Skip to main content

Be an Eagle, Not a Chicken!--What I hope to learn in CS3216

When I was little, I saw a father in a river town teach his kid how to swim. The father dragged his kid to the middle of the river, and then swam away. Helplessly, the kid cried out. Not until the kid could make another sound, his whole body had already sunk underwater. The father did nothing but watch his kid struggling. The kid desperately flapped his hands and legs for survivor. Gradually, the kid was able to take a short breath. It was not long before his body sunk underwater again. Once his month gets out of the river, he kept on yelling for help or scoring his father. However, the father did not swim close, nor did he allow anyone to help. Before long, the kid struggled to the bank, keeping on crying and scoring on the father. Something magic happened the next time we met the boy. He can swim really fast, even faster than guys with life buoys. The boy swam among the fastest ever since and he was the youngest among those swimming peers. CS3216 is like a special swimming lesson that we are all dragged to the middle of the river by Prof. Leong and then pick up the surviving skills by ourselves along the way. It was the native way for teaching swimming in a river town which proved to one of the most efficient and effective. It's not about how beautiful your swimming pattern looks, but more about how proficient one can master the skills and whether one can save himself or other people's lives.
There was a saying that"you've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down".There is no other way to master a technique but to try it out by ourselves. There is no better way to train a great leader than pushing him under a very tough circumstance.
  • It's not really about intelligence, but about mindset.
  • It's not really about playing it safe, but about taking the challenge. 
  • It's not really about learning something, but about making decisions.
I'm sure I can learn a lot along the way, teamwork, time management, stress control,etc. But compared with the initiative I take and the courage I make to take the challenge, I think everything else is secondary. 
 

 I don't want to be a chicken. I'd rather jump off the cliff and FLY before I die.

Comments

  1. benleong12 August 2011 at 03:12

    Very good, glad you figured out that it's about mindset even before you attended the first lecture.

    You have won half the battle already. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shao12 August 2011 at 22:39

    Thank you, I'll try my best!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Imagine I will read it in 5 years(part II)

It is a war and those who fight and survive might become heroes of tomorrow. Top inspirations I learned from this crisis are as follows: 1. As a company or a government, risk management is super important. Those who manage the risks well and planned ahead could possibly overcome hard times and survive strong. One of the key principles for risk management is to distribute the risks over multiple buckets. To a B2B business or country, the key competitiveness would lie in supply chain management, getting the right suppliers and deliver to the end buyers. In the past, the key decision will be primarily influenced by the cost factor. In a low-risk environment, it would be fine. However, in a high-risk environment, this may break, and cost could be much less a factor than the following two factors: The reliability of the supplier The alternative choices in case of the supply chain breakdown. This reminds me of the fruits suppliers in SG's supermarkets. Even for oranges, it c...
3 comments
Read more

IPAD/FB Seminar- Thoughts on Pulse News

Monday's presentation was full of interesting sparks. Of all the eleven teams, only one chose to present FB app, which is Sims Social. The others all chose to present ipad apps. That's not so surprising as Ipad(Tablets) is the most recent platform and there are a lot of blank spaces for us to fill in. The ten ipad apps shared in the seminar covers various fields like e-payment, news-media, education. What surprised me most is that many of us find education a very promising area for mobile app development...As ipads are being utilized as an educational tools in various educational levels, education is really going to be a great pie. Wait, I need to finish comments for my assigned app first. Pulse News, a news media app with good social features. News media are getting more social and mobile and probably "cloudy" in the recently years. Organizing news media contents can be a promising area since there are always interesting things happening around and people just have...
9 comments
Read more

Pause and Retrospect

I recently enjoyed a swift lunch with an old friend, who was once my roommate during our school years. We had an in-depth conversation about life and career. To my mind, his thought process is far more mature than mine, and his decisions seem more future-oriented. Although our conversation was private, I believe certain insights should be shared with a broader audience. 1. The Role of Luck in Life.  His life experiences have significantly highlighted the impact of luck. While I'm not ready to accept this fully, similar sentiments have been echoed by other successful and wise individuals I've interacted with. I also recently watched an informative video that lucidly explains the 80/20 rule and the principle of luck. The video demonstrates through "agent-based modelling" how the wealthiest person isn't necessarily the most talented but is usually someone of average talent who encounters multiple lucky events in life.  I agreed that luck indeed plays a vital role and...
Post a Comment
Read more