Interesting Talk on Brazil

This Wednesday Professor Andre Rozemberg Prixoto Simores, an Agricultural Economist at Mato Grosso do Sul State University, came to have an very interesting discussion with us on Brazil. I really enjoyed the Rose Cafes last semester on several African countries so I decided this is a great opportunity to learn more about Brazil.

The professor started the conversation by showing us a map of Brazil. I learned from before that Brazil is the largest country in South Africa and Latin America. The professor point to the capital Brasilia in particular, which is located in the middle right of the country. I know that 2016 Olympics happened in Rio de Janeiro, which is located on the southeast corner of the country. The professor was mentioned that the country is very close to equator, and I remember seeing people suffer the hear last summer when I watch the competitions on television. One interesting fact about Brazil is that its education system is different from ours. In Brazil, the best institutions are state universities since they attract the best faculty whereas the private universities are less popular. Clearly it is very different from the situation in US, as the most prestigious universities here are mostly private and they get large amount of their endowment from alumni donation and private investments. I am not sure the exact reason why the system in Brazil would be different but it might be related to government funding.

The professor also discussed about the high Gini coefficient of Brazil, which is currently about 50 right now. I did a little research and a country with a Gini coefficient about 50 is considered a country with very large income equality. United States is also a country with a high Gini Coefficient at around 45. I am from China and I know China has the high income inequality problem as well, with a Gini coefficient at around 50. In the states, there is a lot of discussion going on about the richest 1% and how the richest tend to accumulate more wealth through time. I personally feel that it is okay to have a income gap among people, since there can be a large variation between two persons’ ability, intelligence, background, environment etc. But I think it is very crucial if people at top realize the benefit of distributing their wealth among the society and people who are more in need of that money.

And of course, Professor mentioned about soccer in Brazil and how crazy popular it is. I really enjoy the talk of this Wednesday, and I hope to learn more about South Africa in the future!

Importance of Mentorship

This Wednesday night I went to the Rose Café with Sam Beck, Social & Cultural Anthropologist – “A Dialogue with Students on Engaged Cornell”, unfortunately I got to the event I little late, but I am happy that I attended.

At one point of the talk one student asked Mr. Beck about how to get mentors during one’s college time. Mr. Beck was being very forthcoming that he think college advising is a failure, since the student usually don’t actively seek advising, and the faculty don’t have incentive to mentor a particular student, since mentoring someone is a big investment of time and energy. Someone in the audience commented that to let a faculty invest in the student, the student must invest in the faculty first. Now I totally agree with that point, I feel that for me personally, the faculty that I have been lucky to work with and have been benefited from are those who I invest a large amount of time getting to know in the first place. There is a professor in Johnson school who I found on Cornell website and reached out through email. We ended up having a one-hour conversation and I asked her many advice about going into finance and finding internship. Then she brought me on board with the undergraduate stock pitch competition and women investing conference, both are amazing events and I have learned some much from it, also making some great friends. In the future I will continue to do more of the work myself before expecting anyone would invest time in me.

Learning About Fats

Last Wednesday I went to Dr. Robins’ talk on “From ‘Hogless Lard’ to Smart Balance: fats and the global food system”. As someone not coming from nutrition or food science background, I really appreciate Dr.Robins explained different kinds of fat in an understandable way. He mentioned several kind of fats that can do harm to you, such as saturated fat and trans fat. I clearly remember from the talk one week before then the lady talked about how fat-free cookie actually is harmful to our bodies since the sugar component would be way to high in order to fill in the gap of lacking of fat.

In my everyday meal, I am always cautious of talking in overly high fat food such as desert, icecream or fried, fast food. But sometimes after exams or long study sessions, I find it necessary and satisfactory to give myself a sweet treat, and the high calories contained in these kinds of food can give me a very quick reboot to come back to more studying. At the same time, I find myself gaining weight for indulging myself in the delicious deserts provided on West Campus this semester. I am pushing myself to eat more healthy, but sometimes the healthy alternative just can’t give me enough energy to sustain long day of working.

 

Food and Flora Rose

On Wednesday evening I went to the talk “Nutrition Warriors: Home Economics and the Fight to Feed America During the Great Depression” by Jane Ziegelman, a visiting writer who wrote A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression. Before the talk, I learned during the lottery at House Dinner that American people used to spend 25% of their income during the Great Depression time, while they now only spend 9% on it.

During the Great Depression, the crisis in financial industry expanded to every aspect of the society. Household was lack of money and generally were granted a set amount of necessary food by the government. At the time, there were homo-economists who noticed that Americans were eating too much starch and spending too much income on food. By the way, I didn’t know what home economist was and Wikipedia defines it as ” the profession and field of study that deals with the economics and management of the home and community”. Flora Rose was a home economist at the time and also was one of the first female professors at Cornell (also MVR). Mrs.Jane showed a a picture of Flora Rose along side Eleanor Roosevelt. She told us that Eleanor Roosevelt was also a home economist at the time and she was promoting budget eating in White House at the time, but FDR didn’t really appreciate her style. Flora Rose developed two kinds of breakfast cereal: Milkorno and Milkoato, which were two cereal choices that are inexpensive and nutritious at the same time. Mrs Jane did mentioned that during the Great Depression each household would get a set amount of milk, meat, beans and other food that contain necessary nutrition for human body.

