Graduated in 2018 with a major in Film Scoring. Principal instrument: voice.
Position: Software Engineer at Apple. During the first two years of employment as an engineer, it’s standard for Apple to rotate the person through a series of teams in different parts of the company, so that one finds their best fit.
Overview: While at Berklee, Lisa decided that she’s be more employable if she got into writing music for video games as well as for film, and that required an interest in video games. She enjoyed playing the game “Overwatch”. Then she got an internship writing music at a video game company the summer before her last year. That internship, at a company where everyone else in development did software, kindled her interest in software coding. She taught herself some coding. Her senior year, she did an audio/tech program that Berklee did in partnership with M.I.T, but already her primary interest was moving in the direction of software, an interest her parents encouraged. After graduation she moved home to Korea, but applied to software engineering programs in the United States. Lisa got into Columbia University for a Bachelors in Computer Science program, and started in the fall of 2019.
In the spring of 2022 Lisa graduated, having spent a lot of time making connections and getting valuable experiences. Fall 2022 she started looking for a job, applying to MANY places, using her conections. She wasn’t hugely optimistic about getting anything good., with only a few years coding under her belt “It was hard, getting so many rejections or not hearing back at all. That was my low point. Then an Apple recruiter came out of nowhere–she hadn’t even applied to Apple. “Initially I really thought it was a scam when I heard from them!” After several rounds of interviews she was hired into her current position.
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You can see Lisa’s LinkedIn profile here.
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Choice Quotes: “I like having clearcut answers on things I’m working on. That wasn’t a thing in music–answers were subjective and people-based. Here the way you get the answer may be different, you have one clear objective and you know if you hit it.”
“Really get to know yourself. Know who you are. It really helped me to constantly self-reflect on my life/behavioral patterns and my real self. And really learn what I like and dislike. That really helped me know what I wanted to do in the future. Don’t just think of what you project to other people.”
“It’s ok to switch paths. It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to take a break.”
“One thing we learned from film scoring is there’s a lot of detail-oriented projects we have to do. We have to manage a lot and do a lot. We learn not to waste any time. When I first attended Columbia folks told me how much work it’d be. TBH I found it easy and told folks that if they thing that’s rigorous they shoudl try going to Berklee and take Intro to Film Scoring!”
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