Having excellently won Global Korea Scholarship (GKS) Embassy Track and passed entrance to the top universities in South Korea, Tran Thi Thuy Trinh, a young female teaching assistant from the Viet Nam - Korea University of Information and Communication Technology (VKU), a member school of the University of Da Nang, said her intention is to return to VKU after completing her studies in a bid to impart knowledge and experience to her students.

Da Nang young female teaching assistant Tran Thi Thuy Trinh wins GKS Scholarship Embassy Track. Photo: T.L

Trinh was born and raised in the sandy area of Gio Quang Commune, Gio Linh District, the central province of Quang Tri. At the age of 16, she was preparing to enter the 10th grade when Trinh's mother died of a serious illness, leaving behind her husbands and children. Financial challenges got more worse when Trinh's older brother went to Da Nang for his tertiary course.

"Feeling sorry for my father’s hard work, I always motivate myself to try harder, both to be able to support him and to study well for a stable career in the future,”, Trinh said.

In 2018, Trinh was enrolled into VKU, becoming a new student majoring in Business Administration, Faculty of Digital Economy and E-commerce. Actually, Trinh's journey to university was not easy. Therefore, Trinh tried her best to study well, looking for opportunities to hunt for scholarships to cover living and accommodation expenses.

Overcoming many difficulties, Trinh always achieved typical achievements and continuously received certificates of merit from VKU. At the same time, she won scholarships through 4-year university course.

Not only that, Trinh also participated in scientific research and won many remarkable prizes among which were her berth in the top 10 of the contest ‘Incubating creative ideas for startups PISI 2018’ and the first prize in ETC English Student Contest 2019.

Most impressive in Trinh's research activities was the idea of building a sale point for pepper grown in her homeland Quang Tri. This idea won the second prize in the GBA Business Challenge Student Contest with Start-up Ideas 2020.

“I noticed that in Quang Tri, farmers grow a lot of pepper. However, each harvest season, their products are often undercharged by traders. That is very disadvantageous fact for farmers. From there, I came up with the idea of building an online sales address so that farmers can sell pepper directly to consumers who need it at a higher price and more proactively," Trinh shared.

In 2022, Trinh graduated from university with a full-time academic record of 3.88/4.0 and was started her new position as a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Digital Economy and E-commerce. With her unremitting efforts, Trinh excellently became one of the 28 Vietnamese candidates to win the KGS to join courses for master’s degrees.

Also, she passed entrances to the top universities in South Korea. Trinh said, the KGS Scholarship is one of the extremely rigorous candidate selection scholarships. The scholarship is one of the most prestigious scholarships in the world and lets you study in South Korea for free. But, unlike other scholarships, the process to apply for the GKS Scholarship is a bit different, for there are two ways to apply: Embassy Track vs University Track.

Introduced by the Korean Embassy in Viet Nam and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), Trinh boldly applied for the scholarship and then lucky smiled on her thanks to her careful preparations for enhancing professional knowledge and learning more about South Korean culture.

Trinh said: “Under my plans, after completing my master's course in South Korea, if it is favourable, I will seek a scholarship for a doctoral degree, then return to VKU to continue my teaching career. It is my dream to be a teacher standing on the podium. I will choose to return to VKU because my teachers and friends at this university have facilitated and supported me a lot during my 4 years of university. Without their support, I probably wouldn't have finished my studies as I am now. I want to come back here to inspire my potential students as a gratitude that teachers and friends have given me.”

Reporting by THIEN LAM - Translating by A.THU