The Moment of Dream Come True

我好開心呀 開心的想要大叫 哈哈哈哈~

我找到新工作了,在新竹, 是我最愛的行銷, 而且是行銷數位相機,

我很愛攝影，能把工作和興趣結合，簡直太perfect了!

老天爺真的很保祐我，也很照顧我，我覺得好幸福也好知足哦!

我要好好珍惜我目前擁有的幸福

While my American roommate said, "You're gonna be a gourmet cook," two weeks ago,  yesterday, one of my American friends gave me a very special and thoughtful present before I leave for Taiwan.   ha ha!  I really love it!  That is such a cool gift I've had!  Elissa said when I read the English recipe at home, the mesearing system is different from Taiwan and the measuring cups we bought in Taiwan is different from the English receipe for sure.  It seems like more and more people are endorsing my cooking skills.  The day becoming a gourmet cook is not far away for me.


A picture taken in my bedroom.   Thanks Elissa! xoxo

The Harvard's teaching method was very impressive.  In Taiwan, the English course is usually divided into a few types of classes based on functions, such as grammar, conversation, writing, listening, vocabulary...etc, and that's the way we were so comfortable with. Here at Harvard, it integrated four skills together: listening, speaking, reading and writing.  In other words, the course was designed to be content-oriented.  The biggest difference of English classes between Taiwan and Harvard was we had tons and tons of assignment here.   We were required to read a lot of assignment or do research before we went to class.  Besides reading, we had to look up the vocabularies on our own, to annotate, and to come up with a few questions.  Everybody was so stressed out.  I stayed up late and got up early to catch up with my homework but still couldn't finish all of them.  At first, I was kind of disappointed, thinking that "Is this the English program I want?"  I would really like to work on listening and speaking skills instead of spending most of my time doing research and studying.   I would like to learn something more practical like TV news or newspaper or something.



I just finished my stressful graduate study at Brandeis.  I desperatedly wanted to have a relaxed summer vacation to enjoy learning English language, not jumped into another even more challenging program.  Oh no!  I complained a lot.  I felt depressed Sometimes.  A lot of times, I just didn't want to do my homework until the last minute.  When time went on, I gradually found the classes were so valuable, and started to appreciate the hard work and the great efforts the educators and instructors had put into in our classes.  We had visiting activities once a week and lectures twice a week.  With regard to visiting activities, we went to Treedom Trail, JFK museum, The Science Senter and The Peabody museum..etc, during which we were required to do research and class discussion before and after our visiting. 

Am I passionate about English? Sometimes I am confused about the reason why I’ve been studying English so hard. Do I consider English language as a tool which might give a boost to my future career, or do I treat English as an entertaining value, loving it with all my heart? I really don’t know. I only know that when I feel upset, stressed or depressed, studying English at a café can comfort my anxiety and sadness, making me forget all my sorrows. I only know that if I have a laid-back afternoon when I don’t have to work or to suffer from the heavy burden of schoolwork, I’d love to go to a coffee shop to enjoy my time there, studying English with a great cup of coffee and with soft music. That is my favorite thing to do. Learning English makes me feel fulfilled and delighted.

Most importantly, the most valuable lesson I learned at Harvard was to have exceeded the English language itself. The greatest benefit that will last my lifetime will be the attitude to approach knowledge. We’re required to do research: to read, to annotate, and to listen to the materials online and then come to class to discuss the work. This Top-Down learning method at Harvard is vastly different from the way I learned in Taiwan, where students are used to coming to class and waiting for the teacher to feed his or her knowledge to them. “Whatever you can do yourselves, you have to do it on your own,” said Liane Jeschull, my workshop instructor. I have learned how to absorb knowledge proactively, instead of passively. It is significantly important, and it will be a great influence for the rest of my life. Be prepared and come to discuss!  

My research paper at Harvard University

Introduction

        The recent news that shocked Taiwan’s society and has stirred up fierce debates in this island is that the university admission rate has hit a record high of over 100%, which means any student can be admitted into one of the universities even if they get zero score during the examination (The China Post, “University admission rate hits record high of over 100%”). An increasing number of people have harshly criticized the admission committee and have called for a reform for the Taiwan’s higher education, arguing that an excessive number of universities are the root cause of the low quality of college students. Having experienced graduate studies in both Taiwan and the US, I believe that high admission rate is just one of the numerous factors that lead to low quality of the higher education. Except for admission, we should look into causes deeply in a social and cultural context. This study will scrutinize three major differences between the US and Taiwan’s higher education: time to choose a college major, the teaching and learning styles, and the students’ learning attitudes. By means of comparison of the higher education systems between these two countries, the objectives of the study aim to make suggestions to Taiwan’s college students and to Taiwan’s higher education reform.

I am the person who doesn't like to say negative things.  I'd rather wait until everything has positive come out and then share with my friends.  It's about the time to tell you guys what really happened to me in the past two weeks.  

