The World is Mine!

Watch your thoughts: They become your words.

Watch your words: They become your actions.

Watch your actions: They become your habits.

Watch your habits: They become your character.

Watch your character: It becomes your destiny.

 Zen Buddism saying

How I already made it…

My own life experience of immigration proves that I’m capable of reaching any goals that I establish for myself. To start with, I’m one of those examples who had 99% probability to be rejected on their application for a visa to America. I was rejected twice. My friends and my family told me to give up my dreams about America and just do the best I could in Belarus. However, because of my interest in Human and Minority rights, I was invited to the venue in New York. When I came to America almost three years ago with 168$ in my pocket, no acquaintances and no place to stay, and hardly any English, I made it clear for myself that I will make the best out of that experience. 

The thing is I didn’t know how I was going to make it. I knew that I would have to work very hard without any guarantee of success. I knew that I would have to give out golden years of my youth in exchange of work that sometimes lasted up to 16 hours. This is going to be a little strange to hear, but I didn’t really know HOW I was even going to make it …But, a few weeks after I settled down in Brooklyn my friend took me for a ride to Manhattan. While passing by the mesmorising lights of Manhattan, I was telling myself that in a year or two I would live in the middle of the city, go to school, have a great career and a family of course. 

To make the story short, after envisioning myself in the city, a few weeks later I found a truly wonderful opportunity to live in a big soho-like loft and pay very decent rent to my roommate, who I became a very good friend with. I also went to school, despite the fact that the required TOEFL-score of 105 seemed to be unachievable for many of my friends, I got 99 after 1 year in America. I do work on my career in the field of finance and already have a proposal for a 3 months summer internship next year.

How I’m going to make it…

Be a respectable professional.

Currently, I’m a junior at Baruch College, pursuing a degree in finance. New York is a great place to launch a career in the field, as well as be promoted (unlike other countries where discrimination still exists) and I’m going to do my best to be successful at my job. Although I find area of investment banking very attractive one (good compensation, lots of traveling, high pressure environment) I also consider an option to work in financial department for a global organization with a good cause, such as UN, World Bank, European Bank of Reconstruction and Development etc. 

I think that it would be a very interesting experience to either intern in a such organization or work for it. To obtain the goal I have to be highly academically achieved (GPA higher than 3.6), have related experience (internship), and just be well rounded (read newspapers, do extracurricular activities, network). Currently I’m working on each one of these points. To wrap up, no matter whether it will be just a regular financial institution or an institution with a good cause, I want to have an executive position in it, because I am able to manage successfully a lot of things in my life on my own, and in a similar manner I can manage others.

Help Children.

Another reason why I want to have an executive position is because power and money give access to certain people and resources, which may change one’s life. I had experience of working with problematic kids for the Chernobyl Children Project International and I would be glad to improve lives of children in the Eastern Europe. My main focus will be on improvement of conditions of orphanages. I will also devote certain amount to the program that will help qualified families (who have good characteristics but can’t have children for a biological or financial reason) take kids from the orphanages and be paid for that.

Family and…hmm.. French Bulldog or Doberman?

I also want to have a big family and ultimately this is a goal for me. Why? New York is a strange city: although it makes a transition for foreigners nice and smooth, it seems like a lot of people are disconnected and lonely in the city. Therefore, my wish is to have a caring husband, many kids and a dog, of course. I'm currently involved in romantic relationship with someone...we'll see how it goes)

An apple a day keeps a doctor away.

Another goal of mine is to stay healthy and be in a good shape. I excersise a few times a week, do yoga. I also eat a lot of raw food, mostly vegetables and fruit, and occasionally fish. I also want to sign up for martial arts. Anyone is interested?

Get ready to…jump!

Oh yes, and last but not the least goal in this very short list (the professor only asked for 5, right?) to get a license in skydiving. I have a special feeling for skydiving. For some people it’s one of the scariest experiences, but for me – it’s a very peaceful and relaxing activity. I’m only 23 tandems (have done it twice this September) away from my license. Next year I’m planning to do 10 - 12 jumps (you can do two, or even three jumps in one day) next year. I hope I will not get bored on the 15^th time.

Finally, what I found interesting, is that when you truly wish something, things do happen. At least that works for me. As simple as it sounds, don’t be afraid to ask for too much and don’t be shy to think that you do not deserve something.

Never exhaust one's kindness...

It truly was an unforgettable class. We only had twenty or so minutes to improve our final grade for the midterm. When the professor mentioned that my classmates had to agree on one decision, I thought that it was impossible task to accomplish. But we made it. Yet, even though the plan of the final change of everyone’s grade was not perfect, the experience of negotiation was precious.

My management class represents a high power group, and the main role of the leader was to facilitate decision making among the people. After the discussion started, two people took the initiative to facilitate dialogue among the members of the group. However, soon after listening to each other some people started yelling at each other. The process was getting out of control. It was the first time for me to negotiate something in such a big group of people under a very limited time frame. It kind of “killed” my confidence and my faith to win in this process (to deliver a balanced decision that would meet interests of everyone), and soon after starting the negotiation as compete-to-win participant I found myself as a collaborator.

