Photo and article by: Xu Zongchang

Edited by: Kou Fangling

In May last year, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to study in Paris. I successfully applied for the visa with the help of teachers and seniors in the Institute. And the movable feast started in the autumn season.

The school I attended was École Polytechnique, ranking No. 1 in France, with famous alumni in both academic and business circles. What I experienced in the first half of the year was the rigorous and scientific nature of its elite education, which combines learning and transferring research outcome into productivity. The teachers here teach seriously and are friendly to others, and senior alumni from large companies are often invited to offer lectures. What's more, the foreign partners are passionate about life, and positive about learning.

The theme in the second half of the year was internship. I started to send out my resume online for internship from November. I had a lot of interviews and was snubbed. Even now, there are hundreds of rejection letters in my mailbox. However, I was finally fortunate enough to get an offer respectively from TOTAL and ENGIE, two energy enterprises in France. And ENGIE was finalized for the reason of my thesis writing. From starting the internship to the present, what I have obviously felt is the high intensity of working pressure. I have to give three reports in three times a week, and the program I propose will really be implemented in a state in the United States. The feeling and pressure are very different from those caused by the previous exams, and I hope that I can grow a little bit at the end of the internship.

After going through more than half a year, what I want to say most are my thanks to the Institute for providing us such rare opportunities . Also, I would like to thank all my friends for their companionship. and my parents and teachers for their care. In the end, I hope that I will live up to my efforts and ICARE will become even better!