Two "takeaways" From American Experience

 
“International Student Voice Magazine” has awarded a $500 Margaret W. Wong Scholarship to Wei Zuo. Wei, an international student from China, just completed a year of study for an MBA at The University of Findlay.  The magazine selected Wei from among 400 applicants, based in large part on an essay she wrote about her experiences at UF and in America. Her essay follows:

The Spirit of Americans

by Wei Zuo

I am a Chinese student, currently studying economics. In order to chase my dream, I came to America to study MBA. What is my dream? Of course, it is Wall Street! It is believed that working on the Wall Street is every financial man or woman’s dream. And now I am working on to get there. I want to be an excellent financial stockbroker to help more people with their wealth-management. However, I know that I still have a long distance to reach my destination. As we know there are mostly men and few women, for Chinese, it is fewer. Therefore, I am studying in the U.S. Now and become professional. I have been here for ten months. From my experience, the most useful achievement I get is not only English communication skills, but also the spirit of Americans.
On spring break, I went to the Dominican Republic with American students to do service as a volunteer. We were asked to help build a church and a bathroom. At first, I was so excited because I would like to help people and I cherished that incredible opportunity to improve myself. And then I found that the working was not as easy as I imagined. After working for the whole day, I began to feel tired. But my awesome American members, even very thin girls could lift two big bricks by themselves and felt nothing! Then I noticed that their muscular arms, I realized the importance of exercise. I never did that before; I am not used to do that. Then I conceived working in the Wall Street, if I do not have a healthy body, I do not think I can bear that heavy duty. So since then I began to workout, and now I feel better and more confident to get my career goals.
Besides that, I found that Americans do reflect every day. Every night, after working, all of my members sat together and did summary and reflection. They wrote the questions down and discussed the answers, everyone described their solutions. At first, I did not get comfortable to do that, but I understood the meaning of doing that gradually. That is a process of developing thoughts. Through asking questions, thinking and listening to others, we can figure out the solutions to fix the problems and find out the meaning of doing. I believe this custom I learned can help me go further on my career road. Because when I am working on the Wall Street, I must have miss on my job, if I can reflect myself every day, I believe that I can improve my working and help my customers more.
In a word, I learned the spirit of Americans, keeping health and reflecting every day. In my opinion, health is the foundation for a person to do everything, and reflecting is a tool to improve selves. Therefore, I believe that these two things I learned in the U.S. must be the most significant keys to help me to reach my career goal.

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