Fireside Chats and Farewell

Post #10
Date: 6/23, 7/16, 8/21
Activities: Panel Discussion with SAS Executives
Technical Information: N/A

Reflection: SAS benefits have no limits. SAS treats their interns so well and give them additional programs to make them feel accepted and get them up to speed on the newest inner workings of the company. That was the idea behind the fireside chats. Newly introduced to the intern program at SAS, the fireside chats were designed to send executives from different divisions of SAS to come talk to us interns, give us life lessons, the company's current progress, vision, future, etc. I was able to hear a lot of great life and success stories, as well as advice on how to further one's career and make the best of a given situation. Another neat perk was that wonderful food was provided for lunch, with Alex and I often taking two or three boxes to last us multiple days (they had so much everytime that they encouraged people to take multiple)! I was really appreciative of how the executives gave up time in their busy schedule to come talk to us lowly interns during our lunch hour, it was humbling and flattering.

Needless to say, I learned a lot of interesting things during these presentations/"mini talk-shows". I learned that in order to be successful, you have to find your niche, where you fit in in the big picture of society as a whole. Always look for opportunities, never be afraid to step up and speak up/advocate for yourself, because you never know what you'll be missing out on. Be flexible. Your interests may change as you grow older, don't be afraid to switch to what fascinates you. One of the VP's (Oliver) majored in Forestry for his undergrad before he mastered in Statistics, taught Statistics in college, and then went to SAS. Another gave his formula for success as follows: Success = Soft Skills + Technical Skills + A Whole Lotta Hard Work. If you handle the small things you will be given more and larger opportunities; titles are earned not bought. Never stop asking questions, challenging old foundations, going above and beyond, accepting failure, and stepping out of your comfort zone. As a wannabe programmer it also struck me the importance of documentation and having a fire passion for the code that I write. I could tell that the executives actually enjoyed speaking with us an answering our questions and concerns and I was glad that I was able to attend such an amazing of an event.

Now in full hindsight, I realize how blessed I am to have been able to have interned at SAS for eight weeks during my Junior year summer. SAS as a company are exceptional at treating its employees and families with respect and courtesy and benefits. My manager and fellow coworkers were extremely easy to get along with and would never hesitate to help us when Alex and I needed it and would give us tips even when we didn't explicitly ask for them. They genuinely cared for us like a family, because that's exactly what SAS is, a giant, loving family. I was able to learn more about the real world than ever before. I'm glad I let myself let go and be flexible so I could be able to adapt to whatever came up during the internship and so I was able to experience the internship in full blast. The orientation people gave us a slip with this written on it: "'You will get out of this experience exactly what you put into it.' What are you going to put into it this summer?" I wrote: "A whole lot of work, joy, enthusiasm, and fun. Never stop learning something new everyday and asking questions." I'm happy to say that I have met this goal in full. My last day was bittersweet (who wants to go back to school?) and filled with lots of hugs and smiles. I absolutely cannot wait for an opportunity to go back as an intern in the future... who knows, I might even end up working at SAS full time!

Our own name plates!

Our whiteboard on the final day

Farewell!

How to Program While at the Help Desk

Post #9

Date: 7/13 - 7/17

Activities: Programming a Hard Drive Failure Warning System

Technical Information: SAS Data Integration Studios

Reflection: You can't actually program while working for the help desk. However, Vicki was able to talk to Cameron's manager about having me help assist Cameron on a side project that his manager gave him. Here's the general lowdown: SAS used to have a system where they would scan all of the hard drives that were registered to the company and were connected to a certain hub. The machines would check in everyday and the program would detect when hard drives were about to go bad. Well after a system update, the old program no longer worked and was put out of commission. Seeing as how this would be a relatively simple project, just meticulous and conceptually time-consuming, they threw the project of recreating a new program using SAS Data Integration Studios (DIS) to Cameron and then eventually to me as well. Having been already stuck at the Help Desk for more than a month now, I was more than eager to have a change of pace. I was unfamiliar with DIS so my job was to come up with the abstraction and have Cameron code most of the program.

