Meet the Interns: Jordan Meier

Recently, Cheeky Monkey Media selected two interns from the Epicodus Drupal Development Track. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Epicodus, it is “a vocational school for aspiring programmers” based in Portland, Oregon.

After what seemed like weeks of listening to Gene and Rick interview potential interviews, where they asked them, along with a number of other things, whether they preferred Starship Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon, we finally settled on Jordan Meier and Jared Beckler (pssst, read his story here).

Eager to get to know the new monkeys, who seemed pretty cool, we decided to ask them some questions, mostly not about Drupal or their developer capabilities. After all, we don’t need to ask them what they can do with a keyboard, we see their work.

Oh, did we mention they work remotely? This is important because it makes it harder for us to uncover their quirks. We had to be a bit sneaky with the questions.

Now, without the further ado, we introduce you to, the girl monkey intern: Jordan-Meier.

Q. Did you always want to be a developer?

A. No, this is a more recent development. It was something I decided to pursue in the past year. Before that, I had quite a bit of experience in customer service and retail. I also did some outdoor conservation work with Americorps.

 

Q. Why the switch?

A. I wanted to move into a field with more opportunity for growth and with a bit more financial stability.

 

Q. Are you mostly self-taught or…?

A. Yes and no. I taught myself some of the basics, but I learned most of the stuff at Epicodus, a five-month long coding boot camp. It was fairly intense. 40+ hour long weeks.

 

Q. What did you want to be as a child?

A. Not a developer, although my parents did send me to a two-week web camp when I was a kid. I love animals so I think I wanted to be a vet, but more of in an animal whisperer kind of way. And a pirate, I wanted to be a pirate.

 

Q. What’s your favorite thing to eat?

A. Mexican. And Italian. I love yummy delicious Italian carbs. Thai.

 

Q. What’s your least favorite thing to eat?

A. I was going to say that I really like sushi, but I don’t like raw fish, or soft, stinky cheeses.

 

Q. What are your hobbies?

A. I’m a huge outdoors person: hiking, skiing, kayaking, fishing, being in the garden, and watching the chickens. Jordan grows peppers, beets, onions, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, corn and peas in her garden. She and her partner currently have 5 chickens.

Q. Starship Enterprise or Millennium Falcon?

A. I like Star Trek, but I watched a lot more Star Wars as a kid, so for nostalgia sake, I’d probably have to say the Millennium Falcon.

*For those of you who are unfamiliar with these space travelling ships, the first is from Star Trek and the second is from Star Wars. Please also note that if you do not know this in your interview, you have failed the question. While there is no right answer, you are required to understand the question. This does not mean you will not get the job.

 

Q. Do you have any pets?

A. A cat named Wren and a dog named Morgen. They didn’t get along at first, but they’ve come to like each other. I also have five chickens. We had six, but Voldemort had to go live on a farm because roosters are not allowed in Portland city limits. The chickens are all named after Harry Potter characters.

 

Q. What’s your favorite animal?

A. That’s hard. I love animals in general. But, I mean, who doesn’t love the fuzzy cute ones?

 

Q. What’s your favorite tech tool?

A. It would have to be my text editor – atom. To write code you need a code editor. There are some built in [to your system] but they can be hard to work with. Atom is open source and has a lot of packages you can install to make your life a little easier. You can also change syntax highlighting, which is nice.

 

Q. Where did you go to school?

A. I spent 3-4 years attending Portland State University. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do, so I took a lot of classes that interested me but didn’t add up to a degree. Then a lot of my friends who were graduating weren’t getting any jobs with their liberal arts degrees so I tried some more science based stuff – fisheries and wildlife. I guess University just wasn’t a great fit for me in the end.

 

Q. How did you pick Epicodus?

A. When I went back [to school], I decided to be a lot more selective. I picked Epicodus because it is very well regarded and requires a more hands-on approach to learning stuff. I also liked that it was shorter, that way I could try it out and see if I liked it, without putting all my money into it.

Q. Have you done an internship before?

A. I did one a decade ago in high school. Nothing tech related. I was maybe 16 or 17 and really passionate about photography. It was a photography/production internship with my cousin in Hollywood.

 

Q. What were you expecting?

A. I didn’t have any huge expectations other than a fun environment in which to learn. At Epicodus we were given a list of potential places to intern and asked to rank them, then we got matched with some of our top choices for interviews. I had ranked Cheeky Monkey somewhere at the top. You guys sounded fun and seemed like you would be cool to work with. …It’s too soon to tell if we’ve met her expectations, and are, in fact, cool.

It’s been a little overwhelming so far, but I think that is to be expected when trying new stuff out. Starting to get a better feel for it!

 

Q. What’s your music of choice?

A. I love music, it’s a huge part of my life. I can find something to enjoy about most types of music. Been listening to a lot of bluegrass lately, but today I’m listening to All Things must Pass by George Harrison.

I also play music recreationally. I’m comfy playing guitar and alright at the piano. I’d love to learn to play the violin or the cello.

 

And that, folks, is some interesting stuff about our new intern Jordan. At this point, I’d like to add that she prefers runners or chacos (a flip-flop-like sandal that actually stays on your feet) to high heels. She also had some fantastic advice for me on my pea problem – the peas are growing like crazy and taking over.

When it comes down to it, our interns are pretty kick-a%$ programmers – they wouldn’t be interns here if they weren’t – and pretty cool to boot. I mean seriously, does it get much better than working with a team that makes awesome websites and gives gardening advice?

I think not. I think not.