UC Bearcat - Weijie Li

                 Before writing my reflection on this unusual third year of university, I would like to summarize the level of accomplishment of the four goals that I set for myself this year during the summer vacation last year. Number one is reading four books in two different categories, which I finished. Second, the rate of return in the stock reaches 10%, which is unfinished. Third, lose 5kg through exercise, which I finished. Fourth, get a summer internship job, which is incomplete. The third year of my university is like the completion of my goals in the past year, which is a mixed blessing.

 

Due to the global pandemic, the work and study last year were all remote work, and the impact on me was also pros and cons. Good aspects such as my academics, I can make a study plan for myself more flexible and adapt to the rhythm of online study. Or I have more time to spend on a part-time job on campus. At the same time, the pandemic also allowed me to go to some sparsely populated places to experience the beauty of nature. The disadvantage is that the lack of opportunities for close contact with people has aggravated my mental illness of social phobia. It has also reduced my experience of participating in or organizing campus activities. More importantly, our dependence on mobile phones at home and the chaotic information impact from the internet prevent us from accumulating our own life experiences with full concentration. It also makes us continue to experience the violence of the time.

 

 

                   In the past school year, the online class mode lacked some fun experience compared to the classroom mode. But for me as an international student, online classes have provided me with an effective solution to a problem that sometimes cannot keep up with the Professor's class rhythm due to language reasons. Since my native language is not English, Sometimes in the classroom, it's easy for me to miss some teaching content because the Professor's speech speed is too fast. However, online classes are different. The professors will record the class content through video so that students can view it at any time. Therefore, it also provided me with the opportunity to review and study the content of the class repeatedly. This advantage was brought to me by online courses that enabled me to master all courses' study content more efficiently and improve my GPA by 1.2 points in the past year.

 

Compared with the basic courses of my freshman and sophomore year, most of my courses in the past year are my professional courses, so the difficulty has increased a lot. And there is a class that impressed me the most was a course called econometrics. It is better to say that it is the hardest lesson I have taken in the past three years in university. This course not only has to learn a lot of complicated economics technical terms and analysis models, but also a computer language called R language. I am not very good at computers, and I heard that I would learn a computer language in this class, which makes me ready to fail the course.

 

Fortunately, at the end of the semester, not only did I pass this course, but I also got an A. More importantly, the sense of accomplishment I gained after challenging difficulties in the process of learning this course made me interested in this course. I concluded that there are two main reasons why I can pass this course smoothly and achieve an excellent result. The first is because there is a responsible professor and professor assistant to teach.

 

Prof. William's teaching method is unique and efficient. During the 50 minutes of the online class, he will spend about 15 minutes explaining a new knowledge point, and then he will divide the students into groups of 2-3 people. Students will discuss related questions for about 25 minutes, and in the last 10 minutes, we returned to the class, and Prof. William would analyze and solve the problems with us together. His teaching method effectively solves the disadvantages of students' difficulty in concentrating in online classes and helps students participate in the discussion of topics so that students have a more profound impression of the content of the class.

 

In addition, Megan, the Professor's assistant, is very enthusiastic and helpful. Each time I will spend about half an hour asking her questions the day before the assignment is submitted. She guided me patiently every time and helped me solve all my problems. Therefore, I can successfully master this course, and they bear the brunt of the credit.

 

The second reason is because of my little learning partner. Because learning computer language is also his weakness, he will come to me every week to ask me about homework problems. So whenever he comes to ask me questions, I would try to solve the problem first, and then explain it to him slowly. Of course, this process of explanation is also a process in which I am reviewing and deepening the impression of knowledge points. It is very effective for me to fully digest and absorb the learning content. Therefore, the humility of my learning partners is also an important reason why I can successfully master this course.

 

Finally, in the past year, a major decision I made in my studies was to add another major —insurance and risk management. I made this decision after careful consideration. Briefly explain why I made this decision. First, I want to add another dimension to my choice of graduate programs. I may only choose the field of economics for the graduate program if I only have Economics as my major. But after I majored in these two majors, I can choose either a graduate program related to economics, a graduate program related to insurance and risk management, or even a program related to these two interdisciplinary subjects. Second, the world is currently ushering in a new wave of population aging, so I believe that the corresponding population aging-related insurance and pension fields will burst out with a new wave of opportunities and a larger market. Therefore, studying this field helps me deepen my understanding of this area. I think my studies in the past three years have been relatively smooth sailing. Of course, part of the reason is because of my desire for knowledge and hard work, but the more important reason is that the responsible teachers help me and humble classmates and friends around me brought positive influence to me.