It turned out that this simple project was a whole lot harder than I had originally thought. We were given no requirements or parameters, we could make the program as elaborate or as drab as we wanted. This level of ambiguity threw me off in the beginning and we spent countless hours coming up with different design plans that we could use. We would often go down a certain path, and realize that the plan had a weakness in it, then toss it out and return to square one, the basics of what we were given. It also didn't help that I was unfamiliar with the programming interface (it was picture and data-table based), so I wasn't sure of the limitations or boundaries of the program, making it harder to figure out how I would go about coming up with a good warning system. After countless moments of brainstorming and starting over, we finally came up with something. There are four codes that are related to hard drive failure. We focused on one that was most related to an unresponsive hard drive. We devised a program where it would read in the specific error code of all the machines that checked into the system and count how many times that error occurred. We had three different levels of severity: Good, Moderate, and Severe. Our program would automatically email the owner of the computer if they reached the moderate or severe stage and also the hardware team to give them a heads up about possibly replacing the drive. It was amazing to watch Cameron put all of our ideas into a giant program with seemingly endless merging and extracting amongst data sets and email automation. I felt so happy when they shortly started using our program just days after Cameron had finished the programming (he deserves way more of the credit).

I didn't experience very many frustrations during my time at SAS because everyone was so darn friendly and helpful. One of the few frustrations I experienced I described above, but the satisfaction of being able to come up with something that useful and actually be implemented overcame the feelings of frustrations that I had prior to coming up with a successful solution. I also sometimes felt helpless when tickets would come in and wouldn't know how to deal with them. The way I dealt with these adversities was just to continue to persevere and to keep trying new things. If I ran into something I didn't know how to do, I would ask someone. I grew much more comfortable at asking questions when before I would have been more hesitant/scared to ask so many times. I'm glad I did so, I was able to learn and grow so much and glean much more from the internship than I would have if I didn't go out my comfort zone of being complacent in sub-optimal conditions

 An outdoor chess set, each piece is about knee height!

Our brainstorming whiteboard

School at SAS?

Post #8
Date: 7/23
Activities: Training Course Learning SAS Studio
Technical Information: SAS Studio 9

Reflection: I never would have thought that I would still be going to school during the summer. And I still haven't gone to school during the summer. But it sure felt like school when I went to take a course at SAS on SAS Studio 9 that was targeted towards interns. SAS loves to pamper their interns wieh SAS specific training courses and academies to encourage them to come work for SAS after they had graduated. It might seem a little evil, like SAS is trying to bribe these interns to come work for them, but after I really thought about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. SAS as a language is much different than other programming languages because it is specifically tailored towards mass computing and statistics. The type of education needed to use SAS software is not something that is easily taught everywhere, it is much easier to just train interns in the "art" of SAS programming and immediately recruit them after they finish their formal education because they already have the necessary tools to help advance the company.

I had no idea what to expect as I made my way to Building H, which is one of the two main training buildings, training for everything and for anyone, from customers to old employees. Was the class going to be huge or small, would I see anyone I knew? Turns out there were only like nine people in the class. I was the only high schooler, so I felt a little intimidated and sat in a little corner by myself. Most of the others were from NC State and some person went to a school outside of North Carolina. The instructor was very nice and informed us that she was also responsible for teaching SAS customers on how to use SAS software for over ten years, which I thought was impressive and neat. I had originally thought that the class would be a review class because I had already taken the SAS class at school, but I realized how much more sophisticated SAS Studio was. There were snippet functions (code templates already written out by former programmers) and other unique IDE workings that allowed the user to create bar graphs and detect data errors with the click of a few buttons. You didn't have to be a SAS expert in order to use the many powers of the IDE and the power of SAS. Overall the class was fun and exciting, and I was able to experience formal training in the work place.

This internship at SAS has truly opened my eyes and let me soak and absorb in more than I ever could have imagined. I've learned that I am a hard worker and that I've gotten better at handling my responsibilities and communicating with superiors that are older than me. I was able to become more independent and be held accountable for my actions. Having me work in IT was a really important experience for me because I realized that I like SAS the company and the language, but not the IT aspect of it. I wouldn't mind interning in the IT department in the future, but I would not like to work in IT full-time as a more permanent position/career. I was glad that I was able to understand that even though my customer and people skills were not entirely lacking, it is not what I'm interested in nor extremely strong at.

Alex and I got a large pizza for a discount and we each ate a whole half!