It was challenging for me, because I have never had a problem of expressing my point of view in front of a big group of people. I also have never had a problem with either being a leader or being leaded by someone. In our classroom, however, there were no single significant leader at the moment. There were a few people (including me) who actively participated in the process, but no one could be called a leader at the moment. Even the person (thank to him) writing ideas on the board didn’t have the full authority over the group and was attacked a few times. Under the time pressure the situation was becoming ugly as some students were too aggressive in attacking those ones who were against the final plan or just didn’t want to vote because they didn’t have a full understanding of the proposal and it’s consequences.

My transformation from compete-to-win participant into a collaborator occurred after I made an attempt to explain everyone the importance of extra credit assignment using very simple statistics. To me, prove the importance of all options was obvious, as the calculation of the grade including curve and extra credit was very simple. The reality test showed that math was not the best argument for the group. Or may be I wasn’t eloquent enough. I went back, took my seat and realized that once you believe that your idea is workable, but no one supports it, you don’t want to be active anymore. You just want to let the whole process go.

In a similar manner international students kept silent on the issue of keeping the essay as a part of the second test. I know that for American students essays are almost never a problem. Unlike them, I, however, sometimes have a very hard time putting all my thoughts on the paper and spend time not on developing an idea, but rather finding the best way to express myself. Therefore, silence of international students in regard to the essay question was hard for me to understand. 

However, despite all disagreements the final decision was made. And I think that it was a fair decision. Not every professor would agree to the terms that we offered: 10-points curve, plus 10 points extra assignment, plus drop the lowest grade for the quiz. Someone in the class said that it was our chance to shine. I agree that it was a possibility for us to bust our grades and argue for additional 10 points for the extra credit assignment. But how fair would that be??? I know that limiting oneself is not the right thing to do when it comes to achieving a goal (such as a good average grade after the discussion). But asking too much is another dilemma. No doubt the test was hard, but it would definitely motivate us to study for the next one. Additional 10 points of the extra credit would bring everyone in the high nineties and half of the class will not study for the second exam and possible fail final exam (which is cumulative, if I’m not mistaken).

Someone said that one should never be afraid to ask for too much or aim high, because even if you don’t reach as high as you wanted, you would still reach higher than you planned. However, you should never exhaust someone’s kindness (as in professor Kupris’ case), because favor can easily turn into one’s dissaproval.

An Egg with a Character

Majority of us have an opportunity to explore their skills not only in class where the assignment is to create a perfect case to deliver an egg but in every day life. Assuming that very often we lead and manage people, we all should be experienced enough to work well in a group. So why then the assignment to construct a perfect case for the egg was so challenging? Was it because the members of the group had little information about each other’s background and skills? Or was it because the task was challenging? Or may be the reason was lack of experience in creating the structure? I will try to address these questions further in this text.

In the planning process we went through a few stages. First, we defined our goal – to deliver the egg and not to break it. The objective was to construct a perfect case so that the egg will remain unbroken after the case hits the ground. Another objective was to use the material that we were given as more efficient as possible. Finally, meeting the deadlines was one of the most important parts of the assignment, so we got that under control as well.

In the second stage of the planning process we were trying to find out each other’s skills in order to assess the different parts of the assignment. The biggest strength of my group I think was desire to work effectively on the project under pressure. The weakness, I guess was lack of engineering skills and absence of similar project experience in the past. Some of us had basic understanding of how physics works with gravity and mass. But it didn’t matter that much for our assignment. Therefore, our weakness didn’t really hold us back because in this particular case knowledge was not as important as desire of a group to work together.

As far as I remember, we didn’t develop an alternative plan. We had two designs that differed a bit. But after discussing each one of them for five minutes we picked up one . I don’t remember our group thinking about an alternative. And I guess that is partially why we didn’t accomplish the result. There hardly was a moment when we would stop and think “Hey, this is not going to work, what are we going to do?” Unfortunately, we faced exactly the same situation when our planned design lacked the required material. While constructing the case it appeared that 8 straws would not make the design, which we wanted. Luckily, we figured out a solution right away and made some adjustments to our design.

We also didn’t really discuss who was going to be responsible for what. But there’s a reason for that. Since the assignment didn’t (from the first look) require very complex design, estimations and activity (glue the straws to each other, cut the paper etc.) we didn’t really assess different tasks to different people. Indeed, why would you decide who is going to hold egg or straws, who is going to cut the straws or glue them to each other, who will draw the design? And I realize that it was one of our biggest mistakes. Had we done this, the group would work more efficiently.

We also didn’t revise the plan. I think that it’s interesting how critical we were in the beginning while discussing the designs. Once the design was chosen everyone was inspired by the awesome idea. We had some disagreements regarding the distance that the egg had to be from the walls of the case. But for the most part we were so convinced that our project would work that we didn’t hesitate to think about alternative. 

Finally, I would like to thank all the members of my team for their cooperation. I think that overall we did great. Everyone was involved. And even though the egg was broken (just a little bit) and we didn’t get 10 points of the extra credit, this experience was priceless. It was a lot of fun too!