"Having both Cem and Brian as mentors has been nothing short of a great experience. Brian offers a lot of technical help and if I have any specific questions about internships, career paths, or even projects, I look to him and his expertise. Cem, given that he is a Berkeley Alumni, has really helped me roadmap my goals for the present and future career goals. He always questions me with statements like "How are you going to balance this with classes? Have you consider attending career fairs?" Both dynamics have provided me with all the support I could have wanted from this fellowship.

Cem was walking me through the steps that he took to prepare for [coding challenges] and helped provide me with strategies given a short timeline. He also talked about going to career fairs and suggested approaches for them and what to expect.

With just a one-off call that you get from most networking, you miss out on all their other personal interests and daily life - like Brian is talking about the kind of side work he's doing with Cem with the airline industry. There's true depth to these conversations that I have never had with professionals which has definitely been a plus. And I think things like that, you don't really get the chance to talk about when you just see those one-off calls. We've been diversifying our conversations a lot more which I really like because it shows their vested interest to learn about me as an individual as well.