Although not having a nutrition background previously, I still learned about food history during Great Depression, comparing what we have now. Professor Blalock commented at the end of the talk that as our income grow, the percentage we spend our income on food would become less. I feel very lucky to enjoy such great dining halls on west campus everyday and I hope to learn more about nutrition and how to stay balanced in our diet.

A Educational Session on Antibiotics

On Monday night I went to the Germs, SuperBugs, & Antibiotic Resistance Table Talk with GRF Shiv and House Fellow Cynthia Hill.

Cynthia and Shiv started off by asking us a question: do you use antibacterial soap and do you think it is better than normal ones. Coming from an economics background, I honestly never paid attention to the kind of foam soap provided uniformly around campus, but I have heard the saying that artificially eliminating the bacteria on your skin may cause you physical system to be weaker to bacteria. I always find the question of whether we should use antibiotics very hard to answer. On the one side, my dad use to need to take a lot more medicine than normal people, since he took a lot of antibiotics as a child, as doctor and parents at the time weren’t aware of this strong side-effect of this medicine. So I generally avoiding taking any antibiotics during cold and fever, and instead take herbs and carry through. What Shiv and Cynthia talked about was alarming, there are about 25,000 people in America who die of taking antibiotics every year, and the death rate of children due to antibiotics shoot up in the past decade.

So what happened here? I would have imagined that as the medical technology grows and people are more aware that antibiotics is a double-blade sword, they would more cautious of taking it and doctor would be less likely to prescribe it unless the situations is really urgent. But this led me to think about the change of world through years and maybe people are weaker to certain disease as year goes. So Cynthia asked here: is it necessarily a bad thing that some people die of antibiotics? I thought that the underline alternative thinking is similar to Davinism. Maybe we can take antibiotics as a form of natural selection and people who survive the side-effect might possess more potent gene? I am not very sure, but personally I would rather to think about building solution to antibiotics harm.

Apart from that, one of the major things we discussed during the dinner was the SuperBug. Honestly I really thought Super Bug would be a physically ultra-large bug. Turned out I was totally wrong. Super bug is a kind of micro conceptual “bug” that is built us when someone take a overly large amount of antibiotics, and this wall of super bugs would make any medicine useless to your body. So in another way you can not get cured by medication anymore and have to survive yourself! (if i get the concept correctly) This is such a horrible concept that I feel this “super bug” is much more intimidating that any of the spiders I have seen in my dorm. From Shiv and Cynthia’s talking there seems not to be a solution to the super bug problem so far, and there are many cases of people who suffer from it.

Although the topic is very serious and heavy, I felt very happy that I chose to go to this event and get educated on antibiotics and the current trend on it. What I take away from this dinner is to be cautious of things you take into your body and always find some time to learn stuff outside of my subject area. Great experience!

Philosophy of Personal Statement

On Thursday night I went to the Personal Statement Workshop held by GRF Magdala and Dr.Hill. The workshop was a very educational experience about tips and philosophy about how to market yourself during the recruiting / graduate school application process.

Dr.Hill started by giving a long monologue on what the personal statement should strengthen and how to strategize  for the specific institution you are applying for. First of all, Dr. Hill mentioned that in a general personal statement we should mention our goal, influences and motivation. Admission officers want to know what we plan to do with the degree and the motivation should be unique and convincing for them to proceed. To get ready to write a persuasive and concrete personal statement, it is important to do extensive research on the institution / company beforehand to learn about its prevailing culture, faculty / professionals, publication, research, and what they value. Researching also allows us to see if a specific school / company is the best fit for us.

Another point is the benefit of maintaining a strong network. Dr.Hill mentioned that it is always useful to identify multiple people who you can work with before applying. Using those people to get internal advice is an extremely crucial step, especially for schools in the UK. Dr.Hill gave the example during when he applied to Cambridge that they only care about a personal statement that comes with a clear research proposal on object and different parts of the potential project. Otherwise, they are very likely to reject the application, even the essay is outstanding. Also finding a supervisor is crucial in getting into both Oxford and Cambridge. Any application would be rejected if the applicant can’t find a supervisor before matriculated.

Dr.Hill spent rest of the time giving general advice of applying to jobs / graduate schools. One thing I want to take away is to put in extraordinary time to do research and apply for more than once. When writing a personal statement, never forget to put in a concrete example, or as Dr.Hill described, your “nugget” (not sure if the spelling is correct). Always pay attention to detail, that is also a great advice that I am trying very hard to adapt.

