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(Continued from Part 06)
One great lesson
One thing I appreciated about IBE, was the fact that we were taught by the new way. We were made in teams, and pretty much we did everything with our teammates. It wasn’t just about teamwork; it was about developing leadership, discipline, responsibility, and personality. That’s why I was so pleased when my teammates valued me highly, and that’s why I could really say that I had become a better person.
One of the three IBE professors was Dr. Michaelsen, my very first Management Instructor. It was significant because his class would be very decisive for my attitude about my Management major. Fortunately he did a great job. Throughout the course, he’d taught us many good lessons, several of them were quite crucial. I am gonna talk about one of them, which was called “The unsung hero”.
“Unsung” means unrecognized. An unsung hero would be someone that deserves to be praised more than what people think about him/her. And Dr. Michaelsen told us to write down the company member that we believed to be “the unsung hero”, write his/her name down, and also explain why. His request made me think for awhile. I could easily tell who the outstanding members were. That could be Mike, the extremely devoted guy I mentioned in The Recognition part; or Nicole, the girl who had the highest sale, which was nearly 100; or the president Jacqueline, she turned out to do a much better job than I expected in the beginning; or some others. But then, the word “unsung” struck me. Someone that was secretly doing a good job wasn’t easy to tell, and I wanted to tell exactly who that was. In the end I chose Levi, one of my teammate, for his contribution in the service part was abundant, far surpassed even our Service Manager’s, yet he was blamed a lot by other members for any imperfection. I wrote that down on my piece of paper.
Another thought came to me when I heard about the activity was, “Man, I wish I was doing a much better job, so I would be the unsung hero now!” Many might have the same thought.
After we were all done, Dr. Michael told us to give those pieces of paper to the ones we were talking about. In our company, many gave it to Mike or Nicole, and when I gave mine to Levi he was surprised. I bet he was glad. About myself, I was also really surprised when Jacqueline the president gave her piece of paper to me. Wow, someone did choose me to be the unsung hero, saying that I was “upbeat”. “What in the world is ‘upbeat’?”, I asked myself. Whatever, it’s still kool to get one like that. Gotta tell Arwen.
What Dr. Michaelsen also did, was showing us how most of the reasons for people to choose the unsung hero/heroine were: Being devoted, always doing his/her best, having a good attitude, and being ethical. He said that in any workplace, those kinds of people would be great assets to the companies, and they would be treasured. He was telling us to become like that. What a great lesson.
The grades and the rest of IBE
As I said in SALES part, our inventory of glasses went out rather early, so I wasn’t concerned much about it in the last days of IBE. It was the grades that took my focus. The grades were always important, even for IBE. If my GPA dropped, I wouldn’t be able to explain to my interviewer that “But I was a good seller!” Being a great member in IBE would only give you one A in the Practicum part, but there were still three other classes to be taken care of. The Marketing class and the CIS class were hard to get good grades, mainly because of the tests I mentioned in part The tests was another battle. They were tough, but since I kept trying, and kept finding a more efficient way to study, my final results were satisfying. My favorite class, the Management one, ironically was not that simple. Most of the grade I got for that class was the RATs, and RATs were nearly impossible to get higher than Bs. So I came to talk to Dr. Michaelsen, telling how I was worried about my grade. He said to me that his way of determine grade was different from the normal percentage method, and since I had the sixth highest score in his class, I would get a solid A. “Wow, I was the sixth best guy in a class of 85? That’s awesome!” I thought.
But I wasn’t the sixth at all. The next day when I came to see the ranking sheet hanging on the wall, I was at the third place. And by the end of the semester, I went to be the second guy. Yes, I, Anh Tran, was the second place in a class of 85. It would always be one of the proudest things in my life, something that I could tell even my child many years later.
Everything else left of IBE was just a dream. I got my first portfolio website which I designed and wrote the entire thing. The girl with the highest sale Nicole came telling me that she voted for me in the very beginning, when I was nominating myself to be the Marketing Manager (in part “The first great failure”). Kool! Then people were saying good bye. Then I knew that I got straight As for one of the most challenging semesters. Then I happily jump to the long Christmas break, bragging about how well I did in IBE to my girlfriend until she got sick of it. :D
That’s right. Happy ending. Thank you for reading one of my most memorable experiences.
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