this possible by teaching me the skills I would need in our IT courses. Since I will be graduating at the end of the Fall semester, my goal will be to take the next step up and land a full-time role as a software/web developer. Whatever I am doing in the future, I will be sure to use all the skills gained here at TFM as I continue to work towards my goals. With a little bit of persistence and continued learning, we are able to achieve the things we never thought possible. Good luck to everyone!