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.
Here’s the other chapter chosen from Numbers Don’t Lie, entitled “What’s worse for the environment – your car or your phone?”. What do you think? If it is obvious, I guess Prof. Smil will not have written this chapter.
According to the chapter, an average sedan (4-seater) weighs 1.4 tons while a smartphone weighs 140grams. Now, take another angle. About 1.75 billion mobile phones were sold in 2020. About 250 million of other portable computing devices such as laptops, notebooks tablets were sold in the same year. The total weight would be about 550,000 tons. In summary, without telling you the units of energy consumption, new cars weigh more than 180 times as much as all portable computing devices combined, but require 7 times as much energy to make. Considering the need for more frequent replacement of the computer devices versus cars, the energy used for producing cars is just double of that of computer devices.
Considering all of the above, mobile phones still consume less energy than cars. What is missing? Network that supports our phones, and servers that have to save our data! Think of how much of your data is in the “cloud”. I remember watching a documentary in which a group of the younger generation in a northern European country were asked about protecting the environment. They all agreed that they participated, until they were asked to cut the daily usage of their mobile phones. Oh well!
Here’s the open question. What will you do to help save our planet earth?
Have a good weekend!
Tomorrow will be the last class day of this semester. That means this Friday email serves as the last one for this semester.
To continue the topic of the previous two weeks, have you heard of Waymo? It is an American company for autonomous driving technology, and a subsidiary of Alphabet. What is so special about Waymo? It supplies robotaxis. As at the end of August, there were already 100,000 paid rides per week, which was a double in just three months. Its services are now available in Phoenix, Arizona, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Impressive? It reflects how much people trust technology. But in a recent study by Forbes, Waymo rides turned out to be more expensive and took twice as long to reach the destination in over 50 rides when compared to a taxi service with a driver by Uber. Some of you may be giving me a flown face now because China has already had Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis in Wuhan, and will be extended to Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing, probably, soon.
My point is that we need to keep inventing and fine-tuning our technologies to make them work, sometimes taking quite long. A lot of patience and money are both necessary! And yet, we also have to think which technologies are necessary in improving human living, and which are not. And their pros and cons. For example, by having more robotaxi services, will sustainability and bio-diversity be enhanced, for example, as in COP29, which was held in Azerbaijan over the last two weeks? Not to mention the number of job loss by taxi drivers! And safety for the time being?
You, potential future leaders, should consider both pros and cons, benefits and impacts, every time you make a decision, as you should be responsible not only for the decisions, but the world you live in, and the people you work for.
Good luck to your examinations! Let’s talk again next semester.
By the way, if you are not very familiar with any of the terms I used above, please Google search them. I am sure you will be opened to a world of knowledge which you have no idea of learning before.
Merry Christmas in advance!
Welcome back to the new semester! Hope you have had some fun time and enough rest during the Christmas and New Year holidays!
In this beginning of 2025, some of you have gone to new places – our partner universities – for your “study abroad” experiences. For those of you in your second year, you will have to start preparing for this “study abroad” applications. If you are in your Year 1, perhaps you will have to be ready for taking TOEFL or IELTs in order to submit your scores to meet the English Proficiency requirement. What do you have to do if you are in Year 4? Prepare for your Honours projects?
You might ask why I want to remind you of your work at HC. Well, I actually meant to remind you that, yes, your studies are important, but so is the awareness of what is happening around the world. I was in Japan for vacation in December. The weather was beautiful, warmer than usual. But two days after I came back, it snowed heavier than it usually would. I just came back from a conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Macao time. Then, on Tuesday, US west coast time, wildfires hit several places in Los Angeles, burning down many houses, including those of the celebrities. Ten years ago, we had to wear thick coats and down jackets in December in Macao. The highest temperature yesterday, Jan. 9, 2025, was 20 degrees Celsius! Look what has global warming done to us!
Yes, you have to live responsibly by being environmentally friendly. But can you do more than that? Please have a look at the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at https://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals. The aim is to “ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity”. Only a little more than 5 years left before 2030. Where are we now? Far from achieving the goals? Almost there? Something for you to learn, think, and see if you can even take action of some sorts to help push us closer to the goals!
We are already into the second half of the first month of 2025, when I am still feeling that Christmas was just a week ago. People usually say that happy times passed faster than any other times. Are you happy? Hey, the Chinese New Year is approaching. So, why not have some enjoyment?!