Deployments

Post #7

Date: Every Tuesday

Activities: Helping With Hardware Deployments

Technical Information: How to Set Up Different Kinds of Hardware

Reflection: We got to the point where Vicki started to worry about me and Alex not having enough to do, which led to the categorizing tickets fiasco (see past blogs). So, using her many, many connections, she got us hooked up with the hardware team in building R to help with deployments. This team is in charge of all of the hardware replacements and repairs in SAS. The PC lab they have is enormous, with hundreds of cables and phones, laptops, desktops, and the most recent technologies. One of the managers in there was talking about how they received a refurbished 3D printer and made a dinosaur skull with it! Half of the room was named the Repair Depot, where, you guessed it, repairs would take place. They would then have procedures on how to check systems like quality control, to make sure that the system was fully functional again. Once a machine was fixed or new machines (that were ordered) were ready to go out to SAS employees, they would have deliverers come in and send it to them to their office. That was what Alex and I helped with, the delivering.

At first, Alex and I didn't have any clue of what we were doing. So we were assigned and partnered up with people who have already been doing deployments for years. I came to understand that all the people at SAS are friendly and approachable, not just the people in my division. Wherever we visited to deploy, we were always greeted with a smile, a joke or two, maybe a story. Deployments were also a great time for me to stretch my legs and get a break from sitting in front of a computer all day. We helped swap out batteries, docking stations (which I was fascinated by the first time I saw one), desktops, phones, Apple monitors, anything hardware related, we did it. It was a lot of untangling cables and unplugging and replugging wires into new machines. To be honest, it was quite a lot of fun, even though I occasionally got scratched up in tight spaces. But it was super fun to help deliver new hardware to different people in different buildings. Each building had their own unique style in regards to plants, art, and architecture.

Ever since I was introduced to computer games like Starcraft II back when I was still in middle school, I have come to love and appreciate the quality and the fun that comes in these packages and bundles of digitized bits. Currently I have my eyes set on the video game industry and getting into the realm of writing code for a video game. However, I know that the video game industry may not be as stable and generate proper income for a well-suited lifestyle for myself. That's why my career plans are more centered around getting degrees in Computer Science in order to broaden my career choices and to give me some flexibility on what I want to do. That being said, getting an internship at SAS has given me a fresh perspective of the workplace. Granted, SAS is one of the, if not the best, places to work, but I now know what it's like to work in an corporate that's not video games. It made me understand that there is so much more than just games and also that I would not like to have a job in the IT department when I am older XD.

An example of the delivery sheet for hardware (this one is for hardware in Building H)

The Details of Chat and Phones

Post #6
Date: 6/19 - 6/26
Activities: More Training Plus Tours
Technical Skills: AVAYA Phones and Chat Website

Reflection: I finally got to do more and learn more about the Chat and Phone systems at the SAS Help Desk instead of the "boring email-like" MIDAS tickets in HDO. Because our own phone systems hadn't been set up yet, we visited other people as they did phone duty. One of the people we visited was Jim. Jim has also been at SAS for a very long time. He gets to work super early, at 5 in the morning, then leaves to go home after lunch everyday. I learned that our help desk was international, so really early morning times for us were really just regular business hours for other places around the globe. Using a special adapter cable, we were able to hook up a second pair of headphones so that I could listen on Jim's conversations but the customer wouldn't know. I saw Jim fix people's passwords and also help someone by remotely logging into someone's computer, which was a super neat concept, which just goes to show, sometimes it's easier to show someone what you mean by doing it. Theoretically, anyone on the help desk team could take over someone's machine on the SAS network any time they wanted to, not that they did that of course. Most people are really nice and rarely get frustrated and yell at us when we're on the phone with them. However, some of them can be tricky cases if they aren't particularly technologically proficient. One woman didn't even know what a browser was...

You know those people who keep getting in trouble at school? They still exist in the workplace. I was first exposed to this when visiting with Debra, a master at controlling conversation but can really get fired up about certain subjects. I learned that there were certain people who would periodically call and chat with the ESD, and there were some regular's who always had the tricky problems or they often messed something up. When I saw Shauna's name light up on Debra's phone and hear her go, "Oh bless her heart," I knew she was one of those people (I would have many future run-ins with Shauna in chat). Speaking of chat, Vicki told me that their Chat site was actually an in-house tool that someone named Saat had created (his name is probably spelled wrong, sorry). Whenever someone typed something into the chat from the user's end (from our Service Desk website), there would be a dinging noise ringing on our end (that sounds eerily like the seatbelt sign on an airplane). The person's name would they appear red, whoever was on chat duty would click it and commence to help the person out, always ending the chat by creating a ticket, whether immediately closing it or sending it away.

