ASEE @ Vancouver

American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference and Exposition at Vancouver, Canada--This is the first real official academic conference I attended where I have to do a presentation in the prestigious ERM (Educational Research and Methods) division about our paper.  

I made a plan to blog about the conference during my stay at Vancouver, but got too busy about cleaning some data, preparing for the presentation, and too lazy while enjoying the delicious food, beautiful scenery, hanging out with friends, and wondering around the exhibition hall. Also, I didn't have free internet at the conference center. Although I didn't attend too many sessions besides our own, the main plenary, and the best of computer in education division (which we feel are not the best), I still learned something and realize something:

1. Probably 80% of people don't know or don't want to know how to make a good presentation, and I am very lucky to be with an adviser who has extremely high standard about presentation skills. First, I have to be clear about what I am going to tell the audience and confident about why this is important. Second, make the slides in a clear and nice looking way that could guide the audience through the process, and impress them by the beautiful graphs and effect. Third, be polite, enthusiastic, confident, professional, don't be offensive, and remember to smile.  Last, and most important for me now, I have to improve my oral English, learn to choose the appropriate wording and tone while speaking, and find a more natural way of smiling and gesturing. 

2. There are lots of topics in engineering education, but most of the presentation topics are not attractive to me at all. I decided to direct more effort towards social media and collective intelligence. We met a director from Pearson, and he has a very cool personality. He takes a different photo everyday and posts the photo online. He is definitely a fan of social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. I saw a project started by some Standford students called Piazza at the exhibition hall, and I got to know about Amazon Mechanical Turk. Then I saw some news about Google +, and today I saw an IEEE spectrum titled Super Socialize Me: Google, Facebook, and the Struggle for the future of the web. I feel I am at the entrance of a promising and interesting field, and I have to figure how to get in.

3. If I want to be a professor in the future, I have to teach, being an engineering education major, I have to teach engineering, in order to teach engineering in a higher education institute, I at least have to have an master degree in engineering. So I have to stick to this plan, and start to do something starting from the NCN summer school.

These are the three major things, and there are lots of other things about Vancouver to say--among them--I definitely miss the food and fresh taro bubble tea there ~   

Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Being grow up as a Chinese, I was so attracted to the western ways of raising children. I always felt I had no freedom, and I didn't know what I love to do. All I thought is to excel in examinations. Now in retrospect, I realize that what I was complaining is the Chinese school system not the Chinese parenting style. Compared with Amy Chua, now I would complain my parents weren't so strict on me, especially about piano. I was such a lazy piano student and my parents didn't push at all. They care about the school scores more than piano. I had interest in piano at the very beginning, and I was me who said I wanted to take piano lesson, but after a while, I soon get bored (this also has to do with the boring teaching method of the teacher, but we have no way to get a good teacher at that time, also it's not custom to question teachers in China as Amy mentioned). Now my piano is all covered with dust. I guess this also has to do with the Chinese school system. It really doesn't allow that much time to practice. I went to school at 5:30am and came back at 10pm during high school and still had endless homework to do. While Amy's children are educated in the US, so their school system allow more time to practice, their parents have more money to get them good teachers, and more flexible time to accompany them for their music lessons.

I was always thinking that if I had children in the future, I will let them choose to do what they love to do, but now, I kind of feel that it's dangerous to totally abandon the chinese parenting tradition. I won't do such extremely as Amy did, but I do agree that practice makes perfect. We need to drill the hard part to master it, and to achieve success, and to be happy, and then want to do it more.

There is a book called 'Making Learning Whole' by David Perkins, which has a chapter about working on the hard part. I really like that, and think it proposes the same thing as Amy did. I will definitely push my children in the future to drill on the hard part. I hope I can do it too. I feel I've abandoned too much hard-working tradition since I came to the US. Freedom is really attractive but dangerous sometimes.



