Many think that at the end of their undergraduate lives, making use of their last summer vacation to attend a summer school or make a change in their lives is of little importance. Nevertheless, such an experience proved meaningful for me.
As a student who had earned enough credits to graduate, I needn’t completing anymore missions, but rather go on with life in the real world. Because I major in statistics and most people in our school prefer working in finances, after studying a great deal of mathematics, I decided to find out more about the financial world, which I believed, could benefit me towards choosing my future master degree. Therefore, I started my summer school with only one course on Analysis and Management of Financial Risk.
However, I found myself in such a strict environment. Without other kinds of courses to keep a balance or colorful activities to divert my attention at the foreign summer school, I had an unrestricted and intensive exposure to the field of finance and learned the relationships between various topics of study in a complete and direct manner. So the mixed feelings and conflicts tended to go out of proportion many times under the intensive study circumstances.
Spending over ten hours of study daily, as required by the course, made me clearly realize the fact that I felt uneasy learning finance. This is an extremely complex part of social sciences, which requires in-depth analytical thinking in order to be able to understand calculation and perceptual thinking to rationalize and make competent judgments. At the first half of the semester, it was more about calculation than anything else. Accordingly, I managed to understand some financial tools through their mathematical definitions and get good grades in the midterm exams. Unfortunately, my journey into the study of the financial systems became rougher half-way into the second semester.
So I asked myself, what happened. I listed three options: A. I did not concentrate on study enough or worked hard enough; B. I did not use the correct way to study; C. I did not fit with this social science course and I ended up disliking it. As a Chinese student, who had gone through a traditional Chinese education, I needed sufficient courage to put forward the third option, because in my past study, I was expected to overcome any kind of difficulties when it came to study no matter what the difficulties were. I wrote down plenty of characteristics of Finance, Mathematics and English and compared them. Hereinto, Math was what I was good at and liked, while English was what I disliked but got good grades through hard work.
After several hours of comparing, I came to a sudden realization, that if a person had to judge my hobbits by using such a complex method like setting scale, they would end up with the conclusion that I was an extremely rational person. When exposed to such a pure circumstance free of any outside pressure or interior factors such as emotion and so forth, I finally found my real self who pursued rational thinking and believed natural science was more appropriate for me. It is not about how difficult the subject really was. Just to give an example, Math, although sometimes I feel frustrated with it, I am truly in my element solving exercises and I am truly interested in the mathematical challenges. But for some subjects, including finance, I am prone to confusion regarding the analysis of social systems, which seem to be lacking the precision of an exact science. This experience helped me chose my future study and career. I am going to pursue in the direction of Statistics.
This summer, I appreciated LSE and London. Being exposed to a different culture and a different life-style provided by a foreigner summer school, actually did not always mean trying to cope with the unfamiliarity, but rather aided me to avoid future mistakes, forget some habits I was taught and leave my worries aside.
Please expose yourself to a different way of thinking and think of all the options with your own reason, especially if you are unsure which way to take in life. This way, you can make sure that your plans will not fail your dream in the future.
(Edited by Diana & Sijia Hu)
