Welcome back on campus! For those who just joined us at HC in your second year, welcome to our HC family! If you are newcomers, you might not know that I send out emails every Friday during the semester to share with you my thoughts on different, sometimes random, topics (you can access previous ones on our HC website). This is not a regular Friday email, although today is Friday.
Starting off with our UM Motto, being “Humanity, Integrity, Propriety, Wisdom and Sincerity” (仁、義、禮、知、信), I hope you will bear in mind these as your personality traits and goals for your careers and life-long achievements. People often learn from experience to build and strengthen these traits. What we might not be aware of is that our experiences also tend to impact our decisions, and education can help us overcome these biases in our experience. Professor Douglas Diamond of University of Chicago, the 2022 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, mentioned in his article:
“Being able to draw on different views, different beliefs, and different perspectives is important for innovation. When your thinking isn’t confined to the events of your own experience, you’ve got a major competitive advantage in an environment where you’ve got to get out first ahead of rivals… Your experiences matter more than you may realize. The key is to use them to amplify and build on your knowledge, rather than being biased by them.”
You can read his article here .
A second point I would like emphasize is that, if you are now in your second year, please do not compare your workload with that in your first year, for two reasons. Year one is a foundation year, usually with many general courses with general concepts. Year two will be the start of more discipline focused, often more demanding, courses with new concepts. Coupled with this is the additional course requirement from HC. So, please DO NOT underestimate the workload of your second year. With that, all we want from you is your participation in HC activities, and sharing with us your ideas of how you want to contribute to HC, and what you think HC could provide.
I will resume our regular Friday emails once our first year newcomers start joining us in October. Stay tuned!
See you around! Have a nice second teaching weekend of the semester!
After a long break (summer break and then waiting for the new group of HCers to join us), here I am writing to you regularly on every teaching Friday again. As a warm-up, I would like to show you two results found by Statista. Yes, if you follow my emails, you know that I often take reference to Statista, which is a very resourceful data provider, perhaps even useful for your research projects. Anyway, today’s topics include:
- The Enormous Scale of Global Food Waste: https://www.statista.com/chart/24350/total-annual-household-waste-produced-in-selected-countries/
- Energy Consumption by Countries:
China is ranked the top in both subjects. For food waste, one may say it is not surprising because China has a huge population. Yes, that is correct. Brazil, for example, is only ranked fourth as a nation, but way higher on per capital waste. What is astonishing is how much each person can waste in these countries (and how diverse), while there is not even enough food for the children in some other poor countries. And yes, there is not much we can do. But if each of us tries to avoid wasting food, we should collectively be able to help with the world’s sustainability.
Regarding energy consumption, China again ranks the top in primary energy consumption, significantly outnumbering the second one, the United States. The good news is that it not only is reducing the use of coal for generating electricity, but is also actually the top in the world to use renewable energy. I have shared several emails about energy and sustainability in the past. Because this is a crucial subject for our future, your future, I might share more in the future.
Enough for now! Hope you enjoy the read, and enjoy your weekend!
I talked about energy consumption last week. If you have already been with HC for some time, you know that I talk about the environment and climate change a lot. True! These are not only trendy topics, but actually have big impacts to our lives, the impacts of which we will see only in the long years to come, but which can be unimaginably destructive. This time, I shall connect you to three important and trendy terms: gender equality, green jobs, and STEM, with reference to a recent blog from IMF (International Monetary Funds) with the exact title as this email. In case you do not know what STEM means, it is the approach to learning science, technology, engineering and mathematics together, although the newer version has become STEAM, with “A” standing for arts. “Green jobs” means the jobs/occupations related to green energy. Here is the link to the blog: https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2024/10/07/why-women-risk-losing-out-in-shift-to-green-jobs
The blog starts with people predicting that when more green jobs replace brown (energy generation that will pollute the earth) jobs, more men will lose their jobs. It turns out that women also lose jobs, because gender inequality has caused fewer female students to study STEM, which is crucial knowledge for developing green jobs. To change this phenomenon, the blog further referred to a study by IMF people entitled “Green Jobs and the Future of Work for Women and Men”, that countries with less gender inequality in STEM degrees, such as Ireland, has faster greenhouse gas emission reduction.
