In order to get to the academic building I must take two or three elevators, which get quite crowded in the mornings. The HKUST campus consists of dorms and a single academic building where all of the classes are held. This means the building has to be big enough to fit all the offices, classrooms, research labs, and such that most colleges have in many building throughout their campus. So, it’s an understatement to say that the building is HUGE. It probably has between 1000-2000 rooms over five main stories, although part of it extends to seven stories underground on one side for the library and cafeterias. So, I run into a friend who is also from USC who has the same class as me and we found it without difficulty because it was on the first floor.
We walk in early and sit on the side. The room is just like any normal college classroom, although perhaps a bit newer because the campus itself is less than 15 years old. Oh, and they have whiteboards instead of blackboards (When I walk into a college classroom and see blackboards it always bothers me slightly because I feel like I’m in the 1800s). So, this class is MGTO321 – Corporate Strategy. The professor looks to be in his early thirties and quite physically fit. He explains that he grew up in China and went to Ohio State for his masters, so although he is Chinese he speaks very good English. He also shares that he loves to weight train and watch college sports including football and basketball, going so far to complain that there aren’t enough basketball courts at UST. He then has everyone in the class share a bit about themselves, so I personally said that I’m from USC in California and I’m a business major with a dual concentration in Management of Organizations and Operations Management, with a minor in Astronautical Engineering who runs marathons and teaches physics and chemistry (my job at SI during the schoolyear). I thought that pretty well summed up my more unusual interests because I didn’t want to take too long, but it conveyed the sense that I do everything all at once. So my impressions of the class are very favorable, and while talking to one of the students about weight training he used the word “ripification.” How awesome is that! My professor used the word ripification. I was immensely impressed. So that class is basically about how a corporation develops their strategy to compete in the market and analyzing case studies and such things. It should be good.
My next class is MGTO 332 – Judgment and Decision Making. I take the elevator and manage to find the room after grabbing a quick lunch in the coffee shop, although I think I misunderstood and might have grabbed the wrong sandwich by mistake because it has guacamole in it (and I never order that). My friend Ghoribet and I actually have the first three classes together, so we walked there and discovered that there are 5 USC students in that class alone. My expectations were not that high. I thought it would be boring and full of lectures that will put me to sleep and beforehand I decided I was going to drop the class in favor of switching to one on Entrepreneurship. So my professor was Caucasian, possibly for Britain or the US I guessed and began class by saying he stayed up all night trying to decide how to make an impression on the first day. He then said that the waitlist for the class was 55 people, almost as many students as there are slots. So, he said he would begin by giving us a test. Right now I’m thinking ‘great, a test on the first day, this class is great.’ Then he says something interesting, “I want to make this interesting, so if any of you can get a perfect score on the test I’ll give you an A in the class, you don’t even have to show up anymore.” That certainly got my attention. Now, if you’re interested in hearing what this test was please speak to me on your own, because it’s possible that you may take this test someday and unless you actually do it yourself you cannot understand how your mind plays tricks on you. Anyways, out of 5 questions I got three wrong. But, the test was hard and is obviously designed to trick you. After that I was hooked, this class is going to be amazing and is being taught by an amazing professor. So, I was certainly not dropping this class now.
My next class was very close and I got there early. I had another American professor and this class is IMST 200g, which is a special topic class that the professor has broad discretion in what material we cover. I imagined it to be lectures on interesting topics or something like that, but it turns out that it is basically a simulation class. Essentially, the class revolves around a computer simulation where we form teams and make business decisions to compete with other people in the class to make the most money. This way we can see how our decisions affect the business and how all the different departments of finance, operations, marketing, and another I’m forgetting at the moment effect one another. It looks interesting enough, but I was disappointed after those first two amazing classes.
My fourth class is MGTO 236 – Teamwork and Organizational Effectiveness. Basically, it’s a class on teams and how to use them to make an organization effective. By now I had been in class for 4.5 hours and was a bit tired and the introduction was less than captivating. The professor was nice, but the course didn’t seem to meet my expectations. After the introduction and covering the syllabus he put us into teams and we had to try to make the “best” structure out of playing cards, but each of us could only use one hand. So, I tried the various tricks such as “can we only use playing cards, or can we use objects from around the room?” and “what do you mean by best?” and “do we have to keep the cards strait?” The first one was a definitive ‘no,’ and he refused to answer my second question, but he said we could do anything we wanted to the cards.
Being an engineer at heart, I quickly analyzed several possible structures to build with the 52 cards we were given and decided that “best” probably meant tallest because that is presumably harder to build. So, I quickly showed my idea and everyone else agreed (although they were probably somewhat intimidated by me because I get that way when I’m thinking of an idea). We quickly began building and the professor stopped everyone when he saw how high ours was getting. He seemed quite surprised at how fast we were able to do it. He announced that ours was the best (being around 10 cards high and quite stable due to the redundancies I built into it) and several others got honorable mention. After that I headed back to my room where I relaxed and fell asleep early. All in all, a good day and I can say I’ll wake up on Tuesdays and Thursdays looking forward to class.
The view from my foggy excursion to Victoria Peak on day 3 or so.
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