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Review: The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I saw some negative reviews among the dominantly positive reviews towards the paper book. I actually watched the video of the talk, so my experience was very positive. What impressed me wasn't his strong mind towards the cancer, but his childlike heart towards his dreams. Sometimes I will feel scary about growing up; The adult world is so complicated, and you have to compromise with so many things including your dreams. I am not saying that we absolutely necessarily have to stick to our childhood dreams, because some of them might be a bit ridiculous and selfish, for example, one of mine was to become the greatest leader of the world, which I assumed should be the chairman of the United Nations. This dream was kind of selfish, because I was just thinking being a chairman is great, not thinking about that position is to serve the humankind; Probably I was in the egocentric period of development. So what I am saying here is to always look at this world like a child, in a positive attitude. Be kind, nice, pure,warmhearted, but not dumb. Be frank and sincere, and work hard to fulfill your dreams at whatever period, don't easily get frustrated and give up.



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Got My New Car, Began My New Life in America

 

     I got my new car 4 days ago, not showing up here, because basically nobody reads this blog since Hong went back to China, just for memorizing the first car forever in my life. It's a white Focus 2012. 

     I also got my new Mac from my adviser two weeks ago. I am using amazingly brand new things in my life and I hope I could achieve some amazingly new accomplishment in my life too, especially academically. I really have to work hard. I am preparing for the presentation for the conference in Vancouver next week, and I am writing some proposal to do a research project, hopefully, this will be going well. I have to resume my web programming study and my virtual organization project.

    

     I didn't feel very well yesterday, because I didn't feel very well physically, so I didn't work, and then I felt many other people are working harder than me, and many other people are happier than me, because they have family, and they cook very good food, but I am all alone, and have no good food to eat, or somebody doesn't agree that my food is delicious, I only have one fan of my food, that is my dear roommate Christen. I have this weird relationship with my Mr. Romantic Fantasy, which I don't know where to go and how to deal with. 

     Then I came back home, and read Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational". He says that human beings do not make decisions based on absolute values, all decisions are based on comparisons. Much of my unhappiness also comes from comparison. I am always so greedy. There are always people that are better than me who will make me unhappy. There will never be an end. For example, if I got a new car, I should feel happier than people who drive used cars, but NOT. Because I feel they are more diligent and save more money than me. They work hard, and they buy their car themselves, but I am a spoiled kid using my parents' money...sigh. 

    Now I think I should not compare so much, I am still young, why I keep comparing with people who are 4-6 years older than me, and think they have more experience, they work harder, they have family, and they are happy, but I am not? Even they can swim and I cannot, and they do exercise, and I am lazy, and fat. I will have all those 5 years later, and I have higher starting point than them. It is also because of this higher starting point, I think I have skipped too much experience, which makes me unhappy, but then when I compare with younger kids who start even higher than me, and think they start so early, and this also makes me unhappy, what's wrong with me? It feels so weird being in the middle. However, there is never the highest, and there is always middle. I guess I shouldn't care about everything, every trivial thing, the only thing is worth compare is academic achievement, all other things are nothing (神马都是浮云). Others are just a little bit sugar in life, and maybe make life more relax, but I can live without sugar, and I can still be happy, and be away from diabetes. Hard working is the only thing that will make me happier at this moment, so I should go for it!  

Coming Back to Work

It has been a long time I haven't written anything here. Last semester was a busy and a bit "ridiculous" (irrational) semester somehow. Then I went back to China and then I came back and went to New Orleans for vacation. Now I missed the life of eating delicious food everyday, watching speed-dating TV shows with my parents, going out with friends, listening to Jazz in New Orleans, living in a "free" luxurious hotel, etc. I was too spoiled for this month, and now I've come back, I feel kind of empty. I shouldn't make myself so spoiled and forget about working and studying. One thing was lucky that I finally finished reading Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother on the planes and at the airports. This book makes me feel very guilty about not working hard. Another good thing is I am really relaxed and refreshed now. At least my brain, if not my body because of all these travelling.

Now I've come back. I have to gradually phase into my working status, and not do too many "ridiculous" things anymore. I just have to be patient. To read, write, and listen. It will be my day someday :)