BACK AT LAITS
Hi y’all, I am back and could not be more excited. This summer has been one of the best summers of my life. Life update in short: Travelled to 2 new countries and 3 new cities. Eat countless delicious dishes. Finished an internship and a job. Spend countless quality time with family. A well-spent summer indeed.
- I started off this summer with a mission trip to the Philippines where I got to see the beautiful country with the nicest and friendliest people I have seen. I also have a chance to see what God did in this country with so many community outreach and worship sessions. After the mission trip, I went back to Vietnam and connected back with my family. It was really sweet to see how everything did not change so much, and everyone was there for you, waiting and supporting you all the way.
- In Vietnam, I did a remote internship with Claudius Scholar, a start-up in the AI and publisher industry. I helped them engineer the front-end application and spearheaded the main design framework that they could build on top of it. In this role, I was basically the UI/UX designer and Front-end developer where I got to propose my sketch in Figma and implement my outline in Bootstrap and Javascript. I also learned so much about backend development with Django. It was truly a learning experience because I had a chance to witness where the data is stored and transferred from the back to the front. The work that I did at LAITS really strengthened my front-end engineering skill that I felt more confident going into this job.
- Also, in Vietnam, I had a remote job with UT for the Discovery to Impact Program. In this program, I researched and drafted different sections in a profile template so that it saves time for the researcher to examine and submit. Researching different scientists and professors is a very interesting task. I had an opportunity to know so many cool and talented researchers along the way in so many industries, ranging from medicine and robotics to rockets and biochemistry. There are a ton of UT labs, spearheaded and managed by those cool scientists, whose lab members work diligently to pursue scientific breakthroughs.
- Reading up to this line, you may ask yourself: Where is the second country I visited? Did I forget? Oh no, I remembered. When I went back to Vietnam last summer, I did not have a lot of moments when I could spend traveling with my family. (It was because my sister needed to study to graduate senior in high school. Everyone is stressed, but she turned out just fine). Therefore, this summer, I and my sister decided to plan out our travel to visit different cities in Vietnam. So one week after we planned, we packed our suitcases and luggage and off, we went. That week was filled with so many happy and sweet moments. The moments turned into core memories and made my summer. Every day was just full of joy, laughter, and curiosity about what we wanted to do next. Then one month after the trip, we decided to go out of the country, so we looked for a cheap tourist trip. And again, off we went to Korea. Korea is definitely one of the most beautiful countries I have seen. The road and the structure are very similar to America. In just 4 days and 9 meals, we ate kimchi as a side dish for 8 of them. It was good, but when I went back to Vietnam, I did not want to see kimchi for a while.
- All and all, I was very happy that I went and saw so much during the summer. I also learned and re-learned a lot during the internship that I had. It was a very productive but also heart-warming summer for me.
- Looking into this semester, I hope to hone my skills more in the Data Science track. All the classes that I take this semester are related to that area, so I am super excited to see how I can do and learn more in class and outside of class. I also added another major Economics because I want to be more prepared with my statistical background. I am also interested in Finance area so maybe I will end up as Business Analyst or Financial Analyst or Data Analyst in general. Who knows? I will let God decides the rest, but for now, I will keep learning and acquiring skills for that Data Science area.