By Carla Calderon
This trip has helped me think differently on how I will approach my last semester at Berklee and how I will approach my future after graduation. Specifically, when we visited the D school at Stanford, they taught us how design thinking is important and some of the ways they set up the space to help their students be productive.
As soon as our group began the uphill ascent to the Skywalker ranch on I realized how blessed we all were to be on this trip. We were given an opportunity to visit some of the most well known yet exclusive tech companies in the United States, perhaps even the world. One evening before the end of our trip we went to an evening reception, and while there I began talking with a member of our group about our experiences. In the middle of the discussion they mentioned that the price we paid was totally surpassed by the companies and people we were able to visit.
Entering the Silicon Valley Trip, I knew I would be networking but my experience 
surpassed just exchanging of business cards. At Facebook, I learned that they were hiring artists and paying them to create songs on behalf of Facebook which were directly credited to them. Through these partnerships, Facebook is giving these musicians a platform of 2 billion people at their disposal. My disheartened state towards social media was completely revamped through talking with the team members directly working on Facebookâs music department.
Silicon Valley lives and breathes every day as the headquarters for a vast array of technology companies. The ability to attend the Berklee school trip not only strengthened my interest and passion for technology, but I could see
myself living in the San Francisco area after college. While Los Angeles and New York stand as major music and art hubs, San Francisco caters to music lovers such as myself through their technology companies. Of all the companies the school visited, the amount of departments within said companies that dedicate entirely to sound and audio surprised me. The trip unexpectedly sparked an interest in pursuing a career at a top technology company within the Silicon Valley area.
When I was first recommended for this trip, I admittedly saw the subject line and almost immediately deleted it without giving it a thorough read. Not out of disinterest, but because I was intimidated for it was so vastly outside of my comfort zone. What place could there be for a conservatory student like me in Silicon Valley?
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