I feel that it was a great investment of an hour of my time learning from Dr.Hill and Magdala about their experience applying and writing personal statements. I also learned to be persistent, bold, and sometimes aggressive in the search. I was sad to know that Dr.Hill will be on a two-month medical leave at the end of the workshop and I wish him better as soon as possible!

 

 

Sanctuary Movement and Its Indication under the Broader Political Environment

During Monday dinner I joined Esmeralda and my other fellow scholars for a discussion on current Sanctuary Movement. A little background, Sanctuary movement is a political campaign started during 1980s aiming to protect American refugees and preserve human rights. Interestingly, I learned from Esmeralda that Ithaca was one of the active cities that participated in the movement even then and was called a “Sanctuary City”. Through the time, Sanctuary movement gradually adapt to the surrounding political and social environment. The Sanctuary Movement that Esmeralda wanted to discuss with us is the Cornell campus movement that protects undocumented students from being discriminated and losing privacy.

Esmeralda told us that she was involved in drafting the petition document to the school, demanding for more protection for undocumented students as this moment. I was surprised to learn that the university may be open for the federal government to gather private information from undocumented students should they ask for it. Although I am not familiar with that student group, as an international student, I kind of relate to the difficult situation some other student groups are facing. And I truly hope that we would be discriminated. But at the same time, I am not yet strong enough to impact those decisions or the officials. The best thing I can do now is to work hard, and as Esmeralda told me, “stay vigilant”. And one day I can succeed at what I do, I can do better good for my groups of people.

Great Insight of Cover Letters Writing and Resume

I was excited to participate in the The Secret Behind the Cover Letter seminar by GRF Shivem on Thursday night. I have had some good experience writing resumes for finance jobs but kinds wrote my cover letters in very amateur way. We started off the seminar by discussing some crucial components of a effective resume: grades, courses, activities, professional experiences, clubs, skills, languages, software skills, etc. (there are general structure that would apply to most jobs but each industry requires specific features to it) For my finance resume, I think the most important parts are grades, courses, internship experience and leadership roles. Something important is to try to tailor everything on your resume to the specific job you are applying. For example, my general resume has a line of Software Training with items such as Microsoft Suite. But when I submit it to a bank, I changed the name to Financial Training, because software such as Excel is very crucial in many finance jobs and it is a popular skill to put on.

I was also happy to meet some other fellow Rose Scholars with various career interest. The people I sat close to are mostly interested in medical school and biology research. So it was interesting to listen to the different path they are taking to get the dream research. For me, to stand out in many candidates that seek a banking internship, I need to have high grades, relevant courses, good internships, and club leadership experiences. But it seems that medical schools are looking more at grants, fellowship, and past research experience, which are very interesting to me because these are things that I have never done before. I am in the processing of deciding whether or not to write a thesis for my economics degree, so right now I am very curious of everything about research and writing papers (let me know if you have any suggestions / advice:).

It is a snowing today and I felt fulfilled to come to this relaxing yet very educational seminar.  Good luck to everything in the process of applying!

Real Fighting with Deep Thinking

Fight Club is the first film of Rose House film series. Dr.Hill started off by giving us a brief introduction about 1990s when this film, along with other great film like Star Wars were made.

I have seen this movie before and I remember it to be violent and imaginative. [Spoiler’s Alert] The Protagonist (interestingly unnamed) is a automobile specialist who suffers insomnia and loneliness. He lives in a comfortable combo but feel mentally empty. After another regards business travel, the protagonist goes home, only to find his condo has been blown away during to a gas leak. So he called up Tyler, a person that he just met on the airplane and went to live with him. In contrast to the protagonist, Tyler present himself to be free, wild and brave. The protagonist see in him everything he want to be, so they became friends. Soon after, Tyler former the Fight Club, a daily night event where everyone can come and duel fight. With the club becoming increasingly popular across the country, the protagonist found himself isolated from rest of the group. Determined to find out the cause, he tracked Tyler’s whereabouts around the country, only to find out that Tyler is actually his illusions self.
Fight Club begins to get more violent and Tyler created the Project Mayhem, a secret operation to destroy multiple construction through extensive explosives around the country. Realizing what his other self has done, the protagonist is determined to stop the madness. He ended confronting Tyler and put a bullet through his cheek, killing “Tyler” but surviving himself. The protagonist ended the film, holding hand with Marla.

To be honest, I found the idea of the film quite disturbing and twisted, not just the physical violence but also the psychological disorder of the protagonist. Dr.Hill suggests its link to the ongoing political drama but I didn’t really understand his hint. Please excuse me for not wanting to discuss further about this film because when I think of the fighting and death scene I find it hard to go to bed with it. Still, it is a classic movie that have a IMDB score of 8.8. So if you are interested in a complicated psychological movie, by all means, you should check it out.