I shall leave the following sentences from the blog to you for more thoughts:
“STEM education drives green innovation and gives workers the skills they need for green jobs.”
“… policymakers should support women’s participation in the economy by reducing labor market barriers, improving access to finance, reforming legal frameworks, and increasing board representation. This will make the green transition more inclusive and improve the effectiveness of climate policies.”
Enjoy your weekend.
I recently came across a simple but inspirational message which I would like to share with you. Unfortunately, I cannot find the source of this message, as there are many versions if you Google it. The title is “Your title doesn’t make you a leader”. Very true! What is the use of a job title “Senior Executive” (“Executive” sounds executive! “Senior” is even better!) with no one for you to lead? Even worse is if you have subordinates who do not like working for you, or who do not listen to you. So, what will make you a leader? Think of the following six traits:
- Your Vision
- Your Integrity
- Your Actions
- Your Empathy
- Your Communication
- Your Accountability
I have seen many who thought they were leaders because they could pass their thoughts to others clearly (point 5 above). But to motivate people to listen to you, your thoughts should be visionary. More importantly, your team members have to be confident that you have your integrity (be ethical and stick to your promises), you act (rather than enjoying your life while they work over time), and you are accountable for what you do as well as for your team. And if they made mistakes, they have your empathy, rather than blaming them instead of solving the problem.
These traits should be what decent persons have, not only for leaders. I hope you as HCers possess them too.
Dear HCers
Guess this is around the end of your series of midterm examinations! Hope you manage to have some rest!
I try to keep this short and light this week. Time magazine has an article about “8 Toxic Communication Habits” last week. Let me try to summarize them here.
- Making it all about you – Most people do not like self-centered people. Do not let others’ conversation always land on you, such as starting with “Oh, I also have similar experience…” and steal away others’ focus
- Shutting down when you are upset – because your friend won’t know when to come back to care about you
- Frequent interrupting when others talk
- Rambling on, and on, and on – please make your point clear and short
- Distracted “Listening” – I think many of you do, like playing with your phone and pretending you are listening
- One-upping the other person – Do not compare and try to beat others; that is, saying “oh yes, I got a newer model than this.”
- Opinion-jacking – Do not repeat the opinion from someone who just spoke up before you and treat it as your idea
- Offering unsolicited advice when it is not needed
If you want to read in details, here’s the link:
Enjoy your weekend!
Today’s title is also the title of a book by Vaclav Smil who is a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba. By the way, do you know what is “professor emeritus”? There are a few at the University of Macau, too.
Back to the book. Prof. Smil has written several interesting and easy to read books, including this one, and the one entitled How the World Really Works. To give you a flavor about what he covers, let me share two chapters with you. One is “Why electric cars aren’t as great as we thing (yet)”. It was once predicted that electric vehicles (EVs) will constitute 11% of the global car market in 2020. Really? It is less than 4%!! One point to note. The aim of having EVs is to reduce carbon emission. But do not forget where the electricity used to charge them comes from. In 2020, over 60% of global electricity is still generated from fossil fuels. That means the global mean (or average) of electricity for EVs is still over 60% from brown energy.
What do you have in mind now? That those countries with EVs are usually developed countries, such as Canada, Norway, or France, where electricity comes from renewable energy? Partly true! But what you might have ignored is the greenhouse gas generated during the production process, during which higher toxicity to human and freshwater ecosystems are simultaneously generated. You will definitely learn more than what is merely mentioned here if you have a chance to read the book.
So, let’s hope technology can be significantly improved in the EV industry to really enhance the benefits of EV to the planet earth.
I shall leave the other chapter for next week.