Considering it is a time between the end of
all my finals and the start of my beautiful vacation, I wanted to take the time
to do little self-reflections on what I have done during the past few months.
Although grades have not been posted yet, I’d like to say something about what
I thought I did well and what I thought I could make improvements for the next
semester.
For a starter, I think that I did a good
job at time managing. It is a very important skill, especially when you are a
graduate student. Penn has a reputation for hosting various events and
activities for both undergrads and grads, and you are not so good at time
managing, you might probably get occupied with all the parties,
social-gathering while leaving no time for your study. And that’s a no-no for
grad study at GSE because no matter what program you are in, you probably will
have tons of readings, assignments, papers to work on. But that does not mean
you have to sacrifice your leisure time. In this respect, I was really glad
that I was able to juggle the assignments, assistantship, and other campus or
non-campus events. On one hand, life became too dull if you’d be stuck at dorm
doing school works all day long; on the other hand, too much commitment to events,
parties or any non-academic work might make the whole grad study meaningless.
Therefore, find a balance, make a good plan for both of your work and play is
my suggestion, and I felt pretty good when I got all my papers or assignments
done in a timely manner, without any rush or pulling all-nighters while at the
same time, tried to be involved in any activities or events that I was
interested in.
Also, about my graduate assistantship, I
really enjoyed working as a part of GSE admission office. If it counts as a
job, then it is the very first job that I ever had in US, and I felt so honored
and glad that I could be awarded this as part of my admission package. The work
was not hard, but it still took time and my heart to doing it. For example, the
first time I took a prospective student out for a campus tour, I spent 45
minutes looking at our campus tour notes, trying to remember the things that
were worth mentioning. (Because Penn campus is not small. Except for a couple
of regular places that I would go to, other buildings did not seem very
familiar to me. And I would spend time remembering the services, facilities
they provide in order to give students a better idea of what Penn has to
offer.) That is to say that every person working at GSE admission office is
really committed to what they are doing, and they are striving to provide
students with assistance as best as they can. So for this assistantship, I’d
also like to give everyone and myself a round of applause, and I will
definitely work as hard, and even harder next semester.
What I think I could improve is that
perhaps I can be more expressive in class. The frequency of me saying anything
in-class was less than I expected. As an international student, it might be a
common thing—not speaking up in fron of the class. As I tried to overcome this bad
“habit”, I felt that sometimes I was still remain silent, not because I didn’t
have anything in my brain, but because I just didn’t want to say it. (That’s
weird) So I will be working on it and trying to be more open about what I have
to say and stop being hesitant about speaking it out. It is a good opportunity
for international students to get rid of their fear of speaking English and
help them restore confidence.
I guess this is my way to say goodbye to my
fall semester. And if you’d like to take a pry at what I am going to do for the
winter break, I will be updating my blogs, just like usual, and the contents
are all travel-related, if you’re interested in reading them.
Thanks for reading my blogs for the past
few months. Hope that you can continue reading them during the winter break and
spring semester.
Have a nice weekend and holiday!