 

 

                  During the pandemic, in order not to let myself become a "potato" who used his mobile phone every day at home and was immersed in the internet. I organized seven trips with my girlfriend and friends, respectively go to Cumberland Gap, Chicago, Road Trip to Colorado and Utah, Red River Gorgeous, Road Trip to Arizona, Atlanta, and Los Angles. For me, traveling can heal my soul, but more importantly, it helps me put down my phone and have deeper communication with nature and friends.

 

The trip that impressed me the most was in mid-March. My girlfriend and I went to Atlanta's Chattahoochee national Forrest for a day and night camping. On the morning of the camping day, we bought ingredients for cooking. And we drove about 40 minutes from the bottom of the mountain along the rugged mountain road to the top of the mountain. The scenery along the way is magnificent, and the time we go is just at the beginning of spring, so we saw many green leaves of trees and the buds of roadside wildflowers, like spring bamboo shoots after the rain. When we arrived at the camping cabin on the top of the mountain, we saw a green forest. From the gap between the trees, we could clearly see a lake with glittering water, the scenery just like the art painting we saw in the museum.

 

And our unique and creative cabin is in front of this beautiful scene. When we walked into the cabin, a huge floor-to-ceiling window once again brought the scenery I just described, which surprised us. But what's more interesting is that we found that, unlike the cabin I lived in before, there is no sofa, TV, or wifi in this cabin. And what caught our attention was a small box on the table. After reading the note next to it, we learned that this is a small wooden box that locks the phone so that the residents have more time to enjoy nature and chat with the companions. It is precise because of this small wooden box that I deeply understand the true meaning of travel.

 

When everything is ready, it is time for my girlfriend and me to make dinner. I am in charge of setting fire and barbecue, while my girlfriend is responsible for washing vegetables and preparing ingredients. Although it took me about half an hour to successfully start the fire, but the food we cooked was delicious and even more delicious than the food I had eaten in Michelin restaurants. What impressed me was that during the barbecue. However, some of the food was severely burnt, my girlfriend still ate with relish, which broke my original understanding of her because I thought she was more picky eaters before that. She usually is not willing to try some strange and unclean food. After this experience, she has become more willing to try new things and has an adventurous spirit, which makes me admire her.

 

In the evening, we go to bed early to enjoy the peaceful moments that nature brings us. Although we didn’t talk a lot at that time, I felt that we two became one under the witness of nature, and our hearts were deeply connected with each other. In my opinion, no moment can feel happier than that moment. Accompanied by the sunshine, when I opened my eyes in the morning, I felt very warm in my heart when I looked at my beloved one. After eating breakfast, we slowly opened the book at the last moment of tranquility given by nature, making me feel I took a dip in the ocean of knowledge. Compared to taking photos in front of important scenic spots in big cities, staying away from the hustle and bustle of the city with my beloved ones, going deep into nature, and experiencing spiritual relaxation is a trip I yearn for more.

 

 

                     The third thing that made me feel more fulfilled in the past year is joining the UC International admission office and becoming a campus ambassador for UC. This experience is very meaningful to me.

 

On the one hand, I can get financial support through this job and make me feel the sense of accomplishment of financial independence. The more important aspect is that I have improved both my comprehensive personal ability and connections through half a year of exercise. This job's main content is to support the recruitment of new international students through communicating, answering questions, and providing digital content such as photos and videos intended for social media and writing blog entries. This experience has brought me the most the gain is to improve the marketing and communication capabilities.

 

At the beginning of the work, I handled most of the work content, such as writing blogs, communicating with students, and answering questions. Gradually, the work content requires us to take over Instagram, take photos and make Vlogs, which makes me feel a little strenuous. Because first of all, I don't have much experience and professional knowledge in this area. Secondly, my heart is a little bit resistant to promote myself on social media because I am a person who cares more about privacy.

 

However, after several days of repeated ideological struggles, I finally persuaded myself to engage in this aspect of work. Because first of all, I think that since this aspect is my shortcoming, then I should find a way to overcome it, not to keep myself in the comfort zone. Second, I realized that work in this area would not only allow more people to know me and expand my social circle. At the same time, showing the scene of studying in the United States as an international student in the form of vlogs can also let more international students understand the true side of UC students, and indirectly help them realize their dream of studying abroad. So this is a very meaningful job.

 

When we haven't tried anything, we may feel awe and unwilling to jump out of our comfort zone. But once we take the first step and take action, we will find that things are not as difficult as we thought, and will bring us more benefits. Therefore, always maintaining a brave heart, courage to try new things, and jumping out of my comfort zone is the most important lesson of meaning in life that I have learned through the work of the past six months.

 

 

                   In addition to the above things that made me feel very fulfilled in the past year, one of my biggest regrets last year was that I didn't spend more time and energy on organizing and participating in campus activities.

