Today was ECNU's International University Showcase where students from their many programs talked about their home universities. I volunteered to table for Juniata and I guess it worked out. I did get a free hat, notebook, and lunch (I can now state with confidence that Subway in China is basically the same as Subway in the United States), but I didn't get very many visitors. The few students who visited my table were looking for graduate programs, something that Juniata lacks. I find some successes with the professors who liked to recommend small liberal arts institutions, like Juniata, to their students who wanted to study abroad. Hopefully that should become something, but who knows. I guess part of my problem was I was next to Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, two universities who do better on standard measures of university "goodness" than Juniata. Johns Hopkins in particular is way more famous than Juniata so tended to get more students interested. I guess it was cool to play admissions officer for the day and I got some cool stuff so that is nice.
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As some of you may or may not know, East China Normal University is one of China's major research universities. Thanks to new technology invented by East China Normal's own School of Science and Engineering I have been given the opportunity to study abroad from my study abroad. I will truly be standing on the cutting edge of both physics and history with this opportunity. Dr. Zong (棕老师) of ECNU's School of Science and Engineering in conjunction with Prof. McFly of the NYU-ECNU Institute of Physics at NYU Shanghai have invented a BYD e5 with a built in flux capacitor that, once it reaches 141.62 km/h or 88mph, can travel backwards or forwards in time. Since the BYD e5 is an electric vehicle, only minor upgrades were needed to get the car to accept the new plutonium electric generator in the trunk. Hopefully, I will be going back to 1885 to do research on Shanghai's International Settlement, now called the Bund. Being an American, I should have few problems blending into the multinational community that was the International Settlement. Unfortunately, I will have to put my blog on hold during my time in the past though, if all goes well, you my dear readers shouldn't notice anything since for you it should feel as if as though I was only gone for a few seconds. If something does go wrong, I will be removed from the timeline so you won't be stressed about my issues at all. That's time travel for you, so it goes. For those of you who are worried, don't be, Dr. Zong and Prof. McFly have assured me that everything will be alright and I will be back safely in this time period before you can even finish reading this post. I have also been talking with Juniata, the College is willing to transfer the credits ECNU is giving me for doing this research project back when I return in September. It will be a bit of extra paperwork though, since I will be on a new study abroad experance. I will update you all soon when I get back to the future.
Note: Have a happy April Fools Day all. This year actually, Juniata College got a new logo. With a new logo means new college stuff. Last week, at the Juniata get together thing, I got one of these new pens. Just a fun observation I had, the pen was made in China. So it went from China, to PA, back to China, and soon it will go back to PA... I thought that was cool... Someone else must think so...
Juniata’s Vice President for Recruitment, Rob Yelnosky, and two people from recruitment, Ran and Yanping, were all in China to recruit some Chinese students and to do alumni events. Since they happened to be passing through Shanghai last Saturday, they decided to stop by, tour the East China Normal, and take the two Juniata students including myself out for dinner. ECNU has a very easy campus to show off, the ECNU staff will usually introduce the University by saying it is “national project 211 and 985 university and also a garden university;” basically ECNU has good academics and looks pretty. After checking out the Physics Building, the main canteen, the Mao Statue, and the sports field we all went to dinner at Global Harbor. Unfortunately, the first restaurant we tried to get into had a minimum one hour wait, so we went to the Hong Kongese place in the basement that I know is good (I believe pictures form the second restaurant was the first or second post I made form Global Harbor). I am pleased to report that the second restaurant has stayed good. We got a variety of dishes, including a brisket curry dish I tried in Hong Kong with my Mom that was quite interesting. After dinner, we all waked back to campus and took a photo with ECNU’s main gate; Rob, Ran, and Yanping went back to their hotel to prepare for an early flight back to the US on Sunday while my friend and I returned to our dorms. Even several thousand miles away from Juniata College, it is nice to know I am not completely on my own.
"Jared Miller, a Junior at Juniata College, spending a year abroad in China, Read More" - March 2017 Parents eNewsletter If you get the Juniata College Parents eNewsletter you might have noticed that my blog and myself made the Student Spotlight section. For those of you who didn't get it, this months theme seems to be study abroad and international education. So to anyone new welcome to Jared in China and to anyone old thanks for sticking around.
My classes started back up again for the semester with my Chinese studies classes having started on Monday and my Chinese language classes having started today. This semester I have four classes: Chinese Language, Chinese cinema, Chinese civilization, and neo-Confucianist philosophy. I have been to every class except cinema, which begins on Friday, and everything seems to be shapeing up well. It is a bit hard to tell how class will this early in the semester without really knowing the professors, but if last semester is any indicater it should be fine.
I also got an email from Juniata confirming they got my last semester grades (all good), accepted all my credits, and have given me 12 generic study abroad credits. That went easier than I thought actually, I was prepairing for a month of paper work when I returned to JC. Yesterday I went to Srinakharinwirot University, one of Juniata's exchange partners and the University where all my Thai friends go to, to talk to their next batch of exchange students. It was a bit more formal then I thought, they even brought the guy who funds the program (who also sponcered the TnT kitchen), to speak a bit about why he likes Juniata. Aftet the two Thai former exchange students spoke I talked for a bit about thinks I thought was important. We also sat down afterwards so I could help with questions they had, something I think I did better with. Finally, Srinakharinwirot University is trying to figure out why Juniata is not sending them any students, eventhough that is part of the exchange. I think I might end up helping them figure this out when I get back to the US.
Part of my score for the Global Business Project competition is based on a public vote for who has the best case study (my group's is on Tesla in China). Even though my group was close to first for most of the voting, we were knocked back to fourth at the last minute. While I believe many of the Chinese students were just told to vote so picked someoje, that still dosn't explan the fact that the top four groups got more votes than there are students at Juniata (the top three got more votes than total anything at Juniata). I heard this is because some groups actually paid 0.25RMB per vote! Seeing thr voting patterns (the number of votes jumped by 400 in a matter of minutes once), I would belive this. While I want to win, I don't want to drop any coin for this. I guess that is Chinese elections though. I am thinking of pulling a Jill Stien tomorrow by contesting the election, I want to see what my group says first though. I don't think there is anything in the rules preventing students from buying votes though.
A little while ago I complained about the internet speeds in this fun fact post. I have discovered that ECNU's dorm internet is actually worse then I thought, but for other reasons. At ECNU, each dorm room has their own router, hooked up to their own cable box (a very slow one just FYI), having its own WiFi network. Though what ever IT guy set up these networks should actually be fired. I found these in room networks to be totally unsecure, and I hardly know what I am doing. I don't even want to know what someone more knowledgeable then I am could do. I guess my best advice on what to do for students is simply do anything that requires security on a VPN, connected to the base ENCU WiFi (because that one actually has some security even though it is hard to connect to in the dorms), or using Tor (which oddly enough I found worked better in my dorm than my VPN). My advice for the East China Normal would be to treat their network more like how Juniata treats theirs. The network should push any user without a secured device into a cordoned off remediation network and should require a username and password to connect to the network in the first place.
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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