My duties haven't really changed throughout the course of the internship. After the two-week training Alex and I, we were put onto the schedule and "thrown to the wolves" according to Vicki. It was exhilarating but stressful at the same time. I realized that I still didn't really have a firm grasp on where tickets went and I found myself constantly asking for help. But I kept at it, and I eventually got the hang of it. In terms of responsibilities, we did get to the point where Vicki trusted us to do phone duty. I politely declined, but Alex was more than happy to give it a shot, and I have to say, that boy is a natural at talking on the phone. Vicki also gave us the task of categorizing more than 1,500 tickets that weren't given a category. Alex and I finished it in less than 7 days. So even though no direct new responsibilities were given to us, I could totally feel Vicki trusting us more and more as the internship went on.

My workspace (my computer is in chat)

More Learning... and Interacting With the Other HD Members

Post #5
Date: 6/18
Activities: Help Desk Training
Technical Skills: Computer Manager, AVAYA Phone Dialer

Reflection: Now we have entered into the phase where we learned the ins and outs of the Help Desk as we entered into a two-week training period that was specifically tailored to help us newbies at the Help Desk learn the ropes. There are three ways that someone can contact the Employee Service Desk (ESD): through the MIDAS ticketing system, through chat, and through the phone. The interesting thing to note is that regardless of which method an employee chooses to contact the ESD, the end result will always end with a ticket being created. This is so if someone were to come across a more obscure issue that was previously resolved in an old ticket, they could attempt to find it in the mass database of tickets that SAS stores and find the correct solution that they need. Everyone on the help desk team have required shifts every week in 30-minute shifts. So everyday, people would rotate between working on HDO (the ticket system), Chat, and Phones. However, these tasks are comparable to like menial house chores like taking out the trash and making your bed. They are necessary, but can get tedious and monotonous. That's where Alex and I come in.

When I was told that I wouldn't have to make coffee for everyone and be people's personal messengers, I was relieved. But then I realized that my job was still essentially the job that no one wanted to do. Nonetheless, the first couple of weeks when we were first exposed to it, it was extremely exciting. People from all over the floor would come into our office and hang out with us. We would chat, talk about SAS, and help us understand what our duties were. Say it was Kyle's turn to do HDO, he would come in and watch Alex and I take care of the tickets that were to come in. If we didn't understand where to put a ticket or became confused he would be able to help get us sorted out. All kinds of people visited us. Some were young, some had been at SAS for 30+ years. Everyone had a special field that they were an expert in.  Debra was an expert on printers, Joel was a master at SharePoint, Steve was a Mac geek, the list went on and on. Everyone had their own unique way of dealing with tickets and people in chat. Some preferred using the web client version of MIDAS versus the thick-client (we ended up having to use both). It was interesting to have been exposed to so many different perspectives.

My main contribution to my internship would be my hard work. I feel like I take the job very seriously and I try my best to stay on the task at hand and not be distracted. I can take off weight from other people by taking over their shifts so they can focus on what they need to do and actually resolve problems. Helping alleviate the pain of doing HDO and Chat and not being a pain to the other members is probably what I'm most proud of in my internship. It makes me feel good and needed knowing that while I may not have the technical knowledge to solve a lot of the problems, I can still be a useful member of the team by creating new ones and sorting them. When Mr. Evans came to do a site visit, Vicki wouldn't stop complimenting Alex and I, saying how we were such hard workers and great assets to the team, which also made me happy on the inside.

From left to right: Jed, Kyle, Alex

Benefits of SAS

Post #4
Date: 6/16 - 8/21
Activities: Eating and Enjoying the Facilities
Technical Skills: Badges and Using Payroll Deduct

Reflection: One of the highlights of my internship here at SAS is most definitely the food. SAS features a plethora of cafeteria's scattered around campus and housed inside the buildings. My building doesn't have its own cafe, but the nearest one, The Skylight Cafe, is only across the street, so it's not that bad. The prices are amazingly cheap and the food is amazingly good. You can literally get a full plate of mushrooms, chicken, and broccoli for less than $5, if that's not a good deal, I don't know what is. And add that on to the fact that all drinks are free, you've got yourself a golden meal each time you visit the cafe. Cameron and Dhvani have their own cafeteria in building R, which is arguably nicer than ours. So to catch up with each other as the AOIT family/squad we (Dhvani) decided to have us meet every Tuesday at their cafe in R. It's really great to have everyone (Dhvani, Cameron, Sydney, Alex, and I) all have lunch together every week. We strike up interesting conversations about our work and those we work with.