It is well known that Danish are considered as the world’s happiest people. How come? Denmark is so cold. The sun almost never rises in winters. Why are they happy? The title of today’s mail is the title of a book by Meik Wiking, the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute, Copenhagen. Rather than giving you the details, I am going to share with you some quotes from the book and hope you can have a “taste” and “feel” of them to try to understand how to achieve more happiness. Here they are:
Take time to enjoy the journey towards your goal while also being mindful that achieving your goal will not fulfil you completely. (pp.88)
Make time to eat. Reclaim your lunchtime and sit with friends, family and colleagues, and enjoy eating your food slowly and with company. (pp.40)
Encourage your friends and family to have tech-free periods during the week, avoid the temptation to check your phone, and detox digitally. (pp.72)
Perhaps the last one is the most difficult for you. And you might think “tech-free is why I am not happy!”. Well, you will be amazed how good you feel when you can detox yourself digitally!
Wish you can get the gist of the above lines and plan for a happier new year ahead!
Happy Chinese New Year! See you in February!
Happy Chinese New Year! Wish you another great, happy, healthy, and productive year in this Year of the Snake!
We have not had speakers coming to HC to share their thoughts and experiences for some time. For your information, I have invited a young entrepreneur born and raised in Macao before going to Portugal and England to study. Would be a very interesting sharing, on Feb. 19. 5:00pm at HC Multifunction room! Do not miss it (make sure you register and come)!
Many of us have just had family gatherings over the past week, and might have forgotten that some parts of the world need more love than a lot of us. Think of the people in Gaza, Palestine, Ukraine, and those that had been turned homeless by the wildfires in California, and those that died because of the too cold weather in Japan! Then, think of those country leaders who said climate change is “mythical”, “a hoax”! The U.S President is one of them. A recent one is the Argentinian president, Javier Milei, who claimed it is a “socialist lie”.
Speaking of Donald Trump, he is really full of ideas! For example, his administration passed the suspension on “de minimis” as part of tariffs. As a result, the US Postal Service (USPS) stopped parcels incoming from China, Hong Kong included, on the morning of the 5th February, only to be resumed that same evening. You can search and learn what “de minimis” is. He also plans to shut down the USAID, which will be a really big issue. According to Brookings Institute (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-comes-after-a-usaid-shutdown/?utm_campaign=Center%20for%20Universal%20Education%20Bulletin&utm_medium=email&utm_content=345898974&utm_source=hs_email), “USAID’s efforts to prevent conflict around the world, encourage democratic and pluralistic processes and protect human rights, reduce suffering from death and disease, encourage sustainable economic growth, and prevent environmental destruction reflect the essence of the United States. They help build an international environment that services U.S. interests and values.”
So you can imagine what will be the result of shutting down USAID. Again, from Brookings Institute, “The USAID shutdown stalls progress toward economic prosperity and stability. It stops support for cash transfers that reach the poorest households, halts financing for women farmers who produce food and other staples, stops lifesaving health services, and disrupts public-private partnerships to help women compete in the digital economy, to name just a few core programs.”
Oh well! Just fingers crossed that bad policies will not be launched.
Happy Valentine’s Day! So nice that this day will be followed by a weekend, so you can have the love from everyone everywhere, from friends, parents, family members, etc. lingering over the weekend. Don’t forget to express your love, too! 😊
Just another reminder! We will have the Leadership Seminar on 19th February by an entrepreneur.
Speaking of entrepreneurs, some of you have taken the leadership module taught by Prof. Lida Zhang. I recently had a very interesting and fruitful conversation with her about the following:
Managers and executives tend to make decisions based on a lot of data when they perceived the existence of a problem. They would ask people to provide them with all sorts of “sensible” data, and then make a decision based on whatever is presented. Now, pause and think!
Does that sound like the hot and “common sense” term, “Big Data”? You might think, “Yeah, that’s what people now say! We need big data to have better solutions!” (by the way, this is not “Big Data”; if you do not really know the definition of Big Data, I suggest you to search for it ASAP).
But do you know that only information helps us; raw data don’t. When we collect a lot of data, we need to sort and analyze the data in order to extract information that is useful to support our decision. In other words, only having a lot of input is not information.
