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Thinking back to the end of June, I remember bits of the contents of my interview. My interviewer asked of my expectations and desires for this program. So, clearly money was part of my reason for applying to a paid internship, however, I’d also hoped for experience and exposure to the working world. I honestly think that saying I got more than what I bargained for is a huge understatement. The Professional Development series, PD, gathers all the participants from every worksite once a week for three hours. During these sessions, we share our experiences, share our experiences, listen to others, expose ourselves to things outside of our comfort zones and most of all, learn. Although venturing outside our comfort zones proves immensely difficult, I appreciate improving on such tasks like public speaking.

As mentioned before, at PD, we are encouraged to leave our comfort zones and explore, this applies in terms of people as well. We are encouraged to meet and connect with everyone in the room, as they will be our network. Aside from leaving our comfort zones, we are presented many professional skills and concepts such as learning to present and introduce ourselves, to ask questions to improve the accuracy and perfection of our work and to give a good first impression. We are taught to capitalize on our strengths and improve them so that they nullify our weaknesses. Most recently, we have been taught to write a resume and cover letter. A resume documents and displays all of your achievements and experiences in appropriate fields. A cover letter is the front page of the book that is your resume. It is your introduction, your attention grabber and most importantly, it is your first impression. You’d judge a book by it’s cover like you’d judge a resume by it’s cover letter. Although we all know to not judge a book by it’s cover, in reality, everyone judges the appearances to determine whether or not it be deemed worthy of their time. This without a doubt, links back to the stressing on first impressions from PD.

After you create an ideal first impression, then comes the necessity to keep a clean reputation. From that, it is taught that social media plays a role in your reputation. It may harm or benefit you, more so, harm. As a daily user of social media, the thought of the mistakes I may have made remaining permanent and exposable frightens me. Events that you may have no remembered even occurred are capable of costing you your job. Although I recall no inappropriate posts, I definitely take this into deep consideration.   

All of these skills taught at professional development connect together as if a puzzle. Before you climb a mountain, you train. Before you run a marathon, you train. You train yourself physically and mentally to take on unfamiliar tasks if you wish to succeed. My perception of SYCEP is a training camp to prepare and help develop us into youth with awareness of the working world. We will be able to survive and thrive in the working world. We are instructed of the dos and don’ts of the working world. Everything taught at PD, beginning from introductions to cover letters set us ahead of others and I greatly appreciate being accepted to an internship in which I get paid, not only in cash but also the valuable information to succeed in life.  

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SYCEP Week 3 ok

From the beginning, I doubted the strengthsquest and every other test that claims its ability to define you. Tests, such as these were categorized along with horoscopes for me. You would be given a report that gives a lot of general statements that apply to a large amount of people. You would notice one relatable statement and convince yourself the readings are true. I would normally never bring myself to even start it if it wasn’t required for professional development #2.

Deliberative, restorative, achiever, input and adaptability were the strongest qualities the strengthsquest assumed of me. Spotting “achiever” instantly confused and disturbed me as the “achiever” I had grown up recognizing was an ideal individual who would strive in school, sports, programs; life. That student who constantly challenged himself to accomplish feats beyond the average teenagers’s capabilities, That student that, in place of rejoicing over scoring 90, fell disappointed in himself for not having a high A. That student that defined the grade A as average. I decided to read the signature theme reports as an attempt to clearly understand my given themes.(I didn’t know what Deliberative meant :C)

From reading the report for “Achiever”, I had an internal debate on whether or not I accept it as a strength. Overall, I concluded that being an achiever is not identified by the accomplishments you “achieve”, rather, one is considered an achiever from the flame that drives them to achieve. Although I rarely view myself as someone who “tries too hard”, I do recognize that I have an odd drive that fuels me to get my schoolwork done. Even though my thoughts on these tests stand firm, I do accept the report for “achiever”.

Another theme that caught my attention was “input”. My perception of the word “input” was one who speaks their thoughts and contributes. Putting in, input. The definition supplied by Gallup stated that “input” meant to be a collector, a sponge which soaks up anything, materialistic or information. Oddly enough, I found myself able to relate and connect to the report. From reading each of the reports for my given themes, I find myself connecting to each and learning more about myself even if they are broad and general statements.

From professional development #2, I remember an activity where we had to ask around and list ten others’ strengths with the perks and challenges of that strengths. One of the strengths of another made me sprout a strong appreciation for one of mine. Backing up a little, prior to the activity, we were all told that “the best of the best are able to use their strengths to make up for their weaknesses.” Everyone has weaknesses and a situation where someone is strong in may be a situation that you are weak in. The strength “Futuristic” that one of the other students had made me appreciate my strength “Adaptability”. Being futuristic means being thoughtful of your future. I recall that being futuristic sets you ahead and gives you a strong idea of where you want to be in life but is stressing and hard to think about.

