Three Realizations Today

Today is a very productive day. I go to an advisor to talk about my confusions and struggles during the past one year, and I fortunately received plenty of helpful advises on what I am going to do and how to do it better. During the dinner, I talked an honor student who is also my friend about her take on having an intern during the summer. At night, I watched Zilong’s speeches again and find some more inspirations.

First, I met my advisor Lindsay in the morning to talk about my last year experiences and thoughts. I complained to her about my experience as a transfer student from a totally different education system and at a bad timing. I missed many opportunities simply because I was unaware of them or they had already expired. Frustrated was I, she told me that anything can be related to leadership and flexibility from a leadership position or study abroad experience will serve as strong bullet points on the resume. More importantly, she asked me to think about what I can do for the company but not what the company can do for me if I am employed. This idea is crucial because it provokes me to think where my values are and how much they are worth being paid for. The same idea also applied to application for a graduate school—what can you do for your school?

Second, language skill is critical, but not as critical as I thought. I used to be convinced that sound language skill is the bottom line to joining the workforce. This is true because the largest part of work is communication. But at the same time, international students shouldn’t be intimidated by this because sometimes your language skill my not be sound, but sound enough to take on the responsibility of a job. She told me during her intern at the Limited Brand, there are some international employees that are not speaking very fluent English. And this did not prevent them from working efficiently and productively.

Third, Zilong is always the source of inspirations and my role model. I cannot imagine a people like him spent just one year here in United States who can speak this high level English, but I do believe I can get to this level if I spend two years, three years or even four years. In addition, His deep understanding of Asian philosophy as well as Western philosophy has helped him to think and act like an extraordinary people. I know this cannot be gained within a short period of time, but I do believe under his inspiration, I am at least on the right track and will be there in the near future.