Name: Vinty (Liwen) Guo
Class Year: 2020
Major: Computer Science and Math
Hometown: Guangzhou, China

Internship Organization: LITS at BMC
Job Title: Digital Technology Intern
Location: Canaday Library

What’s happening at your internship?

My internship job involves an indigenous language revitalization project and my part of the job is to help customize the views of its language learning Drupal website, debug the PHP codes used in the website, and analyze the language text data in R in order to visualize the patterns/trends of the data. So, basically, I’m on the technical support side to move this project forward. And obviously, most of my work is done on a computer.

Why did you apply for this internship?

I heard about this internship from an upperclass student who was in the same position as I am right now in the previous year and I got curious. Therefore, I collected some information about the LITS internship program and realized that LITS interns usually receive tasks from alumni, faculty, and staff members within the Tri-Co. And, they often engage in clients’ projects, helping their “clients” move the project forward by applying what they have learned at school to the workplace. I was intrigued by the idea of a group of people helping the clients in need with the projects that they value and have put so much effort in.

What has been your favorite part of this internship?

My favorite part of this internship has always been the interaction with my colleagues, clients, advisors and my supervisors who have been kindly trying their best to help me. For the project that we interns have been working on, communication involving scholars and technicians across the country plays an important role throughout the entire process. We have weekly check-in meetings, teleconference with our technician based in California and client based in New York City, and have taken several trips to Swarthmore College to meet with a linguistics professor for his expertise in analyzing language. This diverse working environment has been motivating and keeping me excited about my work.

What is most rewarding about your internship?

The most rewarding part about my internship is that my client, a linguistics scholar, is satisfied with and excited about the result of our work. This gives me the feeling that what we have done and what we are doing right now is important and meaningful to some people, and they will use the tool that we engaged in building for educational purposes. When our client said that he had been waiting for this moment for almost 20 years, it feels extremely rewarding.