So this week all the students in the flagship program had to pick their classes for the semester, and since they are all in Chinese and unlike any classes we've ever taken before, we had to sit in on them to see if they were something we were interested in/ could handle. So this week I sat in on 管理冲突与沟通 managing conflict and communication， 当代中国经济问题研究 research on economic problems in contemporary Chinese economy，发展中国经济 developing Chinese economy，网站设计 website design, and 投资项目评估 investment project appraisal。当代中国经济问题研究 research on economic problems in contemporary Chinese economy was a master class, in fact, it was the first masters class I've ever taken and it was taught in Chinese. Basically what happened was I almost lost it in the first 30 minutes. Two students went up one at a time in the beginning of class and each gave a 15 minute presentation on their research into a certain aspect of that week's topic, graphs, statistics, own findings and all, oh and in rapid fire mandarin. I then turned to the student next to me and asked what was going on and she said that every week, the teacher will send the class next week's topic and every single student must prepare a 15 minute presentation on their research on the given topic. The catch is that only 2 students will do the actual presentation, and they find out the night before. Afterwords, the assistant teacher will call on 5 random students to either comment or question on the topic. Of course, if you're unprepared, you get major points deducted. So in that frenzy of my first day in a masters class I made a friend, because she was panicking as hard as I was, because they were all first year masters students and not used to this either. Besides this class, another class that interested me was 投资项目评估 investment project appraisal because the class was taught in Chinese and some english was used to make sure the international students were on the same page (there were 7 of us). All in all this was a good experience because I got to feel was it was like to take a business course in Chinese, experience my first master's class, and make a Chinese friend. Good week I'd say!