How do academics solve problems then? We firstly try to understand the problem we want to solve. Then we form a hypothesis, i.e. define a potential explanation to, or direction of, the problem. Then we find the relevant data to support, or reject, our hypothesis. The key is “relevant data”, not all available data. An example of a hypothesis (if you have not learnt well from your Statistics course) is “H0: The total GDP of Macao is higher than that of Hong Kong for the period of 2000-2024”. What data do you need to prove that this hypothesis is right or not? Do you need mortality rate? Employment rate? Population? NO!!! You simply need the GDP figures of Macao and Hong Kong for 2000-2024! More data does not add to useful information for this purpose. By the way, the hypothesis should be rejected. See if you can verify.
So what is the difference? Academics take the active approach to find the solution. Managers tend to allow data to lead them to a “solution”.
What have you learnt from this conversation? I am happy to hear your thoughts, if any.
Remember “About Decision Making” which I shared last week? I would like to come back to my conversation with Prof. Lida Zhang. In fact, I am going to share her description about hypothesis:
There are two different approaches to constructing hypotheses: deductive and inductive. In the deductive approach, we derive a hypothesis from a general theory, which is established based on rationality and evidence, and then collect relevant data to test the hypothesis. In the inductive approach, a hypothesis may emerge from a pattern in the raw data. In this case, the data are valuable if they provide an insight on what is going on. That is, data can be used not only to test hypothesis but also to generate hypothesis.
I thank Prof. Zhang for sharing this food of thought.
Sorry, more on Statistics! But even if you don’t like the course, I am sure you will come across the following terms in your daily encounters. You might even learn to use them, if you have not yet done so.
For those who still sort of remember what you have learnt about Statistics, do you recall “Type I and Type II Errors”? These terms are not only used in Statistics, obviously. You see them in everyday life. “Type I error” (or false-positive) is to reject a null hypothesis when it is actually true. In other words, you negate the fact when it is right. Sounds familiar? By the same token, “Type II error” (or false-negative) is when a null hypothesis is not rejected when it is false. Remember we do not “accept” a null hypothesis. We simply can reject it if the sample shows that it is not right, or we cannot reject it because our sample does not show it is wrong.
OK, did you see “false-positive” and “false-negative”? Sound familiar? Yes, during the COVID-19 pandemic period, when we had to do a lot of swap tests, we always heard the results to be “false-negative”. How about “double negative”? It is a term in English usage, meaning negative of negative, such as “not uncommon”, or “not unreasonable”. How about “He never says nothing interesting to no one!”? “Never” – “Nothing” – “No one”? This is a triple negative. Funny? Maybe! But this is not acceptable in formal writing. Why? Think about how long it took you to do the math, literally, before you finally understood it, and if you did understand it. That means you prohibit people from understanding you easily.
Hope you will find these terms interesting.
Do you know that HC has Leadership Lecture Series and Honours Forums? Do you know that this year’s Leadership Lecture by Mr. Bernardo Alves has already been held on 19th February?
For those of you who were here, this email serves as a recap on some useful lines he used. If you did not come, he is so kind to allow me to share some of his words of wisdom here. The one I particularly like is the one on today’s title.
- MAC: Master yourself. Adapt to reality. Conquer it.
- Adopt Change: Traits and habits are not hardcoded in the brain.
- Do a self-audit on yourself – and change what you don’t like.
- To conquer Externally – you must first master Internally.
- The (Warren) Buffett Riddle: “If you could invest in 10% of someone’s future earnings, who would you pick? Who would you short?
- Success isn’t determined by external achievements—it’s driven by traits, character, and habits. Because traits and habits compound over time.
- The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
Finally, Mr. Alves concluded his talk with: “Leading isn’t about winning. It is about Mastering. Adapting. Conquering. Always do a self-audit: Internal mastering allows you to challenge the uncertainties of tomorrow.”
Worth a lot of thinking!
Surprised by the title of today’s mail?
I have a chance to have some very nice chats with a few HCers, and from whom I learnt that a noticeable number of HCers have understandings and puzzles about HC which I was not aware before. Here are some:
1. The Study Abroad program selection process is not transparent. Students who could, and could not, go to HC partner universities did not know why they were, or were not, selected.
2. The requirements for studying abroad are unclear.
3. There is not enough communication and information dissemination from HC about what students should do.
4. HC claims that the aim is to train HCers to leaders. But the course HONR Honours Project is about doing a project that is so academically based. How is this related to leadership training?
