Victoria Hawk's Blog Post #3: June 2, 2024 | 2024 Lehigh-in-Milan with Professor Gupta

So far, completing the work for the Corporate Social Responsibility class has been really enjoyable. It is getting me very excited for when we start class on Monday. All of the articles I have read have informed me so much about what is going on in the world, economy, and market. For my WSJ post this week, I read an article called “Cooling for AI is a Hot Stock Market Trade—for Now,” which is about how AI is literally “hot.” It then begins to talk about the effects that AI is having on the world and how it is actually hot and creating heat. AI chips are actually extremely hot and disperse hot air into the atmosphere. A solution that fixes this is liquid cooling. Liquid cooling absorbs heat by putting the coolant liquid into the pipes that act as servers. The reason behind using liquid is that it transfers the heat very quickly and allows data centers to condense the servers to be closer, making it more efficient. Liquid cooling is booming, and the two companies discussed in the article are doing extremely well and are predicted to do even better in 2026. Reading these articles has already helped me be more informed about what is happening in the world, and I am very interested to see what other topics I will read and learn about!

Before completing the first internship class, I was confused about the purpose of the class and what I would be doing. Shortly into the class, I realized how important this class is in helping prepare for our internship and future internships. We went over how different working in Italy is compared to the US and the cultural differences. We have already learned so much about the do’s and don’ts in an office setting that I would not have known without this class. Then, we discussed how they would help us use this internship in the future. They will coach us and help prepare us for future interviews and how we should spin and present our internship in Milan. This is something that we will be asked and want to be asked about in interviews, and we want to make sure that we have it on our resume and explained properly and be able to talk about what we did and how we got out of it. Being able to work in another country is a very impressive skill. It can show how adoptable, flexible, and easy to work with you are, which are admirable traits when considering hiring someone. This class will help mentor us on how to do that and help us be as prepared as possible for our internship and the future.

After completing the first week of my internship, I feel I am learning a lot and really like the company and people. This week, there were two trade shows my boss’ boss, Mauro, went to, and like I said in my blog last week, Jen and I made the Excel schedules for him to use during them. I thought it was very interesting how trustworthy they are of our work as that schedule is a very important aspect of the trade show. If done incorrectly, that can affect the clients you are meeting with and completely throw off this event for them. My boss Kamal told us that the summer is their more relaxed time of the year, and they don’t have as many trade shows in the summer. It is more of a period for the organization and for them to see what changes and goals they want to set going forward. Fall, winter, and spring are their busy seasons, and they have 2-3 trade shows a week rather than 1-2 every two months in the summer. The rest of the week, we made a PowerPoint to gather the statistics of Gen USA’s progress over April and May to see what changes need to be made and how to improve the company.

This weekend, I went on another Group trip planned through IES, but for just Lehigh students. We went hiking in the Swiss Alps and also did an obstacle course. For this trip, I woke up at 4:45 and it was an extremely brutal wake up. As soon as I got on the bus, I immediately fell asleep and woke up when we were almost at the cabin and obstacle course by the windy, steep roads going up the mountain. I would definitely say that the obstacle course was my favorite part of the trip. I was really nervous about it at first because I didn’t think I would be good at clipping myself in and setting up the clips for me to zip line and be properly secured on the course, but it was actually pretty easy. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my phone on the course so I don’t have any photos of it, but it consisted of zip lines, tight ropes, tires, and wooden logs you would have to walk on to get across. After that, we drove 20 minutes to go on a hike up the mountain. I was so surprised by how cold and snowy it was because when we were at the cabin, it was so warm. The snow made it difficult to hike, and we ended up not being able to finish the hike because it got too dangerous. We turned around and walked back down and went to the restaurant right by the mountain. We all got a snack and some gelato at the restaurant and were all recharged for our ride home. This was a great experience, and I loved seeing the beautiful view of the mountains.