Sincerest apologies for "ghosting" you all these last few weeks. Contrary to most instances of "ghosting", I have a legitimate reason for doing so. For the last two weeks, not only have I been under fire from unceasing Flagship midterms but also the burgeoning pressures of securing an internship in SH within the next two months.
Let me begin this rant with the Flagship Midterms, which was composed of three midterms, two of which were split into two parts. The first wave was the 写作课 (composition class) exam. This name can be quite misleading as we do much more than write, which brings me to our first midterm: a mock interview. We submitted an example internship position to our main teacher, depending on our major and interests, and they prepared/ customized interview questions to ask us on the day of our interview. Of course, we had to keep in mind to cater our delivery of a Tell Me About Yourself and our answers to Chinese interviewers, the parts played by a panel of four of our teachers. To sum it up, we had to be extremely humble, courteous and not as direct as we usually would be. I scored extremely well on this portion of the composition class, and was praised by the head teacher during a class meeting held after finals week (yes!!). The second half of this course's exam was the written portion. We wrote to: describe pieces of art, express gratitude for receiving a second place reward, decrypt lengthy Chinese phrases, and last but hopefully not least, use sophisticated Chinese to outline our personality. The written test lasted 100 minutes, most of which consisted of fighting off hand cramps.
The 传媒课 (media course) exam was also composed of a written and spoken test. The written one was simple enough; the teacher played a total of eight varying news reports, anything ranging from politics to environmental problems, that we had to watch and answer questions from. The rest of it was reading reports and answering corresponding questions. The spoken part was my absolute favorite part. We chose a hot news topic to write a six to ten minute speech on and presented it to the class. I did mine on the Belt Road Initiative and more specifically the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
The last part of the exam was for my 优化课 (Optimization? No easy translation for these words) class. We memorized classic, traditional poems and explain their meanings, however abstract and vague they were, using Chinese idioms. Then, the teacher conducted a mock OPI. We discussed topics ranging from playing soccer to artificial intelligence.
On top of the exams, we had a separate OPI exam that lasted about an hour where we, like the 优化课 exam, dove into multiple topics and discussed them in detail.
Since, I've already taken up a chunk of your day and this page, I will save the discussion about the difficulties and minor successes of my search for an internship for another day.
In Chinese face reading, they say that long eyebrow hair is often associated with an innovative mind. This is the face of innovation my friends.