Meet Andrina Zhang

We recently connected with Andrina Zhang and have shared our conversation below.

Andrina, thank you so much for joining us today. Let’s jump right into something we’re really interested in hearing about from you – being the only one in the room. So many of us find ourselves as the only woman in the room, the only immigrant or the only artist in the room, etc. Can you talk to us about how you have learned to be effective and successful in situations where you are the only one in the room like you?

Different from early ages at school, when most students are learning the same general education contents, the gradual steps of going into a more specialized field bring a lot of people into the situation that they can no longer find someone around alike. A lot of times, I like to observe people around me and try to paint the possibilities in my mind, so being the only one in the room can be lost and unmotivated sometimes. After realizing the situation, I’ve been pushing myself to switch my mindset proactively. I’m always interested in a breath of things and love to learn about things happening to people around me. With this evaluation of myself, I found that being the only one in my room means people I can interact with may have a broader background or experience level, which brings me opportunities to talk to a wider variety of people. Holding this idea in mind helped me to relieve the majority of the stress that I had when thrown into a new environment in recent years and motivated me to talk to a lot of people, whom I may once thought were too different from me even to start a conversation with. And just let nature take its course after the first conversation.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Currently, I’m a Software Engineering / Product Innovation Co-op at Bose Corporation, contributing to the next-generation features on surround / out-loud speakers, after graduated from UC San Diego June 2024 with my BS and BA. I’m very lucky to have a great manager to mentor me and have a talented extended team of senior engineers that I can reach out to. Outside work, I’ve been scattering my time on collaborating with others for sound projects as a contractor or exploring production techniques on my own. Please feel free to stay in tune through my LinkedIn or personal website. I’ll release projects from time to time and make posts on my social media when they are ready to go public. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly through LinkedIn DMs or email if you’re interested in collaborating on some creative topics.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

[Heuristics] that I’ve been intentionally cultivating for myself. I think it grows naturally with years of experience in a lot of things, but since I’m at the very early stage of my career, I’ve been trying to accumulate the knowledge base behind my heuristic pool intentionally. [Bravery] to talk to whoever sparks my interest. [A peaceful mindset and a steady core], even if I need to sacrifice things for my goal, which rewinds back to the heuristics I mentioned at first – I trust my heuristics.

To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?

My parents give me full freedom in anything I want to do. My parents both work in very different fields from what I’m doing currently. Although they don’t understand all the details of the things I share with them sometimes, they trust I can do well. As I mentioned earlier, I use my heuristics to make decisions sometimes, so it’s not promised that I can bring several solid supporting arguments to accompany my decisions at all times. Unconditional trust did help me to confirm my decision when the scenario comes. Another funny fact is that, since they’re giving such unconditional trust to me on uncertain things, I try to list out all possibilities and rebut my own ideas to see how feasible they are more often than I do normally, to avoid myself falling into the straw man fallacy or so-and-so.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://andrinazxx.github.io/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrinazxx/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrina-zhang/
• Other: I’ll get music-related pages ready in 2025, please stay in tuned 😛