It's the start of the academic school year... and instead of rehashing some of the advice I have tried to give incoming students... I thought it would be useful to write all of this up. I try to identify the most useful things, things I wish someone told me when I was 18.... things I have only found out were extremely useful say
#1) Get ample opportunity to work on your writing.
Most colleges prescribe a writing requirement. But I cannot reiterate the importance of learning (relearning) how to write. In many occupations, most especially if you end up working in the government... you will be judged predominantly by your writing. Writing is a hard skill to "teach" as well as to "learn" and the best way to learn how to write is to write and get feedback. I did the most writing in my first semester in college... my political theory class required 1,500 word essay every two weeks, and my history of medieval europe required 500 words every two weeks. So I was writing every week. I had a painful experience learning how to write from my political theory tutor. She liked the ideas I had, but I was just wasn't doing justice to those ideas and it got so bad that she gave me a C+/B- on my second essay (very bad in American terms). She wouldn't take the "I used to be a science student, I can't write excuse" and literally coached me through the remaining weeks. My vindication came when I got an A+ on my final exam paper.
#2) Be on top of numbers. Make sure that you include a Statistics/Econometrics/Accounting class. Whatever your job is, you invariably have to look at numbers, learn to be discriminating with them, and also use them to your advantage. The use of statistics teaches you to learn how to communicate and think with numbers.
#3) Learn how to program. okay I don't care what major you are, but in this digital day and age, I regard programming skills as quintessential... after all you use the computer every day, don't you? When you get to work, it's not that you will end up programming... but very often, if you have to deal with data, it is useful to know how the computer programmers have set up the database, and how it can be improved. Warning here... programming classes are and can be painful.... expect 20 hours of work every week, or as I tell people 2 hours of programming and 18 hours of debugging... but treat it as "character building" ... you won't regret it.
#4) Don't pass up a chance to learn a new language. I took up both French and Japanese in college.... (my claim to fame was to do a sequential translation from French to English for Abbe Pierre to 600-700 people). Learning another language is a way to communicate and connect to people of different cultures, and to learn and appreciate from their different experiences. It also helps us appreciate our own heritage and culture more.
#5) Work on your communication skills. The underlying thread behind #1-#4 is all about communication.... #1 is about communicating through writing, #2 is about communicating through numbers ... and when you learn #3 you realise that learning programming is almost like learning another language. To this mix, I would learning how to speak, make powerpoint presentations, not make powerpoint presentations... One of the best things here in the US elementary school education is that kids do show and tell starting from kindergarten. It's a skill that you never stop learning.
3 comments:
Thanks KB, this was very insightful! W.r.t to your point on communication, I think it's especially important for Singaporeans and Asians in general. Due to our culture and education system, our communication skills tend to be lacking compared to the Americans. In general, we're nowhere as confident at verbalizing and expressing ourselves, or at voicing ideas spontaneously. I was at a dialogue session with Ambassador Chan Heng Chee a few weeks ago and she noted that even though Asians make up high percentages of the top US unis, their lack of communication skills makes it harder for them to climb the corporate ladder, which is why there are hardly any Asian CEOs in the Fortune 500 (I think the only non-Indian Asian in the list is Andrea Jung of Avon. Indians are the exception though, they do tend to be better at verbalizing themselves, and a few companies including Pepsi and Citibank have Indian CEOs).
But what better place to hone communication and verbal skills than at an American university, right? :D
Same goes for writing. Writing style is very important in the working world, and it isn't emphasized enough in our rubrics-based content-heavy education system. But yeah I'll definitely work hard to pick up those skills here.
Looking forward to part 2 (:
Thanks Joel, for responding. To be fair and also rather brutally honest... I was rather disappointed at the quality of verbal sparring and debate in my classes when I got to Princeton and considered a pale shade of what I was used to in Singapore. Then again, I developed my skills in a GEP class that included classmates like Siew Kum Hong (former NMP).
It would also say that it isn't just verbal skills in English which are important (which is why Indians have a head start)... I think verbal skills in different other languages are equally important. I used to volunteer to do Chinese presentations when I first started working (not that I was that good in Chinese).
You will probably have to learn and -relearn your writing.... because writing styles are different in academia (college) and when you start work and also depending where you work (government or private sector). But what underpins any writing is are you able to communicate your ideas.... and the best way is to start now, blogging, getting involved in causes... in additional to the writing that you have to do in college.
Hey KB, I just saw your reply, thanks for that! Haha I assumed that if you replied I would get an email, but apparently that isn't so. Wow your classes in JC must have been exciting, mine weren't like that.
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