The story of cover: Dunning-Kruger effect
When I write this, it’s thursday of the first week in QUT. Personally, I think it’s not successful. I made a review for myself, and I hope I can avoid the same mistakes.
# Help yourself first
The one of main differences between university in China and Australia is that you have more extent of freedom. You can design your own timetable, and there are more events for different people, but most important thing is you need to look for help by yourself.
Although QUT provides a lot of useful resources and help, before you get in, you need to know:
- what’s your problem
- which help do you need
They expect more on you come for them if you need help rather than they come for you.
You need to diagnose yourself first, and that’s one of reasons why I write this.
# Know my position
Just as mentioned, there are many events in the campus, and they are valuable for students, but more importantly, they are not valuable for everyone.
Because of invitation from others, I always choose to attend the event without any information about the details of the event.
When I realize the event is not for me, I have already wasted time there.
For example, there is a programming event for people who has no experience for programming, but I attended it, and watch the tutorial which teach how to write variable/condition statement/loop, which knowledge I have already known.
I think that I can change my planned timetable easily, which means I don’t know my position clearly. In other words, at anytime,I need to know what I should do now and what I should do next.
But whatever, thanks for invitations!
# English
English problem is bigger than I thought, especially on listening.
Recently I understood why study abroad is hard for international student who never leave their home country.
Most of my classmates have study abroad background/native English environment/experience of growing in English speaking country, which means they can understand what the tutor said without any pressure.
Luckily, I have background on IT industry, for now, most of content in courses I have already studied, so I can learn from the slides. Of course, I can’t let the situation continue.
I summarized my problems:
- I will say OK or other no meaning word to reply the sentence I don’t understand or cannot recognize rather than make them speak it again
- I cannot recognize indian accent
- I always try to translate content word by word in my mind rather than understanding in the context
- Using too much chinese in English learning
Here’s my solution:
- just ask the unkown part in conversation
- make more india friends, and talk with them.
- watch more English youtuber, try to understand all content with subtitles
- try to explain English term in English, decrease the portion of Chinese in my daily life
Maybe most important thing is I need to give myself more acknowledgement.