Let’s do a poll. If you agree with the above, please let me know by replying to this mail. If you can think of more questions and puzzles about HC, please send them to me, coz I am very eager to know what they are. Please do not feel intimidated that I will remember you in the negative way. I always believe we can learn something every day, and that true also for HC, and me.
I will come back to these puzzles again next week. Stay tuned!
Thanks to those who replied to my mail last Friday! I initially planned to reply to you one by one. But then I realized that my replies would be very similar, and there would be many. So, I have decided to let you wait together with others who did not reply to me, but still would like to know the answers to last week’s puzzles. So here are my responses.
1. The Study Abroad program selection process is not transparent. Students who could, and could not, go to HC partner universities did not know why they were, or were not, selected.
2. The requirements for studying abroad are unclear.
I will answer both questions together. The requirements for applying to study abroad programme, which are clearly stated on the HC website, sent to you via emails, mentioned at briefings and at orientations, are:
- Meeting the Language Proficiency requirement of HC study abroad program or that of the partner university, whichever higher.
- Meeting the GPA, CS point and RC residency requirements
So can you still agree with Point (2)?
Now, some of you might browse our partner university websites and found the minimum language proficiency requirements to be lower than what we require, and ask why we do not follow theirs. By “minimum”, I am sure you know what it means! It is a threshold below which you do not even have to apply, while just above it is not necessarily sufficient to secure a place. Besides, HC has to be fair to all HCers. If others need a higher score, why can you join study abroad with a lower one?
Some of you asked why there could not be more quota for sending students out, or increase the quota of some universities. Ideally, of course! But you also know that resources are scarce. HC is run based on the budget allocated by UM, the funding of which mostly comes from the Macau government. It is not up to HC to decide sending any number of HC students if the available budget is not enough. That said, in the defense of HC, I am sure you are not aware that we have tried our best to squeeze all the budget possible in order to be able to send more students. I do not even want to share with you the hurdles and bold moves we made in some of the past years in order to ensure more HCers could join the programme.
When we have limited resources, but more demand than we can supply, it becomes an Economics problem. We will have no choice to rank students according to their GPAs in their majors and their CS points. In other words, we compare among the likes (same majors or same faculties), not just blindly looking at the GPAs. If you have better methods to fairly rank the students, please do share with us! Also for your information, in most of the years, we have more quota than the number of applicants. If you disagree with this last point (quota > application), the following will give you the clue why it is the case.
You might have heard from someone, or you yourself, that you cannot find the courses which you can transfer back to UM, and therefore you cannot join the programme. Let me ask you then. Is this HC’s transparency problem? For example, if you study Chinese and would like to transfer some compulsory courses in Chinese Literature from the partner universities, do you think every university would definitely have Chinese major? Or are you sure your Faculty will consider the course contents are equivalent? Ultimately, though, the course equivalencies and transfer eligibilities are the decisions of your Faculties. HC does not intervene in your bachelor programmes. Again, that said, we have tried very hard to discuss with all Faculties to see if students from their programmes could join HC. The replies we got so far were all positive!
A minor note following the above point: this is why we keep emphasizing since day one that you should spare your free elective courses for Study Abroad programme so you will have less pressure in transferring the compatible compulsory courses.
Another note: HC Study Abroad Programme is open also for you to go in the first semester of your Fourth Year of study. Or you can join GAO’s exchange programme in your fourth year.
You may say you heard some HCers not being sent to their desired universities. First, you should know two points. For the first five years of the HC history, the number of universities available was half of what you have today. For the first ten years, HCers were allocated to universities, not by their choices, of course for good reasons. Anyway, now you are allowed to provide your top two choices. That however does not mean you can always go to your first choice (and in some cases, not even the second). For example, you major in Accounting and dreamt of going to University of Michigan, and your second choice is University of Coimbra. We will not be able to suit your request because the Ross Business School of the University of Michigan does not join our partnership, while University of Coimbra offers courses in Portuguese, in which case we know that sending you to either one will not provide you a chance to transfer any courses relevant to your major back. Other than the difficulty in course matching, we at HC have always tried our best to send you to your top priority universities.
