For me, a crucial part of finding happiness is exploring new countries and cultures from all over the world. However, I cannot deny that to the end of my trips I’m always looking forward to coming home, which I’m thankful for.

It has been almost the same feeling when re-joining GDF by end of 2020. During my internship at GDF last summer, I was not only able to learn many great things and got to know great colleagues from all over the world, I also got accepted for my master studies in International Information Systems at University Erlangen-Nuremberg. 

Let’s travel back in time. When I started my GDF journey in April 2020, I was an intern with little to no experience in IT. Nevertheless, right from the start I got meaningful tasks like a Product Ownership or designing our Sketch Wireframe Library. You now might wonder yourself how such tasks can be fulfilled in an appropriate manner without having a practical background in these areas and I will answer that for you.  

Although I would consider myself having a solution-driven approach paired with an ability to go deep into the essence of complex problems, this would have never been possible without my supportive team. Taking into account that I started during the first lockdown I’m really happy that everything went this well. From day one I had the chance to meet all my colleagues in one-to-one coffee chats which was great. This combined with a culture where employees are given the time to absolve several trainings during working hours made up the perfect growing soil for myself. 

Now, almost a year later my days are filled with UX/UI and computer science stuff. I learned to make screen designs with Sketch, build prototypes with InVision, write programs in C, Python, Flask and JavaScript and how to conduct and analyze UX research. Besides these hard skills I could strengthen my soft skills as well. Presenting in front of more than 80 Allianz experts from all over the world? No problem - let’s do this! Considering where I left off, I have to admit that I’m really proud being where I am today.

Since I’m almost finished with my first semester at FAU I can only underline the things I just said. As of now, I already could benefit from my knowledge gained GDF. For example, when taking the course User Experience in a Business Context, most UX methods were not new to me, as they are applied by our great UX researchers at GDF as well. 

But this shouldn’t be a one-sided relationship. As I’m currently on a journey, where I’m exploring all different aspects of Information Systems, I hope that I can apply my knowledge from university very soon as well. 

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