The Outstanding HUST Bachelor: Excellent at Programming, Active in Extracurriculars 

The graduation ceremony at Hanoi University of Science and Technology is always an emotionally filled space, honoring the persistent efforts rewarded with prestigious bachelor's/engineer's degrees. Among the thousands of new graduates this year, Le Xuan Phuc emerged as a standout name, being 1 of the 4 most outstanding graduates of the entire cohort and receiving a Certificate of Merit from the University.

Looking at the radiant, confident young man on the podium of honor, few would know that he began his university years with the shyness of a math-specialized student from the land of Lam Son, Thanh Hoa. With a GPA of 3.65/4.0 and a training score of 96/100, Phuc has shown that Hanoi University of Science and Technology is indeed the place that nurtures well-rounded personalities.

Stepping Out of the "Shell"

Looking back at his high school years, the student Le Xuan Phuc was early on captivated by the beauty of Mathematics and numbers. To Phuc, all things and phenomena in life operate on a foundational logic, and Mathematics is the key to decoding them.
  That passion led him to programming, where data structures and Pascal or C++ commands became tools to simulate the world. Choosing the School of Information and Communication Technology at Hanoi University of Science and Technology was a matter of course, as it is a convergence of like-minded friends and the high-quality engineering training environment that Phuc had always dreamed of.

However, on his first days stepping foot in the capital, Phuc faced a major barrier: his own shyness. Confronting the vast campus and the academic pace at HUST, the math-specialized freshman felt the need to break out of his safety shell. That determination to change brought Phuc to the Youth Union, the Student Association of the School of Information and Communication Technology, and other student support organizations. This was the turning point that helped Phuc find the joy of youth as he personally designed media publications, wrote articles, and organized large events. Extracurricular activities became vibrant patches of color, helping him shed the image of a "bookworm."

This proactive participation brought Phuc a training score of 96/100 - a special score for a senior busy with graduation projects and internships. Phuc shared that his secret to maintaining enthusiasm is considering movement activities as a way to relieve stress after intense academic hours.

This process helped the young man from Thanh Hoa mature, know how to defend his personal viewpoints, and communicate more effectively. The title of "Student of 5 Merits" at the City level for two consecutive years (2022 - 2023 and 2023 - 2024) demonstrates his remarkable growth in morality, physical fitness, and volunteer spirit.

A Fulcrum from Teachers and Like-minded Friends
  Studying at HUST has never been easy, even for someone with good logical thinking like Phuc. There were periods, especially at the beginning of his sophomore year, when Phuc fell into a state of imbalance due to spending too much time on extracurricular activities. Or at the beginning of his junior year, a feeling of being lost struck when he had to face tough specialized modules.
In those moments, the HUST environment demonstrated the magical power of connection through the network of senior students and friends.

Phuc recalls that the guidance from seniors in the Youth Union/Student Association helped him create an effective study plan to overcome general courses. When entering "hard-to-chew" courses like "Introduction to Machine Learning" or "Data Structures and Algorithms," it was his like-minded friends who spent countless hours with Phuc in the library to resolve every line of code.

In the Project II module, Phuc took on the role of gathering the team and assigning tasks to build a semantic search system for Vietnamese newspaper headlines. The most memorable mark was when the team had to compare up to 6 different natural language retrieval methods such as TF-IDF, Word2Vec, or SBERT. There were major challenges that seemed insurmountable, but through joint efforts and time spent thinking thoroughly together, the solution appeared unexpectedly.

The teachers at the School of Information and Communication Technology left a deep impression on the young man from Thanh Hoa. Phuc always cherishes the orientations and solid knowledge foundation imparted by his teachers. To Phuc, each teacher brings a unique "color shade," contributing to molding the professional, disciplined working style of an engineer. The dedicated instruction in difficult assignments on system security, integrating Spring Security, or JWT equipped Phuc with the bravery to face practical problems later on.

The very resonance between the dedication of the teachers and the support of friends helped Phuc maintain his form to achieve academic encouragement scholarships during crucial semesters.

Reaching Far with the Identity of a "HUSTer"    
  Not stopping at the numbers on his transcript, Le Xuan Phuc always aspires to put knowledge into practice. A personal project named "QM Bookstore" is a prime example of that spirit. Stemming from the practical needs of the digital transformation trend, Phuc personally built a massive stationery management and sales system. He applied a series of modern technologies such as Spring Boot, ReactJS, PostgreSQL, and packaged it using Docker Compose.

The system not only features basic sales functions but also integrates VietQR payments, inventory management, and even real-time chat capabilities via WebSocket. This is the result of a persistent self-study process and meticulousness in every operational step.

Phuc's practical experience was also expanded through internships at large tech enterprises. At ELCOM, Phuc participated in a remote sensing image analysis project for monitoring forest fires and illegal construction. Getting acquainted with Git Flow for version control in a large team taught him a lesson in professional collaboration.

Following that, at A-Star Group, Phuc ventured into the completely new field of Blockchain and Smart Contracts. He participated in implementing on-chain fee collection logic using ERC-20 tokens and decentralized mechanisms to process payments. Even if his personal orientation changes later, the knowledge of these new technologies remains valuable baggage.

An important weapon helping Phuc be confident when working in an international environment is his excellent foreign language proficiency. With a TOEIC score of 935, Phuc can deeply comprehend technical documents without relying on translation tools, which still have many limitations.

He also quickly completed the Google Data Analytics course to supplement his data analysis thinking. Phuc believes that "Every encounter is a lesson; every experience of success or failure is an experience." This quote sums up his entire eventful but extremely brilliant university time.
  Now, as the graduation ceremony closes amidst applause and bright lights, what lingers with Le Xuan Phuc is his youthful university years.

HUST gave Phuc the knowledge to enter the tech world, taught him how to stand firm under pressure, how to find teammates during difficult days, and how to maintain his enthusiasm amidst the whirlwind of youth. The most beautiful thing Phuc carries with him is the memory of a period in life where he lived fully, studied hard, and matured day by day in the arms of his teachers and friends.

And like so many young people who have passed through the Parabol gate, Le Xuan Phuc will continue his journey to new "vast seas". The spirit of a "HUSTer": Responsibility - Creativity - Integrity - Excellence, will always be his baggage on every road ahead.