How to stay MBA 2

A Happy New Year to everyone!

First term has gone quickly and intensively. Since I could not review daily life for the period, I want to review and think about Resolutions to year 2013.

• Review of 2012
  When I come to Rady, I planed my short term 3months-goal as below. My review for each goal is…
  1. Learning US business environment and using English naturally as first language
     *40%; Development of English fluency is not as fast as I expected and have to think feasible way to improve it.
  2. Put value in each internship position
     *60%; at CONNECT, I build personal relationship with staff, developing annual report as output.
  3. Have open mind to absorb like an baby and positive attitude to contribute to discussion
     *80%
  4. Getting practical service skill(tennis)
     *30%; Though I find good coach, I couldn’t improve tennis skill so much because I failed to secure time for lesson

     Other than above, in terms of academic, I planed to get above 3.2GPA for first year. On the other hand, I fortunately could get A score in all 4 courses for Fall Term with 3.9GPA. Though GPA itself has limited meanings to me, I am satisfied with the grade compared to my undergrad GPA 2.6 since one reason of MBA is surely learning new concepts. Especially I am happy to see I get A for my favorite leadership class where 40% of grade depends on evaluation from professor and other classmates since it would be one criteria of contribution to class.

• Resolutions to year 2013
  Therefore, I hope to modify past goals, making new goal for 2013 as below. I particularly focus on 1,2, and 5.

1. Develop “emphasy to others” and “conflict management”
2. Getting paid-internship position in US without merit of skills as Japanese
3. Forgetting Japanese language to acquire English thinking process
   *Use extension course, watch News/Drama everyday, read the Economist, build vocabulary via online, and expand network to domestic friends
4. Getting high academic score(above 3.6GPA)
5. Radically improving service skill(tennis)
   *Take regularly based lesson from Todd Nelson 1~2 times per month. Also challenge tryout again to UCSD Club Tennis.

2nd day for Fulltime PreTerm 2012

Talked with Career Advisers Team whole day and then we hold social party after class, drinking beers.

In the class, I asked a couple of questions. Before join the class, I imagined there are roughly two ways for branding ourselves. 1 Speak up frequently without caring the contents/quality so much. 2 Speak up only few with notable contents. In generally, most Japanese students take second option. But I have already decided to speak up as frequently as I can since we cannot contribute the discussion without speaking up in USA. After getting used to speak up in class, I can improve my contents gradually. So, I think I took good start for these two days!

After I offered social party, 16 of 26 international students join it and just enjoyed talking. I am sure that we can gradually change classmates attitude to open-minded as I can see 3 of 12 Chinese students joined. I am happy to be a part of the Class of 2014:)

1st day for Fulltime PreTerm 2012

Finally we started orientation for international students.In the morning, we had Ice Breaker Activity, filling blank by writing classmates’ name to make “bingo”. After taking campus tour and lunch with classmates, we talked with career advisers about job-related matters.

Our Class may have about 50 students, over 50% of them are from outside USA, including Argentina, Bulgaria, China, England, Israel, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey.

My main goal for two years other than getting paid-internship position in US is build good relationship with each of students and getting high academic score say 3.5 GPA. I also want to bland myself as person who is good at networking, energetic, friendly, and confident.

But as I imagined, I find some challenge today. 12 Chinese classmates and 3 Taiwan classmate stay together all the time. I also guess American people have few intensive to get along with international students. So, I want to give influence on classmates with my friends to build class which has strong cohesion and build a cross national bridge. Anyways, it is exciting!

Las Vegas Trip

Went to Las Vegas for 2 nights.
We have party 5, Loren and Rick from America, Serkan from Torkey, Joseph from China, and I from Japan. It is super awesome experience and more than exciting to stay overnight with classmates. 5 guys board on one small-sized mustang, having only two car, for 6 hours drive. It is super hot.

We enjoyed Chinese Poker in Hotel room till 4am rather than casino since we are not rich people. Through the trip, we surely understand more than before and particularly I have confidence Loren and Rick will be my best friends despite of English barrier. We will connect domestic students with international students, building better class. I am happy to have such a nice classmates!

Tennis with classmate

Using vacant 6 beautiful courts with sunshine, I enjoyed tennis with Ichizo, Rady classmate, world class entrepreneur, and professional tennis player! Welcome to America!!!

Meeting with Mary

I met Dr. Mary Walshok, Associate Vice Chancellor for Public Programs and Dean of Extension at UCSD to get her support for Table for Two Project.

Since she is so energetic and positive, I really enjoyed talking with her, finding several shared value between us; she is Rotarian, I am currently
intern for CONNECT, which she founded in 1985, and we have a couple of common friends in San Diego.

Every her suggestion is incredibly helpful; 1)she tell me TFT has quite similar concept with Tom’s shoes, which send one pair of new shoes to children if someone buy one shoes.2)she help me find decision maker to launch up TFT for whole campus.3)she recommends to ask individual cafe/restaurant since it allow us to launch more quickly.

We still have long way to go to launch TFT on campus, but I have no doubt that TFT fits UCSD value of global justice and her network/suggestion help us lots!

Meeting with Dean Sullivan

Met Dean Sullivan of Rady to get support to Table for Two Project. He is truly gentleman and introduce me to other professor who is expert of social marketing and international project. Long way to go step by step.

 

Pro & Private Tennis Lesson 3

At, Rancho Valencia Resort and Spa, I got a private lesson by Todd Nelson, a top pro whose highest ATP world ranking is 52 in singles and 38 in doubles. He is the same generation and friend with Shuzo Matsuoka, a Japanese top pro. The fee is $80/hour and quite reasonable considering his past/present performance. Todd may be the man we should stay with!!!

MBA 事前学習2

引き続き、Radyの課題を終えました。今回はYou Tubeで公開されているExcelのTutorialsをやっといて、とのこと。といっても内容は基礎的で、Excelになじみのある人には物足りないかもしれませんが、自分としては、抜けているところの確認や、Excelの英語表現に慣れることができて、楽しみながら取り組めました。Excel Tutorials on YouTube
余談ですが、日本から持ち込んだパソコンはMS Officeが全て日本語対応だったため、英語変換用の言語パックを$25くらいでオンライン購入しました。英語バージョンに早めに慣れていこうと思います。

How to Negotiate with AT&T

This is America, a world of negotiation!
After talked 40 minutes via phone with AT&T staff, I succeeded in getting huge discount for my CATV and Internet. Monthly payment downed from $126 to $80.

• CATV: from $88/m to $52/m(start today end 12 months later)
• Internet: from $38 to $28/m(start today end 12 months later), plus free grade up to high speed one
• $30 spot discount for this month

You can see good summary about how to negotiate with cable companies here.

In my case, it works like this.

First challenge is to make phone call to “Retension Department” staff in AT&T. Unbelievably, AT&T has no E-mail/Direct Message service and I guess this is because AT&T intentionally try to avoid getting bunch of claims. Plus, they don’t disclose information about Retension Department, so everyone have to call customer service first. This is terrible. After waiting tens of minutes and called several times, wasting toll fee, I finally connected customer service staff. Since they have no power to offer promotion or discount to customers, it is waste of time to talking them.

After getting retention department staff, it goes very smooth. I just told him that “My roommate and I are thinking to leave your service if you have no special promotion to us because monthly costs seem to be too expensive compared with other service providers.” Then, he offered good promotion and I talked him for a while to get better offer.

Here in US, staying as silent customers means gradually increasing service fee. I will call them again one year later, when this special promotion finish.