Pathway Reflection (Revision)

CHENGDE CAO

PROV 502

Instructor: Emma Cutrufello

Due time: 3/16/2016

I have been a student at George Mason University Pathway Program for almost two semesters and during this period, I have acquired various knowledge that I have never knew before. I would like to be a good consultant manager in the future, so I decided to come to this university for further study in management. Due to my lack of background knowledge, I am required to take Pathway program and meet the Into Mason’s requirement. Pathway Program provides us with EAP, PROV and discipline courses. On the one hand, those academic courses like EAP and PROV helps us not only to improve our ability of writing and language skills, but also to overcome our adjustment issues. On the other hand, discipline courses help us compensate our lack of background of our discipline so that it’s better for our future discipline study.

As management students, I do believe, we should perceive several necessary skills for our future career, such as good communication skills, understanding culture differences and leadership. For example, without any doubt, in your future work environment, you will meet with different sorts of people who have various personalities, and it’s not always easy dealing with different personality types. Different people need different ways to communicate. So you should have good communication skills so that you can be a good manager to manage a company which has many employees. In addition, understanding culture differences is also important, when we work for multinational company, we must have to serve many clients from different countries. Without the understanding culture difference, you will never know the appropriate cooperation methods. What is worse, you could make the company a great loss. For instance, American business man do not like to be dilatory on business, instead, they prefer to get straight down to business. If you deal with them in an indirect way, they may not be willing to establish business relationship with your company. Moreover, in terms of cultural difference, I would like to stress that American people care about rules, and they do everything in rules. If you work not strictly according to the rubric, American clients will feel you are not reliable at all so that they would not like to do business with you.

As I mentioned before, during pathway, I do learn a lot from those courses. In EAP class, honestly, it’s my first time to have class in form of discussion. I can hear everyone’s voice and gather their own various opinions which could stimulate my potential of critical thinking. I can express myself without any worries, because there are no right or wrong answers. I feel that I become more critical after reading each EAP article every time. Furthermore, I realized that the professors who selected these articles really would like to make efforts to help international students just like us to overcome our academic adjustment as soon as possible. In PROV class, the professor also would like to help us with our adjustment issues, however, adjustment issues include not only academy, but also society. For example, in this class, I got a better understanding on plagiarism system in America. Besides, I also know how to use campus resources. In second semester, I learned how to write resume, cover letters and statement of purpose. In Statistics course and Accounting course, I am equipped with basic business knowledge. I know how to use data to analyze a practical business problem and make a better decision by statistics. Also, currently, I can make financial statement and understand the meaning of different sheets. Although we do not learn as deep as accounting student, we can still apply this knowledge in our future career.

Honestly, to become successful, there is a long way to go. It’s wise of me to learn from each other`s strong points to make up for my shortcomings. I hope that I can possess a stable personality and ability of solving problems with calmness. Also, I should participate more activities and establish relationship with local students to enrich my life and help me solve the adjustment issues. I do believe I will make a great progress in the future.