Q:
What was the top one or two major actions that you took in the past 12 months in order to develop yourself? How did you identify the area(s) for improvement? What feedback did you receive?
A:
Inspired by the 2007 International Varsity Debate held by CCTV, I, as the head of social department of The Student’s Union of Hunan University, planned to organize a debating contest over economics issue to provide a platform for students around the whole university to communicate with and show their ability and talent to each other and to put what we have learned in classes into practice by analyzing the on-the-spot hot economics topics.
I picked up 5 other guys in my department to join this commission with me and assigned their duties base on their specialties and characters. One in charge of venues application, one in charge of campus advertising campaign, one in charge of inviting the panel of judges and one in charge of correspondence among schools. I, as the team leader, would take up the toughest task to attract sponsors and to find sponsorship.
The first step would be making a detailed Planning book which was to be sent to potential sponsors. To catch their eyes, I put a lot of innovative ideas in it, trying to accomplish this contest and also to promote the fund company on a win-win basis. I connected with China Unicom, Xinhua Bookstore, McDonald’s, etc. via phone and E-mail and mailed our Planning book to them in the second step, but disappointedly no reply was received. So I decided to meet the directors in person. After jogging in buses for at least two hours a day for six consecutive days, I set my target at Hewlett-Packard(HP) computer company, as their favorable intention. And only after five intense and difficult negotiations in four days, I got a 9,000 RMB sponsorship deal from HP eventually for exclusive sponsorship right. The third step, the Hunan University 2008 Debating Contest on Economics Issue came to the function part and it last for three weeks. The activity turns out to be a great success. After our omnipresent propaganda, the university’s newspaper and TV station had sent journalist to report the contest, even Changsha Evening Newspaper published news of the final contest on their website. Teachers and students had expressed their satisfaction with the activity.
From this activity, I have learned a lot. The first, my academic frontier has been pushed during this activity. The second, the whole contest involved about 50 staffs to work for it including professors in different study fields, executives in different departments, students in different schools and businessmen in different companies. As the organizer, I developed my ability to exploit the available resources effectively and efficiently, to deal with various people, to lead as a leader and to work as a team member. The last but not the least, I have been through a lot in this process. I have to admit that I did think about giving up but finally after considering through the whole stuff, I, however, strode over hundreds of roadblocks on until the last minute. In the future, whatever befalls me, I have got the confidence to conquer. To sum up, it’s a profitable and rewarding experience to me. I do learn my lesson from it and I am proud of myself.