If you are an employee at SAS, you don't have to pay with cash or debit for food in the cafe. You use what they call payroll deduct system. Where you just scan your badge and the charges are automatically deducted off of your pay/salary. This is very convenient because you don't have to whip out your wallet every time, just a quick scan *beep* and you're all set and ready to go. This is also what makes snack self-service stations effective and usable. The SAS stores also use this method. If you want to buy some SAS gear, like a T-shirt or hat, you pick out the one you like, go to checkout, scan your badge and it's yours. If you had wanted to go to the gym but forgot your shorts, no problem. Go to the gym shop, pick out a pair of shorts your size and you can buy it with your badge. Granted, it's not cheap, but it is convenient. And best of all, you can view your payroll deduct charges online through the SWW, just like any other transaction.

When I got the internship, I really had no idea to expect. That being said, I had literally no expectations coming in to this internships. In regards to the expectations that I gradually came up with as the internship went on, I can happily say that they have been met and exceeded. I wanted an internship where I could be a useful member of a team and of a larger organization, while still getting paid, which I got. I wanted an experience where I could still learn even though I wasn't in school, and I have learned something new every day, EVERY DAY, since I first went through orientation, here at SAS. Do I have control over what I want to do? Absolutely. Vicki is so flexible with everything Alex and I do. If we happened to want to visit another division for a day, if we felt overwhelmed by our schedules for a certain week, she would adjust it. I could constantly adjust my objectives/expectations periodically without worries.

The lunch line in the Skylight Cafe

The tables (there's a second floor as well)

I Finally Know What I'm Doing... Sort of

Post #3
Date: 6/17
Activities: Learning the tools used in IT
Technical Skills: MIDAS ticketing, Computer Manager, AVAYA Phone Dialer

Reflection: So here I was. Day 3 and I am finally exposed to what I'm going to be doing for the next couple of weeks. The Help Desk (HD), or the Employee Service Desk (ESD), was the part of IT that I was in. Our customers are not other companies or vendors, but rather what are referred to as "internal" customers, SAS employees. If a SAS employee had a problem with their computer or mostly anything technology related, they would contact us. The ESD is split into three main branches: Helpdesk Personal Computer support (HPC), Helpdesk Unix and Exchange support (HUX), and Helpdesk Front Line (HFL). They each have their own specialty and focus on solving specific issues. For example, the HPC team handles hardware issues, IE issues, and virtual machines, while HUX fixes problems with Outlook, Macs, and Conferencing (such as a system called WebEx). Even though Alex and I are technically part of the HFL team, we don't have the technical ability to be able to really help solve problems. Instead, we help facilitate the ticket process and exchange of communication so that teams get the proper problems and be able to proceed with helping resolve the problem.

There are multiple ways of contacting the help desk. The most common method is through SAS's ticketing system, named MIDAS. People can open tickets about anything, from server issues to asking for a pen and journal (to which we kindly ask them to ask their manager for help). These tickets, when they are first opened, are automatically routed to our HDO queue, short for Help Desk On-Call, which is the queue Alex and I are part of. We read the description of their problem and decide the next appropriate course of action. If it is something we can solve, such as a password reset, we go ahead and fix the issue and close the ticket out. However, most of the tickets we receive cannot be closed out by ourselves, and must be routed to the appropriate team that handles that kind of ticket according to their specialty. For example, if someone were to complain about their IE crashing all the time, we would route the ticket to HPC and have them take a look at it and do further troubleshooting.

AOIT is amazing in the fact that it exposes us, the students, to so many real world business experiences and really give us the chance to evolve and increase the proficiency of our soft skills, in the classroom and out. With numerous team projects and presentations, speaking in front of other people or communicating effectively within a group has never been easier. These soft skills easily transferred over to my internship here at SAS, having to communicate with numerous people everyday. Because we're just high schoolers, we didn't really have the technical skills needed to really fix any issues that employees might have. So even though it would have been nice to have learned some technical skills prior to the internship, it probably wouldn't have been possible within the scope of a high school curriculum.