 

Due to the impact of the pandemic last year, all the courses of the students in the fall semester last year were studied online. Although some student organizations still held some online campus activities, there is not that much fun compared to in-person campus activities. Therefore, this also causes the student's participation in online activities is not active. At the same time, my student organization is an organization with Chinese international students as the main target group. Most Chinese international students have returned to China, so this also greatly dampened the enthusiasm of our organization leadership to organize campus activities.

 

Even in this case, another co-president of our organization and I organized two campus events for our members last year. The first one is an in-person event. We organized our members to the Chinese restaurant to celebrate the 2020 Chinese traditional festival-Mid-Autumn Festival. We decided to organize this event for two reasons. The first is that everyone can only study at home and participate in some online activities due to the pandemic. Therefore, many students miss participating in in-person activities very much.

 

The second is also because of this traditional Chinese festival-the meaning of the Mid-Autumn Festival is that family and friends get together to chat and enjoy the sight of the moon. Therefore, we also hope to gather everyone together without breaking the university's pandemic prevention requirements to ensure everyone's safety. Especially to help those international students who are still in the United States eliminate their feelings of loneliness and homesickness.

 

In the end, the facts can also show that our event is indeed popular. There are about 30 students who signed up. Unfortunately, due to the school's epidemic prevention requirements, we can only invite the first 15 students who signed up to participate. During the event, we made some ice-breaking games to let everyone understand the development of the Mid-Autumn Festival, and let everyone taste the special food of the Mid-Autumn Festival-moon cakes.

 

And the other event is the online Chinese New Year celebrations held in the spring semester of 2021, also called Lunar New Year celebrations. This festival is the most important festival for Chinese people, so it is also one of the festivals that my organization PandaCATs must hold every year. Unlike the lively and joyous scene of our celebration in 2019, we used some online games and gifts to attract everyone's participation this year. In the end, a total of 24 students actively participated. Although this number is far from 150 in 2019, we are still satisfied with it under this special background of the pandemic. After the event, each student not only learned some interesting knowledge about Chinese New Year, but also received a small gift with Chinese characteristics. Therefore, this event can be regarded as a smooth and successful online event.

 

Although we successfully held two campus events last year, compared with other campus organizations, we organized very few events. Therefore, as the co-chair of PandaCATS, I should reflect on it. In the semesters of this fall and next spring, I should try my best to manage my time and strive to organize more and better campus events.

 

 

                    In the past week, I have read a book called "Five kinds of Times". The author classifies all events in each person's life into five kinds of times, which are "survival time"--- most people spend most of their lives. Here, because of its own lack of ability and external conditions, it is impossible to achieve the time distribution of active selection and passive existence. "Money time" —— only work on the core competitiveness of a certain product in a unit of time, until the core value of the product is pushed far beyond the industry average. These hours are real-time to make money. "Good-looking time" --- Arrange a specific time only to do things that make you look good. "Fun time"--- We actively choose to do something to pass a period of free time at our disposal. "Mental flow time" --- is the time we choose to spend in order to get the experience of mental flow.

 

 And these times corresponded to my various event streams last year. Online course learning corresponds to survival time. Becoming an international student ambassador is money time. Fitness at home is a good-looking time. Traveling and organizing campus activities correspond to a fun time. Only the events in the mental flow time are what I lack. However, it is most important for me to have mental flow time, because the events I experience in this time can make me concentrate, not feel the passage of time, and create the most efficient extreme state.

 

In my opinion, due to the pandemic last year, we all had to study and work at home, reducing many unnecessary opportunities to go out and socialize. Logically speaking, this should help us generate more "Mental flow time" as a favorable factor. On the contrary, I did not feel the mental flow experience that any event brought to me.

 

Later, I found out that the pandemic factor did reduce our chances of going out. But because we are in the era of Internet intelligence, our smartphones and the information flow after being armed used accurate judgments to attract us. It takes away our time to deal with the flow of events and monopolizes our precious energy and attention. Therefore, we gradually lose the long-term attention needed to analyze things and events, and as a result, it is more difficult for us to feel the mental-flow experience.

 

In the era of intelligence, if we want to manage our time more efficiently and experience a rare mental-flow experience, then we first need to realize that every application on our mobile phone is competing for our time. What they want is not a click, but a part of our life. The ability to deal with, process, and close the flow of information, the ability to be aware of and apply time becomes very important. Secondly, every push of the mobile phone and the display of the lives of others impacts our existing values, shakes the path we have chosen and makes us suspicious of our own ways of living.

 

The flow of information should serve the flow of events in our lives, rather than allowing the flow of events to be swallowed by the flow of information. Finding the available time and managing our own life order without being disturbed by the flow of information and the expectations of others is real time-management. And striving to experience various events in life and reducing the number of times we pick up mobile phones is also an important direction of our continuous efforts to improve.