Midpoint evaluation on my project's progress

 I had a midpoint evaluation with my manager today. The midpoint evaluation consisted of a written portion where I reflect on what went well, areas of improvement, and my deliverables for the remaining weeks of the internship. This written portion is followed by written feedback from my manager before we meet to discuss details of the evaluation. One of the milestones from the past six weeks of my internship was writing a good engineering design document that detailed the goals, non-goals, and technical approach of my project. My manager commended the work I put in to preparing a design document with technical details that guided the discussion during the design document review meeting. He was also glad that I utilized my time to meet with engineers in different Microsoft teams to learn about the products they are working on, especially those who worked on products similar to my project.

Going forward, he noted that I should not be blocked for so long because I do not have so much time left in the internship. To avoid this, my manager recommended I break tasks into smaller shippable sections that I can work on in parallel when one is shipped. Additionally, he advised me to make pull requests of any smaller sections that I finish so that I can receive feedback soon rather than receiving overwhelming comments about large changes at the end of my internship. I find this feedback helpful because working on a novel feature in the team, as an intern, has been challenging. I spend a lot longer blocked on certain parts of the project because the engineers skilled in that area are in Norway or China where their workday begins later than mine. I have already split my tasks into smaller chunks that I am working independently on to help with faster progress of the project.