The different duties of the Help Desk

They even had signs

Life is a Learning Experience

Post #2
Date: 6/16
Activities: Getting Used to Surroundings
Technical Information: //CaryNT network

Reflection: They always say the second day on the job is more important than the first, because the shock of the first day has long been worn off. Definitely not the case for me. Second day on the job, and I still have absolutely zero clue on what I would be doing. I smile awkwardly as I swipe my badge, my first real working badge, completely with lanyard and the zippy string. I got there before Alex did, and was chilling out in our office (we shared one). Vicki, our manager, was also the senior IT manager, the head honcho, the boss of the bosses... well at least in our IT division anyways. We had only met her the day before and we had no idea what to expect, she seemed chill, but all of that could probably change in an instant. Except it didn't, and probably never will. Vicki, as well as the rest of our coworkers on our floor, the basement of building E, were the most laid back people, helpful, friendly people I will probably ever meet in my entire life. Vicki never gets angry, compliments us all the time, and is always looking for new opportunities for us to do at SAS. One couldn't ask for a better manager for a high school internship.

The first thing Vicki did in the morning was take Alex and I on a tour around our floor, visiting different people. Among them was Kyle, who was also to double as our "mentor". Kyle is part of the Helpdesk Front Line team (more on that later). Kyle graduated from NC State, is super handy with his hands and athletic, but most importantly, he was experienced and helped us on numerous occasions. I truly felt like I was in a corporate environment at that point. In contrast, if I had instead worked at McDonald's, although McDonald's is also a corporate company, it wouldn't have the same feel that SAS did. I got my own desktop computer, complete with asset tag and name on it. Everything I did was being monitored, which was weird but also exhilarating at the same time. I got my own login to the CaryNT network, which is the main internal network that SAS uses. SAS have more internal webpages than I can count, but there are two main ones that come to mind: the SAS Wide Web (SWW) and The Hub. The SWW contains everything that is related to SAS. It holds everything from the campus map and cafe menus to international SAS news and video casts of Dr. Goodnight. The second major website is The Hub, which is basically like a Facebook for SAS (SASbook?), where employees could chat and discuss about work and non-work related topics.

As you can probably already tell, SAS has a very chill and relaxed atmosphere. Needless to say, for those of us stuck in the basement of IT, dress code is fairly irrelevant, since we never meet with people and customers. That being said, there are many people in my hall that where a t-shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops to work everyday (including managers!). However I still try to keep it somewhat professional and I wear a polo and khaki pants to work everyday. Decisions are always cooperative, with everybody contributing ideas and no idea not considered. The company's work ethic is also interestingly very strong, (I mean it has free M&M's and drinks for real), because people love what they do here at SAS, and that passion had already rubbed off onto me.

My Office (my desk is on the left, Alex's on the right)

Why Intern at SAS?

Post #1
Dates: 6/15/15 - 8/21/15
Activities: Spending my summer at SAS
Technical Information: Using the Internet and certain internal applications (e.g. Computer Manager, etc.)

Reflection: Although I knew that I was probably one of the best candidates for getting the SAS internship, there was still a seed of doubt about getting the internship. Getting past the initial screening was the easy part, because I had a pretty solid resume and academic achievements. When the candidates were narrowed down to 12 of us, and only five were going to be chosen, I felt skeptical. People may say that I am good at interviews, but I personally felt that many of the other candidates were far more superior in regards to how they presented themselves. I silently held my breath for the entire time after the interview until I got the news that I got the internship. And it only went downhill from there... in the most amazing way possible.

SAS's intern program coordinators, Kayla and Whitney, were extremely helpful and friendly. The emails they sent regarding important forms and procedures were clear and it was easy to email them with any questions that I had. Training day was pretty sweet as well. Not only did we get paid for listening to speakers come in and talk about SAS, we got free food and were able to connect with the other interns. Out of about 150 interns here at SAS, only about 20 of them are high schoolers! During orientation we were able to learn about the benefits of working at SAS and some of the more intricate inner workings of the company, like it's history and the 20+ buildings on 900 acres of land. It was surprising to see how SAS was a company active on social media and trying to spread its influence globally. However, even after getting to meet our managers for the first time in person, none of us still had ANY idea of what we would be doing, and that was all part of the fun.

Statistical Analysis Software, or SAS, is one of the most powerful analysis software ever created. SAS Institute, the company who created SAS, was founded by Dr. Jim Goodnight, who is currently the richest man in North Carolina. SAS software is capable of massive data computation and analysis, from the millions of customers that banks like Wells Fargo have to the even greater millions of customer transactions of a general merchandise store like Staples. SAS helps to organize the information and help organize it into a coherent and understandable manner so that the management of these corporations can have a concrete idea of how their business is doing. SAS is also great at helping management anticipate trends in the future and what steps it needs to take in order to improve and expand their company and respective industry. I would be part of the Information Technology team, helping SAS employees fix their problems, but more on that later...