Final Round

I always feel nervous after hearing " Final round" when I play fighting games because it can judge me whether win the game or not. Similarly, final exams just the final round in our program. If I fail in the final, I will lose half of the course. We just finished the writing exam, which is the most difficult one. I mean, for me. However, I think I did not so bad as I thought. The topic I chose was to describe advantages of one kind of energy and I wrote nuclear power because basically I knew how it works. After the exam, I found nuclear energy is not only a kind of useful power nowadays, but also a good friend of many EAP 3 students cuz I noticed that most of students who chose this topic wrote about nuclear energy. In addition, none of them feel bad about writing but they thought they did a pretty good job. Yeah, glad to hear that.

Well, I think because of approaching the final, everybody's skills, which include both physical and mental, have been suddenly improved. Not far before the final, we had a wonderful party. We had food, fruit and all kinds of stuff. We kept talking and eating for hours. At.T first, I thought the food were too much to eat; on contrary, the food almost gone after the party because some people ate really fast and too much. Scott was a good example. When I was extremely full, he was still looking for something good to eat. LOL!

Anyways, exams haven't been finished and we shouldn't be relaxed. More challenge are still waiting for us.

Get Shocked

I got shocked yesterday. The shock was from my room-mate. I came back home after working and turned on my computer. Then Alex, who is one of my room-mate messaged me through MSN and told me he wouldn't be home tonight. I asked why. He said he would stay up and work on his dissertation whole night. I couldn't believe it at first because he always work in front of his computer nine out of ten times I saw him. Now, he became even harder than before. What he told me was he had to finish his paper in order that he could get extra time to revise it. Today, I arrived home after school and thought he must be sleeping. However, no body at home. When I was wondering, door was open. It was Alex and he looked tired---he kept studying a night and a day! I said with smile "Oh! You works really hard!" But he seemed very serious and said that at least I don't have exams. If you don't work harder than me, you gonna fail in the university.

To be honest, this words let me think for a while. I admit that I am not a hard-working student because the atmosphere made me feel kind of relaxed. We both in the same university. Although we are not in the same faulty and the same level, we have to face to the final of the semester. Compared to him, I didn't push myself in the final exam. What I need to do is try my best, both in the final exam and in the future. Whether pass this level or not is totally another story.

Successful Universities

Last couple of weeks, while I was walking in the university, I was thinking about a question. Looking at students from all over the world, I wondered why they come to here and study? Generally speaking, every year millions of students come to study in North America. Like Chinese international students, which take the highest percentage of them, have to pay huge tuition fees but they still choose to leave their own country. Why? I think the reason is not just the job crunch in China, but the problem is educational system.

Educational system sounds really common; however, it contains lots of things. I checked Li kai fu's blog, who used to be the vice-president of Microsoft, and found some edification from it. A successful university just like a private company, everything needs to be judged by itself. Things like tutors, courses have to be adjusted with the situations of the university. Some universities are controlled by governments so for example, they have to wait for funds from the governments. In contrast, a private school get money from foundation so that they have more freedom. Because of this, these universities can improve very fast and it is why private universes, especially in the US achieve a great success. In addition, these universities may try some different ways to improve. Some of them are crazy, like the MIT(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has spent about a hundred million dolloars in order to share 2000 courses on the Internet for free. Although the university has lost huge profit, it is good way for them to try distance education and become the best university of engineering. Compared to them, Chinese universities are far behind so there in no doubt that students come to here and study.