Prompted Blog Posts 3, Feb. 7th

     I asked the interview questions from my first uncle, which is my father's oldest brother. He is a Chinese university professor, also the graduated(master) students director, and the head of his major college. His field is material engineering which mainly related to chemistry like elements and carbon, and future organic chemistry material. My father is the youngest, with 4 brother and 1 sister. And, first uncle is the most outstanding in my eyes as a half scientist. What a damn good example that the oldest lead the family! I used to dream to become like him on the field about physics or biological engineering which is also a little reason about my original major.(Now I found I am totally far away from being intelligent about these field, especially in English language) First uncle cares me a lot on my study and whether to be a good person, right after my parents and grandma. So I interview him as a respected family member.

     When my first uncle was still under study, China is going through the Cultural Revolution, which is a disaster time for youth to go to school. But grand-parents educated him so well that he is able to have patience and have the will, intelligence to go to university, and finish the master degree in few years, even the Phd degree during his work time. As he is outstanding in study, he is required, asked whether want to stay in the university to teach, and after more than 35 years 's teaching experience, I don't know when he become the master students' director, but it has been a pity that he doesn't want to become the Phd students' director before he retire.

      About he whether like it or not, in fact he started it with no relationship with interest. After staying over 40 years in this field, he said when he choose this major as career, he didn't think too much whether like it or not. He treats it as a task, like an order to soldier in army. He thinks this is what old, poor China is lacked of after cultural revolution. Luckily, although he does not interest it, he is intelligent enough to understand everything he learnt, and being flexible about all knowledge.(Lucky for him, all these knowledge are written in Chinese, although his English is impressively good for his generation) Compared with him, I feel ashamed as I am not only not interested in these field, but also not intelligent enough. But I have an little excuse which I learnt them in English, and the vocabulary inside are quite complicated to remember. 

      For my major, first uncle doesn't recommend me to study his field, at least in China. Because this field's career and jobs are closed to be full, which is going to difficult to find a well-paid job. And when choosing major, he suggest I should focus on a major with good balance between academic knowledge and social practice, like my first choice, bio-system engineering, which there is a perfect balance that require at least master degree education, and require enough social practice, and will get paid a good salary. 

      First uncle works a lot to reach his current stage, and impressively, he works with other universities' professor, to join in International chemistry or chemical, material engineering meeting, and publish the research in academic magazine. So communication, especially the International communication in his field is quite important for him to reach current success. Social network, or social communication is still quite important for such kind of professor like him, it's not like ancient Chinese researchers that stay in a room alone all the time and search himself. Now you must communicate, to see the outsider world so that you learn faster, and receive more information.

      

Open Blog Posts 3, Feb. 7th

As the pressure of social competition is increasing day by day, a complete and healthy mentality or character has become extremely important for us youth and children. Whether different countries, society need talent with both body and mind. So it would take a heavy burden and embark on a long road to train the mental health. And there are multiple factors to influence children and youth’s individual character, the mains are environmental factors and social factors.

Environmental factors could be separated into two different which is prenatal environment and geographical environment. Prenatal environment means a period of time which is 270 days starting from fertilized ovum to baby is given birth. This is the start of a human life. The prenatal environment where baby grows up is like a natural environment. The nutrition from mother, and mood, health condition all influence the baby’s growth. Geographical environmental means the geography, climate, weather and other natural conditions will also have an influence on the development of individual character. For example, back to my home country China, there are obvious differences on individual character between girls from the north and south.

Social factors include the family environment, school education environment, experience from social practice, and some subjective factors. For the first family, it contributes an huge influence on the process of character formation and development. Your parents’ home is the first education pack where children get contact with after given birth. Your parents’ economic status, political status, and their education concept, level, attitude, mode, and atmosphere of family feeling, the role a child is playing in, and the position, status of a child in a family, all these elements influence significantly to a child’s individual character. Which is why we always say, parents’ home is the factory creating your own individual character.

Second, school education environment. School environment plays a leading role in the formation and development of individual character. As teachers control the whole process under their aims of education, it has purpose, it has systemic schedule and a plan. And it is progressing in students’ class time, assignment time, group communication and living and any other forms.

Third, the influence from social factor. Mainly, the social factor influence individual character in paths like social climate and public mass media. Like computer, Internet, TV, movie, newspaper, magazine, advertisement and writing work like story, cartoon, novel and monograph. In all of these, computer, Internet, and TV show a giant influence to modern youth and children.

Fourth, the function of sel-feducation in the formation and development of individual character. Sel-feducation is a motive, driving power for a healthy character’s formation and evolution. And there’s a main difference between human and animal which is human have subjective initiative. As human have self-regulation power, every youth and children could model their own individual character. The famous Russian educationist Konstantin Ushinsky has a theory, self-education is a basic postulate of formation of individual character, so that every enthetic influence takes effect under control by self-regulation. So in this sense, it could also say youth and children are building their own character themselves.      

 So, at last in a short conclusion, everyone share a different living experience, different family environments, going into different schools and making different friends, which make us receive different influence from home, school and society. These acquired dispositions cause huge effect to the formation and evolution of individual character.