From reading the report for adaptability here: “You live in the moment. You don’t see the future as a fixed destination. Instead, you see it as a place

that you create out of the choices that you make right now. And so you discover your future one

choice at a time. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have plans. You probably do.” -ADAPTABILITY, GALLUP Strengths Finder I developed a strong appreciation for what I recognized helped me “counter” or make up for a weakness of mine, thinking of the future. I learned that although I am weak at planning ahead and thinking ahead of my time, I can carry that weight with adapting and working in the present.  richardmai

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WEEK 2 SYCEP

As I have said in the earlier blog post, I am assigned to Journey Home as an assistant. The moment the day began I was faced with twenty-four Vietnamese students either around my age or older. At the beginning of the day, everyone was assigned a “buddy”. By my supervisor, I was told to record every pair of buddies and thus, I was challenged by my first issue. Because everyone but the buddies forgot who had been assigned who, I had to go around asking the students who their buddies were. Some were shy, some hid their name tags, and most had Vietnamese names. The task proved difficult as expected, even when they did tell me their name and their partner, I ended up misspelling just about every name. I spelled it as it was pronounced; I spelled Cuong as Gung. At the end of the day, everyone would give their name and a word representing how they felt for the day. Again, I was asked to record this and again, I mispelled just about every single name. Of Course, writing the names down, I was not aware of my mistakes but my supervisors kindly explained and helped me fix it.   I find my worksite extremely rewarding in various ways. As a facilitator in Journey Home, I am supplied a large amount of time to spectate. Very often do I find myself learning as if I were a Journey Home student myself. Watching the presentations and listening to the lectures do benefit me as I feel it is giving me a retouch on history. However, the most valuable reward I have discovered from spectating hails from watching the leads JVL, Vi, Duong and Nancy. They form a very strong team that relies on each other and watches each other. They notice and accept their strengths and weaknesses. They plan out a schedule for each day beforehand and are immensely strong at improvising when they have extra time or their plans are off schedule. What attracts my attention the most is the effective interactive methods they create to demonstrate concepts to the youth., They create activities and workshops to connect history to concepts that apply to daily life today. They are exceptionally strong at time management, demonstrating lectures through workshops and controlling the youth. I do believe that watching the leads will give me a head start to becoming a teacher and that the challenges I face are without a doubt, worth the reward. From professional development #1, there were also interesting workshops to demonstrate certain concepts. One of the memorable ones consisted of having partners sit at opposite sides of the table separated by folders. One would describe a picture and the other would draw it, later on, the one who drew it from description would try to ask pictures to match the first partner's picture. What I got from this was that you should ask as many questions as you need to get a result close to your supervisor's expectations. Relating this to my worksite, there was this one time when Duong asked me to cut out butcher paper, write “concept” on it and hang it up. The paper I had hung up did not match what he wanted because he wanted “concept” going across the top and to have it hang down like a banner. I hung up a paper horizontally with “concept” at the top center”. The skill from PD#1  applied to my situation and I refer back to it when I am instructed with unspecific instructions. Although it was not a huge deal, I do look upon it for future reference. Richard

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Week 1 SYCEP

My name is Richard Mai. I am sixteen years of age and born in Philadelphia. Although I am Chinese American, my family and I are most comfortable speaking Taishanese, a very subservient dialect in China; unlike the dominant Mandarin and Cantonese. Being born and raised in Philadelphia, I have never experienced difficulties interacting with anyone capable of speaking English, however, due to the unpopular form of Chinese my family speaks, I feel foreign trying to communicate with Chinese people. Acknowledging this weakness, I tried to expand and pushed myself to enroll in a Mandarin summer school program. I am also currently taking Mandarin as a language course in high school. Despite my efforts, I still wouldn’t consider myself fluent in Mandarin.

My sister introduced me to SYCEP 2015 and encouraged me to apply myself more and participate in programs that would further me in life and thus, I did. I was informed that SYCEP is similar to YPOP and would operate in English. Knowing that, I felt a slight relief that disappeared when I discovered I was assigned workshop Journey Home assistant. Journey Home is a program to educate and train Vietnamese teenagers/young adults and operates in Viet. So indefinitely, a language barrier proves itself to be a problem in my life once again. Being unable to speak and understand the language is not the only problem, I anticipate that I will have difficulty remember and pronouncing everyone’s names as well. I emailed my supervisor, Duong, informing him about my inability to speak and understand Viet.

Clearly, the language barrier is one of my largest concerns, however working and interacting in a professional manner with people is outside of anything I have done as well. I have little to no work experience as this is my first job. I have hardly any connections with acquaintances that have experience working before, so I decided to ask my dad.

As I interviewed my dad, he told me stories about how hard it was for him in his working environment. My dad hardly knew English because he immigrated to America. At work, he could barely communicate with his coworkers and his Chinese coworkers would look down upon him because he wasn’t from the same area of China as them; in other words, he was foreign. His resolution was by doing everything expected of him and more. He would set such a high standard for the workers that everyone envied him when he was promoted. The advice he repeated to me consisted of minding my manners, attitude, and respecting everyone. My dad told me that respect and manners are capable of penetrating the language barrier and it is even more so necessary to display myself with actions if I cannot with words.

From all the knowledge I have soaked up, I can conclude and summarize how I should behave. I feel much more confident in my ability to paint a vivid respectful first impression and to maintain the reputation. I plan on maintaining a positive attitude and making the best out of my job and value my achievements and correcting and apologizing for my mistakes. Regardless of the problematic language barrier, I will do my best.

 Richard Mai