My Nine Week Internship at Uganda Martyrs University ICT
A look back at the projects I worked on, the systems I deployed, and the practical experience I gained during my internship at Uganda Martyrs University.
My nine week internship at Uganda Martyrs University ICT Department gave me the chance to work on real projects and learn how things actually work outside the classroom.
My work with the University started even before the internship. I was already working with the PRO team on the redesign of the University website. During the internship, I took the lead on the WordPress implementation and handled a lot of the actual work involved in getting the website ready, including building pages, adding and organizing content, migrating content, testing and fixing issues.
After the website was ready, I worked with the Head of ICT, with his guidance and support, to deploy it to the University's hosting environment. I am still helping the PRO team with the remaining work even though my internship officially ended on 31 July.
Another project I worked on was Moodle. While working with the ICT team, I developed a custom Moodle plugin that was integrated and deployed with the WhatsApp Cloud API to send automated notifications to students.
I also got hands on experience with Linux servers, databases, cloud infrastructure and application deployment. I participated in the cloud deployment of Moodle.
The internship was not only about software. I also spent time working with networking, including IP addressing, subnetting, Ethernet cabling, RJ45 termination, network racks and a real server room switch replacement.
I am also currently working with two lecturers on the University's attendance management project, contributing to the ongoing development of the system.
One of the biggest things I took away from the internship is that building software is only part of the job. You also need to understand the infrastructure behind it, how systems communicate, how they are deployed and what happens when real users depend on them.
I came into the internship wanting more practical experience. I left with a much better understanding of software development, cloud, systems administration and the kind of problems technology teams deal with every day.
I am grateful to the ICT Department, the PRO team, my supervisors and everyone I worked with during this period for the opportunity to learn and contribute.