Internship or in Bahasa, Kerja Praktek (KP), was one of the compulsory subjects which purpose is to acquint students with the real dynamics of worklife. Although some students search for an internship opportunity near their hometown, different ideas arose in some others. For them, this internship was a way to pursue a priceless experience to work in a new surrounding atmosphere, such as going abroad. Ayu Andriaty (Urban and Regional Planning 2010), Vienda Fadilla Fahmy (Electrical Engineering 2010), Nathaniel Chandra Harjanto (Phyical Engineering 2010), and Tubagus Andhika Nugraha (Informatical Engineering 2010) were some of the students who were lucky to gain an enourmous chance to join an internship program abroad.

Starting with a post in her student body's mail-list, Ayu Andriaty bid for her chance to sent an application for student internship program at University of Tokyo (Tokyo Daigaku, TODAI). Together with one of her friends, Silvania Dwi Utami (Planologi 2010), Ayu was sucessfully nailed the selection process and land on the internship position. Now, she had learnt to work in one of TODAI's resarch laboratory and there she met many professional working peers who had higher academic background, such as Masters and PhDs. She admitted that this was by far the most amazing experience, because not only did she learn a lot of things about social science academic research, she also learned a new knowledge about Japanese heritage and its academic culture. "Here, everyone works so seriously but in other time they also throw  a late-night party. The point is everyone here makes the most of everything in their life," said Ayu.

Different story came from Vienda Fadilla Fahmy and Tubagus Andhika Nugraha. These two students were among six students across Indonesia who had joined the Intern to Mach (Microsoft Academy for College Hire) program. MACH was a program dedicated to senior-year college students who's given the chance to work in Microsoft. While Intern to MACH was an acceleration program, dedicated to prepare sophomore students to be able to join Microsoft company in the future. If their evaluation during the intern program was good, they can have the chance to work in Microsoft full-time. In this 12-weeks program, students were assigned to one project in Indonesia, and they also receive a training in Singapore. They also joined a marketing competition and a meet-up with ASEAN internship students.

Like Ayu, Vienda and Andhika were also feel the difference in the working atmosphere. "Microsoft has a great values. Furthermore, it is one of the best company in terms of working environment," said Vienda. having the same experience, Andhika recounted that his workstation was full with many supporting facilities to boost his productivity. "The office was really cozy. Our workstation was surrounded by boards of glass to help us work with our projects," said Andhika.

Besides those 3 students, Nathaniel Chandra Harjanto who usually called Nathan was also get a priceless experience. He was on of the few selected students that won the chance to feel the worklife in Conseil European pour la Recherece Nucleaire (CERN). CERN was an international organization whose purpose to operate a physics particles laboratory. CERN was also known as the well-established European organisastion who actively done a nuclear researches. To follow Nathan's journey in CERN, check http://www.itb.ac.id/news/3974.xhtml.

These four students has proven that Indonesian students were able to thrieve abroad. They showed that the opportunity was always there and is waiting for us to grasp it. When asked on their secret, most of them answered that only counted on GPA is never been enough. There are a minimum standard of GPA buat it doesn't mean that the highest GPA had the highest advantage in making through the selection process. Another important thing is to have an experience, roles in organizations and other supporting skills like language and interpersonal skills.