How is your first days this week?

How are you? How are you doing in the first days this week?

Today is the 150th day that I am in the US. I got an A on my 4th lesson last Monday and started my 5th course Organizational Behavior Wednesday, passed the first examination this Monday.

My current feeling about the study life in the US has gotten better and better. It has become a wonderful experience with much hard work and a lot of enjoyment. It does not only offer me something new every day, it is also helping me to see my own weakness and to improve within the self-examination and self-adjusting.

Just in the short 7 days since I started the new lesson, I have had 3 new feelings.

First of all, I realized that I had made a mistake to judge the gander of the professors via their names or email addresses in the course list, so that I was so surprised and could not help smiling when I met the beautiful female professor Dr. Elizabeth Rozell in the classroom first time. I have not defined my error according to the management theory yet, but, I have gotten a good lesson that I should be careful when I judge who are who in my management work.

Then the second time I was surprised in the first lesson by Dr. Elizabeth Rozell. It was the first time that I knew how the successful managers distribute their time. Wow! Can you imagine? They use 48% of their time on the networking, 28% on the communication, 13% on the traditional management and 11% on the human resource management. The effective managers only use 11% of their time on networking, 44% on the communication, 19% on the traditional management and 26% on the human resource management.

Just at that time, when I saw the beautiful time distribution diagrams in the class, I realized that maybe the biggest weakness of mine as a manager is that I did not like to attend social activities and felt a burden to attend work meals, work parties or some celebration activities, so that my current boss said that it would be a honor to have Shirley in a work meal and my former boss made a joke that I was the one who always wanted to keep a distance from him. Then, I thought that was a good style to keep my unique personality to work among male managers. Now, I have just known that is a weak point as a manager. So, since the networking is a so important aspect of management, I should really work on it in my coming career.

So, I have written to my bosses in China, to report my new feelings. Meanwhile, I have also started to adjust myself in the US. I have been to a church to meet the sisters and thanked them for they wanted to help me on my math as a volunteer before Christmas. I have attended a girl classmate's birthday dinner with bless to and a birthday cake. I have also written to Mr./Ms. Yan, that Association of Chinese Students & Scholars pointed to apply to be a tutor/volunteer in the writing center. I would really like to help the people who want to write in Chinese with my own specialty. I have not gotten an answer yet, I am happy for I have started my first step to adjust myself.

The third and biggest changing is that I have adjusted my studying way from induction method to be deductive method. The examination on Monday made me realize that I should not use the induction method to learn my new lesson as I had done on the Financial Management lesson in the Christmas Holiday. At that time, my time allowed me to read the textbooks at the first, then to summarize what I had read according to the handout of the professor. Right now, I had to attend the first examination after 5 days learning, include weekend. I still used the old style to read the 135 pages of text book at the first, then the 110 handouts, then, attended the lessons. Even though I went to sleep at 2:00 am or 3:00 am, worked on the weekend, I still felt time was too tight. Why? I had read the textbook too much -- I had dropped into the details and read every word. I had spent too much time on the English language itself, checked every new word and their pronunciation so that I did not have time to focus on the knowledge points that the professor had pointed out in her lesson, I also neglected something important in the handouts.

So, I started to change my way to study from the induction to the deductive method as soon as I realized. Now I preview the handouts before attending the lesson, read the text book according to the handout and the lesson. If I have time, I read every word in the textbook, if I have no time, I read electively. Also, I am trying to jump over the modifiers and just catch the main points.

When I was working this way, I was also thinking that maybe a good training to help me to catch the main points in my actual management jobs.

So, I have found that my time is getting effective much more. Now, I can follow the professor in the lesson, to smile or to laugh for some funny examples, write down my notes and answer professor's questions. Ha, this morning, my speaking about Chinese dialect areas and different Chinese dialects in the classroom got much applause.

I did not think that the studying in the US is easy at all. But, I really have found much fun indeed. I am confident to complete my studies in time. I am trying to do my best to meet my short-term goal -- to complete the jobs for 1.5 years or 2 years for the others within my 1 year in the US.

How do you think of my new feelings? Do you think that a student life oversea is an enjoyment or a suffering?
I am just a learner on art of painting, music, English and Chinese language, to work on the web site in my free time. I would really like to do a few things with what I have learned to make this little web site to be an Electronic Bridge of Culture Exchange, Chinese Language Learning & Friendship making. To help the others while to improve myself.

I will appreciate your understanding, directions, supports and hope to get your friendly direction and help.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, you are welcome to write to shirley@ebridge.cn or Yiping007@MissouriState.edu, or to publish your opinions in the forum.

Shirley Yiping Zhang
Wed, Feb 25, 2009 From USA