It was really a horrible period of time in my life.   I used to love my job and enjoy what I was doing.  I like sales job as well, but NOT door to door sales.  Where is the strategy?  Althought I've known this was a sales position since my second-round interview, it turned out to be totally different from what I initially thought.  I had to go to my territory visiting each single business store by store, floor by floor, and street by street during the terribly hot summer.   Due to the fierce competition in the US telephone service market, Verizon, the client I was working for, has more than one outsourced sales and marketing parter in an area, and due to the fast turnover in my company, they kept sending people out to the same territory.  All of these reasons resulted in Verizon people coming in all the time, at least twice a month, according to one customer.  People hate soliciting.  "I just can't figure out what's wrong with Verizon?  We have Verizon people come in every week.  Please take me off of your list.  I don't even need this(handed a brochure mailed by Verizon)."   "I am sure I have the lowest rate. I don't need any chages."  "I am all set.  I am not interested.  This is not about the right time.  I am busy.   The person in charge is not in....."  These were the words I heard every day for the past two weeks.  I was so sick of hearing this.   It was really really a big waste of my time.

I've always been positive in my life, but right now I feel so helpless.  I don't like my job.  Althought another company called me for an interview today, I just don't wanna work any more in my last precious two months in the US.  I 'd rather work on the things I really enjoy, that is language learning.  I asked my supervisior yesterday if I could take a leave of absence for language training and then came back afterward.  She said she doesn't think it would be a problem, but she needed to ask the manager and let me know the result the next day.  Unfortuntely, I got her message today.  It didn't work out.   ~><~

What am I gonna to do?  I NEVER, EVER feel so helpless in my lifetime, partly because i am in a county where my parents and all friends are all far away from me.  I just couldn't help but cry.  Everytime when I feel helpless, i miss my friends, boyfriend and family in Taiwan so much.  In the past, whenever I felt upset, frustrated or depressed, I always knew who was the person I could call, and who would support me no matter anytime anywhere.  I wanna go home and meet them as soon as possible.  Especially thank my boy friend's endless and unconditional support emotionally and finacially. 

As lucky as usual, I found out a new apartment just in time, right before the deadline I got to move out of the dorm, so i won't be worried about where I am gonna to live tomorrow, and my travel plan didn't be spoiled.

I've moved into my new house in Boston, which is much bigger and prettier than my previous place.  I love it.  It was so messy before I moved in.  As you know, I am a person who loves cleaness, so I cleaned it and rearranged the furniture a little bit.  That's how it looks like right now.

It's been five days since I got back to Boston from LA with a wonderful trip with my boy friend.  This was one and half fantastic yet busy month for me.  First of all, two of my best friends, 秋樺 and 怡鈴 came to visit me in mid-April.  We went to Florida, Disney land, Miami beach and US southest sinking island - Key West.  Three of us had experienced sooooo much, which couldn't be forgotten forever, I believe.

Beginning from a careless mistake, I missed them in the NWR airport and ended up spending a night in the nearest hotel.  I remembered I was so helpless crying in the airport.  In order to wait for them, I missed my flight, and what's even worse was there were NO any other flights flying to Florida at that night, which meant I got to find a hotel to sleepover in New Jercy.  That was so horrible!  Fortuntely, I succefully met them the next day.  We rent a car but made it exchanged everyday, so we had a different car to drive everyday, from a compact to a SUV and then to a compact again.  Our car got towed, so we paid extremely expensive $200 dollars to take it back.  We didn't know how to pay the toll on the highway so we just slowly drove through it.  We were so worried about getting the ticket as we didn't know how huge money we were gonna pay?  The most scary thing was putting the diesel into gas tank which damaged the engine terribly.   We got stuck in a huge parking lot at 2:00 in the morning where nobody was there.  You can't imagine how terrified of us.  It's so late.  We were dared not to get out of the car.  Hopefully, a patrol police car passed by so they came for help.  Thanks godness!  We bought a full coverage insurance, otherwise we got to pay $300 to tow the car.  It's gonna cost us as mush as a thousand US dollars to fix it.  We were so lucky, otherwise we got to stay in America, washing dishes for years and years to pay the debt.

Yes, "the things you don't get - those lessons are sometimes more valuable than the ones you do get."
It's a so valuable American interviewing experience.  Thinking it's also a part of my US advanture, right?

I experienced so much and learned a very authentic American business culture - the relationship between employee and employeer is really FAIR.  They don't like to take advatage of employees, just not like Taiwan.

I never thought that "overqualified" would be a problem in my life, but it did happen!   Why I can't do an easy and simple job??   Yesterday I had an interview with Philip for a web developement Internship position.  The result came out not very positive.   Okay, anyway, it doesn't matter at all, since I already have a job offer, which means I still can remain in so beautiful Boson area.  Go get some professional suits and outfit for yourself!!

Ha, it has long been my dream in my life, wearing high-heel shoes with business suit and briefcase. I dreamed about that since I was in my teenage. 

Tomorrow I will meet up with 怡鈴&秋樺 and start our wonderful vacation in Florida 

I GOT A JOB OFFER!!  Oh my god!  I am freaking out!   I am sooooooo excited!!

Now I don't need to worry about my job any more.  I don't need to do worse case scenario - looking for a language school.  I can go back to my regular life schedule - learning things that i am really interested in -language, going to the gym(although I just went one time, I've decided I'll go more in the futre), going to parties and hanging out in Boston!

That company called Boston Solutions Internationl (http://www.bsiboston.com/) is a premiere oursourced sales and marketing firm in the Greater Boston area.  They have provided promotional and sales support for Fortune 500 companies such as Sprint, AT&T, Energy America, Stamps.com, American Express, AOL TimeWarner and Verizon.  The client i'm gonna to work with is Verizon, a telecom company with a monopolistic position in Massachusetts with 80% market share.   I, as a Verizon's Account Representative, have to visit their clients, most of whom are small and medium businesses, in person and across sell more products to them.