Zhenming

Turning to 25, time to undertake more challenges?

2009-05-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

It has been quite a few weeks after I passed my qualifying exam. After a stressful April, life resumed to normal. Several research projects now are on the way. Being energetic or being tired, I found that I can always be occupied by these projects. When I am in an enthusiastic mood, obvious tasks with high priorities like working on a math problem or writing the first draft of a paper will be tackled; however, utilizing the time when I am tired had been much less obvious until very recently. More and more work that is less demanding in brainpower needed to be done these days: there is a software specification I need to write, there are always progresses over the on-going research projects I need to trace; and there are always paper summaries I shall jot down on my notebook. Summing up all these little tasks can indeed swallow all the less-energetic time I have.

Other than the feeling of becoming busier, I think it is a good time to transit to a new life because I now passed the qualifying exam and because I am turning to 25 this year, a number that smells quite significant to me. A new life in my mind not only refers to being more focused on research, building up stronger publication track, and behaving more self-disciplined, it also means making progress towards those more “mundane” subjects like jogging more every week, saving more money every month, spending more time on those projects that have better odd leading to a real business, putting more effort on my relation with her, developing professional skills like communication skill, writing skill, and leadership skill.

Of course, transitions won’t happen overnight. What’s more important at this moment, perhaps, is to prepare myself with the mentality that all the items I mentioned above are important. And I am fully aware that altering the mentality could be challenging. But an amazing aspect of being humans is that we can always put effort to improve ourselves at any stage of the life. Acknowledging changes are needed and spending time on making the changes are meaningful.

Disastrous talk

2009-04-29T00:16:00.000-07:00

English is a lasting topic among international students; presentation is a recurring scene in academic life. When English meets presentation, my nightmare comes. Today my course project presentation was of no exception.

I thought a 20-minute presentation would not be a great deal for a student that has been wandering around university campuses for eight years. I also start to be aware that I am increasingly comfortable with using English especially since I started to teach. As a result, I was eager to show up in the classroom without even having a full rehearsal of what I was going to present in advance.

The result was disastrous. In fact, just a few seconds into the talk when I was about to cover the first item at the first slide, I strongly felt that I am going to screw the talk because the opening was already terrible. And my feeling couldn’t be truer in the rest of the talk.

In the talk, I also soon recognized that it is impossible for me to keep the presentation moving forward while being careful enough not to make serious grammar mistakes. I ended up with being able to do neither of them. The whole presentation was filled with fragmented sentences, whose meaning I don’t understand myself. The audiences in this university have usually been very patient to speakers with strong accent, but this time the students’ blank faces were making me feel more nervous and mumble more disorganized sentences. In words, the whole presentation was a real sick experience.

At the end of the day, I was actually forced to think over whether my increasing confidence on using English is based on some groundless illusions. I am still not sure about this now; nonetheless, what I am cognizant about is that rehearsal is crucial before any presentations. In fact, rehearsal shall be viewed as a part of preprocessing that is in response to my inability of dealing with English and audience simultaneously. Specifically, dealing with audience could be truly challenging; however, dealing with grammar or other language-related problems could and should have been done before the presentation.

I made a similar mistake in January this year. Probably I should not allow the same mistake happen for the 3rd time under any circumstance.

That goes too far

2009-04-27T22:48:00.000-07:00

Despite that life is quite busy these days, I have been reading Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson lately. Fresh narrations about lives in a classy middle-west town immediately intoxicate me and compel me to relate my own experience of one year of residence in Bethlehem, a town with seventy thousand populations in Pennsylvania, when I was an exchange student at Lehigh University. Albeit grad school application had swallowed most of my time and prohibited me to think and feel about the exotic, sometimes frustrating and lonely, life in this small town, I still quite miss the slow and quiet time in the town, as well as many seemly pointless conversations with my Hispanic immigrant neighbors that happened right before sunset.

Yes, I want to move back to Lehigh and live there for a few months, perhaps, after I graduate.

I looked into different master and non-degree programs at Lehigh, among which the graduate program in comparative and international education sounds the most relevant. Probably an M.Ed. won’t help me to advance my career if I stay in academic; it never harms to know more about the education as long as I work in the education sector. The rate of the tuition also impressed me. And I could not wait to express this sudden-and-random thought to my beloved one with my own imaginary portrait of the beautiful and quiet life in the suburban.

“Shouldn’t you find a job and earn as much as possible right after you graduate?” asked she.

Not expecting such a depressing response, I could only drop the topic. Later, I had been thinking over what she said for a long while and came to a conclusion: perhaps I really stayed in ivory tower for too long and I was not quite aware many of my behaviors and thoughts are too beyond the norm accepted by the society.

Now, more English

2009-04-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

There were many reasons for me not to blog in English until today. I thought the primary purpose of maintaining a blog is to keep my friends and family on the other side of the planet posted; I believed I would only “briefly” stay in the United States and return to the place where I came from; I don’t want to be constantly embarrassed by my English skill; I don’t think I am already “into” this culture. The reasons can continue endlessly.

But when “briefly” turns into five years of extensive stay in this continent, in which I experienced two presidential elections, and when the number of friends and mentors on this side of the planet grows to a number which I cannot pretend I don’t see any more, I think I shall assume I will need to stay in this country for a little more while and try something new, say, writing more in English.