A tip: As long as you have enough free elective slots, you can still try the partner universities which might superficially not fit your major. For example, you are from FST, and you would like to go to UIUC. However, the UIUC Engineering College does not join the partnership. You can still apply to UIUC. You can try to take courses at UIUC Engineering College, although engineering courses are typically very competitive and subject to availability. You can take other courses that are not from the Engineering College. All you need is to specify your plan, and state why you can still be eligible to join UIUC. Of course, since UIUC is one of the few partners which FED students could join without course matching issues, FED students would have priority. Likewise, only the Olin Business School of Washington University at St. Louis is our partner. That is why only FBA students will go to this partner.
3. There is not enough communication and information dissemination from HC about what students should do.
Do you know that a lot of the necessary information you need for your HC programme is available from the HC website? Have you ever visited the website? Do you remember that I keep emphasizing that my door is always open? Do you even know where the HC Office is?
Tell me, honestly, do you read all emails from HC? How many emails do you think HC should send you as reminders for a matter we need to inform you? I suppose 3 will be enough: a first mail, and then another one about a week before the deadline, if there is one, and a last one about two days before. That is if you even read it. Let me know if you think otherwise.
We have received tons of requests for pardoning after the deadlines because these HCers “overlooked” the emails from HC. If you are one of them, have you expressed being grateful that you are still granted the chance?
One final point about communication, if you decide to be the Three Wise Monkeys, I cannot stop you! But I really cannot envisage how different you as HCers are from other passive students! Oh, if you do not know what I am talking about, see if these Emojis show: 🙈🙉🙊
I guess this mail is getting much longer than I wanted. I will leave the response to the last myth for next time. Again, please feel free to share your opinions, thoughts, and disagreements with me, anytime!
The email last week is very long. But I was told that many of you had read it carefully. Good! I hope to hear more from you about your views.
Here’s my view about the last point: why the fourth year Honours Project (HORN 4001) is related to “leadership”. Before I start, I would like you to imagine what you want to see from a leader. Again, please remember what I always emphasize: a leader is someone whom people natural follow when he/she finds a problem and initiates to solve it, or he/she innovates and implements.
For me, a leader should be someone who, on top of being empathetic, trustworthy, responsible, confident, and so on, can also be able to:
- Apply knowledge in his/her area of expertise
- Identify issue/problem
- Understand the issue/problem well
- Lead the process of finding methods to solve the issue/problem, and actually solving it
- Represent the group well
- Explain the issue/problem and its solution to anyone; and by “anyone”, I mean (1) very important people who have only 2 minutes to listen to you, (2) clients who do not have to be interested, (3) those who need to work on the issue and therefore need the details
Can you see now how the above are closely linked to the Honours Project? The project is one that you can show (or forced to work on) your area of expertise. When you lead a team, you as the leader needs to know the issue/problem thoroughly. You cannot think, “I am the leader, meaning I am the boss, and so I don’t need to know much. My people will do all the dirty work for me.” If you think so, you are not a true leader whom people will eagerly follow. Even if the details are beyond your scope, you still need to be hands on about the fundamental issue. If you don’t know, learn it!
Then, when you represent the group, you will have to tell the group your ideas, the potential solution, and how the group can cooperate. You will have to “sell” your idea to different people. The Honours Project offers you a training of how to “sell” your idea well. Imagine the abstract as telling the very important person your story in 2 minutes. Then, imagine your Introduction and Conclusion is the conversation with your clients, and the whole project is what you have to explain to your team. In fact, your 15-20 minute presentations and your poster sessions are exactly opportunities for you to experience such conversations. And if you cannot even “sell” what you know best (i.e. your major), what else will you be really good at?
I am glad that I am able to explain some of the mission of HC through these two emails. And I hope you have a much better understanding of HC after this. But why haven’t you? HC is a home for you! Why haven’t you ask us sooner, more often?
Do NOT always take what you are given for granted! Ask yourself if you have the right before you start “claiming your right”! And even if you think you have, it does not definitely mean you do! I quoted J.F. Kennedy in a Friday Email years ago. I am repeating it here:
Ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country.
Do you take for granted you have the right to be served? How about you do not ask, you just serve? You contribute! Be empathetic, be understanding, be appreciative, be grateful of what you are given, be modest of what you can achieve or have achieved! Ultimately, if you trust that the University of Macau, and of course HC, has always tried to offer you the best for you, which we do, you will not even have such puzzles.
Please, act at real HCers, not just being called HCers! You represent HC too! You should be proud of yourselves!
Again, comments are more than welcome!