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LDI Internship Profile: Meet Thu Truong

This article is part of a series of interviews with Luxembourg Digital Innovation (LDI) students who interned abroad in Spring 2020. Although COVID-19 cut short their study abroad experience, some internships were completed online.

Miami sophomore Thu Truong majors in Interactive Media Studies and minors in 2D Fine Art.Truong is from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Tell us a little bit about your internship in Luxembourg: where you interned, the location of your internship, what you did when you were there. Have you been able to continue your internship since you left Luxembourg?

Thu Truong stands in front of Luxembourg sceneI got accepted to Talkwalker as a Graphic Design Intern. Talkwalker is a social listening and analytics company based in Lux City. I helped the team with marketing campaign materials, blog headers, and social media visual. My contract ended as I returned to my home country when the pandemic happened, but I still keep in touch with my team via LinkedIn.

There are two other destinations with the Digital Innovation program: Cincinnati, Ohio and Silicon Valley in California. Why did you want to join the new Digital Innovation program in Luxembourg (LDI)?

I heard about the Digital Innovation program when I was desperately seeking a summer internship, so I signed up for it. It was not that difficult to choose the place since I just simply wanted to escape the U.S. zone, so heading to Europe was obviously an answer for me. Beside that, as people usually say “save the best for last," I intended to save my experience in Silicon Valley for my last semester.

How did you come to the decision of doing an internship over simply just studying abroad?

Studying abroad means enjoying the non-U.S. zone, so I just made that I included it in my internship plan to both gain more experience and widen my view.

What have you gotten out of your experience? What has been your favorite part?

The best parts were walking in the city and driving along the Moselle river. Lux City reminded me of my home city a lot, which never could be found in the U.S., and the Moselle river was surprisingly nice with vineyards on one side and Germany on the other. Such scenery made me reminisce about the book “South of the Border, West of the Sun” by Haruki Murakami.

What did you learn in your internship?

The internship, to me, was like an introduction to a real-life working environment, so I did learn a lot about responsibilities, communications, and so on. The culture was not much different from Vietnamese, so it didn’t take much time for me to adapt.

What is a fun fact that most people don't know about you?

I put sugar into most of my food. It freaked me out when I first couldn’t find any sugar at my host’s house until I discovered they used sugar cubes.