Week 1: Orientation and Onboarding

 June 9–13, 2025

Christian M. Lagarde – 3rd Year Computer Science Student
Bicol University

The Digital Threshold

Monday marked the start of a new chapter—not just another academic requirement, but the real-world application of everything I’d been studying for the past three years. As I joined the virtual orientation hosted by Mr. Mohammad Ali Fereydouni, our OJT manager at StraStan Solutions Corp., I was acutely aware of the transition that was taking place. We weren’t just students anymore. We were contributors.

The meeting was brisk and purposeful. Mr. Fereydouni introduced StraStan not just as a company, but as a training ground where we would be treated like junior developers, not observers. Expectations were made clear. The workload would be real. And we would be held accountable. I welcomed the challenge.

Infrastructure of Independence

By Tuesday, we were setting up access to tools and resources. The remote desktop configuration, Chrome work profile setup, and environment permissions were all designed to simulate the type of controlled access used in actual production environments. I spent a good portion of the day ensuring that my workspace—local and remote—was ready for actual development work.

Our assigned development model followed Domain-Driven Architecture, supported by a buddy system for mentorship and accountability. Each step of the process emphasized independence, with support only when necessary—just like in the professional world.

Into the Backend

Midweek came the real test. I was assigned my first official task: build a Project Task Manager backend system with full CRUD functionality—but it didn’t stop there. I was also required to implement AES encryption/decryption for sensitive data, enable CORS for cross-origin access, and integrate pagination for efficient data retrieval.

It wasn’t just a challenge of writing routes. It was about designing a secure, well-documented REST API capable of handling real-world use cases. Testing everything through Postman, I iteratively refined each endpoint:

• POST /tasks to create new project entries, with data encrypted before storage

• GET /tasks?page=1&limit=10 to retrieve paginated and decrypted entries

• PUT /tasks/:id to update selected tasks securely

• DELETE /tasks/:id for task deletion with encrypted confirmation

Along the way, I handled cross-origin policy issues and adjusted headers for proper client-server communication. It was hands-on, fast-paced, and full of learning curves. I ran into edge cases, especially when testing encryption compatibility across different environments, but I resolved them through careful debugging and logging.

A Brief Pause, A Deeper Realization

Thursday was a holiday—a welcome pause that allowed me to reflect on everything I had done in just three days. I wasn’t just implementing syntax anymore. I was building structure. I reviewed my codebase, improved formatting, and added documentation to each route using comments and sample Postman responses.

The experience was already reshaping how I thought about development. This wasn’t a lab exercise. It was product-level work, albeit in a sandbox.

Code and Confidence

Friday brought further refinement. I finalized error-handling middleware to return meaningful responses, ensuring that encrypted data returned understandable results only to those with proper access and decoding. I added validation checks, worked on handling malformed input, and confirmed that all pagination parameters were robust against misuse.

By the end of the day, I had completed my first working API—a secure, functional system that could easily plug into a frontend or mobile client. More importantly, I had the confidence that comes from solving problems that weren’t just theoretical, but practical and production-like.

Looking Forward

Week 1 was foundational, not just in the technical sense, but in shaping my mindset. I experienced the pressure of deadlines, the responsibility of proper documentation, and the importance of writing secure, scalable code.

The transition from student to intern felt real. And while I knew that more complex tasks were ahead, I also knew that I had stepped into the world of developers not just in title, but in capability.

Week 2 would bring new frameworks, deeper logic, and broader team interactions. But I’d carry the lessons from this week forward: that development is never just about building—it’s about understanding, securing, and sustaining what you build.

End of Week 1 Narrative