Having Fun Reading Textbooks!
Two weeks have passed since autumn quarter began. I was mostly immersed in books and companies’ information sessions. Well, let’s first talk about books.
I can still remember how resentful I was towards my undergraduate English teacher when she assigned us an entire English novel to read for that semester. So you can imagine how I feel now when I have to read English books at a one-book per one-week rate. But this does prove one thing: Impossible is nothing.
I have to admit that I read books slowly. It’s not because I can’t understand them but because I always think too much, which often gets me out of the original train of thought. But on the other hand…this is more fun! You will see how this happened.
1. By reading Brace E. Kaufman’s The Origins and Evolution of the Field of Industrial Relations in the United States, I knew that The Hawthorne experiment told us that an employee’s productivity is strongly related to his or her emotional state, his/her attitude towards work and relationship with coworkers and supervisors. What about us in daily life? For me, when I am being positive and joyful, I finish my assigned readings faster, stay awake in the library all day long, speak English confidently and even am able to recite the No.18 COTA bus schedule. But when I am upset, hanging around and doing nothing for several days is common and going to Kroger without my wallet happens like clockwork. This is why some say that EQ is much more important than IQ. A high EQ means better ability to control one’s emotional state, which results in longer times of high performance while a high IQ merely means one’s ability to do things in excellence.
2. When I read about a paragraph in Jim Collins’ Good to Great, I was surprisingly enlightened:
The good-to-great companies had no name, tag line, launch event, or program to signify their transformations. Indeed, some reported being unaware of the magnitude of the transformation at the time…they produced a truly revolutionary leap in results, but not by a revolutionary process.
I used to think that the most important thing should be exams or final interviews which directly lead to the best possible result. Well, I was wrong. Not only me but anyone who expects a monumental single moment to cause success is wrong. What really makes the difference is your day-to-day effort. So even being be admitted by one of the best business schools like Fisher is not the moment you become successful. What matters most is how you spend your time here. Your daily schedule and efforts have the secret code that reveals your future. Be alert!
Those are typical cases how I lose my train of thought when reading textbooks … don’t be like me! :-)
JT Chen