When Does it Make Sense to Work Hard?

To work hard or not to work hard? This question seems a lot less straightforward than we think.

Some people grew up with the old-school mindset that hard work is good almost by definition. You work hard because that is what decent people do. You show up early, stay late, grind through it, and there is something honorable about the suffering itself. Whether it actually leads anywhere sometimes feels secondary.

Then there are people who look around and think the whole thing is kind of a scam. You work harder, your employer gets richer, and you just get more responsibilities piled onto you. They see people grinding themselves into exhaustion and wonder what exactly the point is. While there is some truth to that criticism, it is unfortunate that this mindset seems increasingly common among younger people. #quietquitting #yolo #eattherich. Cynicism, while it may protect people from exploitation, can also squander one’s potential. It breeds detachment and distrust, which in turn dampen the spirit and outlook of society itself.

Others take a more calculated approach. They are willing to work very hard, but only when the payoff makes sense. If the rewards are there – money, opportunity, ownership, freedom, something meaningful – then they will go all in. But they are not interested in blind effort for its own sake. Everything is optimization.

My own view is a little different. I do believe in hard work, but I think definitions get muddy here. A lot of what people call “hard work” is really just mindless grinding. Repeating the same thing over and over because that is what you are “supposed” to do.

To me, stepping back and rethinking the process can be the harder thing. Thinking is hard. Admitting the current approach is not working. Questioning assumptions. Changing strategy. Trying something smarter instead of just pushing harder. That takes honesty, humility, and courage. I would advocate for that version of hard work every time.

But there is another question here: what if the world does not reward your hard work? What if we give our best and still get ignored, passed over, underpaid, or cheated? Should we then pull back and take the lowest-effort approach possible? Should we “quietly quit”?

Personally, I would not. Because I am a Christian.

In 1 Corinthians 6:7b, Paul says, “Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?” That is a difficult mindset in a world where people are constantly calculating outcomes and protecting themselves.

I also think about Joseph in the Old Testament. Whether he was in slavery, in prison, or elsewhere, he consistently gave his very best. I doubt he spent every moment mentally optimizing, calculating whether the immediate outcome justified the effort. He simply worked faithfully wherever he was placed. And Colossians 3:22–23 instructs us to work wholeheartedly, not just when people are watching, but as unto the Lord.

There is honor in giving your best even when the rewards are uncertain. Not because the world always rewards it fairly. A lot of times it does not. Sometimes the lazy person gets ahead. Sometimes the manipulative person wins. Sometimes the person who cuts corners and flatters gets promoted while the conscientious one gets ignored. We all have seen that.

But if my standard for effort becomes “only do my best when the outcome benefits me,” then eventually everything becomes transactional. Every act of effort becomes a negotiation. Every situation becomes a calculation of whether people around me “deserve” my best. I do not think that is a good way to live.
At the same time, I also do not admire blind grinding. A person can waste years exhausting themselves on a bad strategy simply because they are too stubborn or too prideful to rethink it. There are people who confuse burnout with virtue.

To me, the better approach is this: work sincerely, work intelligently, and detach our sense of honor from immediate outcomes. Give our best because it shapes us into a certain kind of person. A dependable one. A thoughtful one. A disciplined one. Even if nobody notices. And if we realize the current path is foolish, inefficient, or pointless, then changing course is not laziness. Sometimes that is the harder move. Sometimes wisdom looks less dramatic than grinding, but requires far more honesty.

I think Christians especially should understand this distinction. Faithfulness is not the same thing as mindless self-destruction. Joseph served faithfully wherever he was placed, but he was also perceptive, adaptive, and wise. He did not confuse suffering itself with righteousness.

So let’s work hard. But discerningly. And may God bless our good work.

Fighting for $15 Minimum Wage is a Great Idea

People who skip their ECON classes have been fighting for $15 minimum wage, and I never thought it would affect my life in such a positive way.

One fine afternoon, my dear wife suddenly wants some French fries. I have no choice but to drive to a McDonald’s to get her some. The drive-thru is very long – maybe their wives are also craving for fries! – so I decide to park the car and walk in.

Before people start advocating for the $15 minimum wage, life was tough. To order some fries I would be asked by a McDonald’s employee,

“What size for your fries, sir? Small or large?”

“Small, please.” I would say.

“Okay, one small fries. Anything else for today sir?”

“No, thank you.”

“Any drink to go with the fries?”

“No, just the fries. Thank you.”

“Alright. The total for today will be $1.84.”

“Here y…”

“Would you like to donate 10% to St. Charles’ Arbitrary Charity today?”

“Um, no, thank you.” I would answer, trying to imagine what sort of difference would I have contributed with a hefty amount of 84 cents.

But it’s no longer like that. Not today. Not since kind folks around the country start fighting for $15 minimum wage, and large corporations start voicing their supports to the movement, saying how it is a wonderful idea, while slowly replace their staff with self-serving kiosks. Walmart. Target. Panera Bread. McDonald’s. In New York City where $15 minimum wage has been adopted, people are shocked to find food prices rising, WSJ reporting.

I walk into a McDonald’s to buy my wife some French fries. I see a nice computer screen asking me what I want. I quietly press some buttons and pay. Shortly after, someone puts the fries on the counter for me to take, then quickly disappears to the back before I can say thank you. I walk out with my fries. Zero human interaction. Lovin’ it.

My Company's Values

Thank you, A-ron, for your help with this post.

One day, at the monthly meeting of the company I was working for, the CEO owner told all employees to write down what he/she would consider the most important thing in life, and text message it anonymously to this one number. The app would gather all of the responses and build a “word cloud”, and the company would base on that results to form the company’s core values. Below was what we got:

“God” was the most common answer, and “family” came second. If you look closely, you can see that the “God” response can arguably be a lot more significant, since there are other similar answers such as “church”, “faith”, and “hod” (which is a typo in case you’re wondering – “g” and “h” is next to each other). So I thought that was really interesting (while comforting): what on earth was the company gonna do about this kind of response? Were we gonna have morning praying times? Would there be weekly Bible studies, company-wide? Considering how non-religious the CEO owner happened to be, I was curious of what we would decide to do.

Later on, it was revealed to us that the company’s core values would now be: Passion; Loyalty; Pride; Integrity; and Trust. Well, that was a lot more generic and politically correct than, say, “God-centered” or “religious”. The 5 chosen values seem like something out of a business textbook, or something an owner would want their employees to go with. That’s why, to be honest, these core values might have had been decided way before we had that company meeting when us employees were bestowed the false sense of democracy. I might be wrong, but I was rather disappointed. A false sense of democracy is so depressing when it’s seen through.

My Dale Carnegie Adventure - Pt.01: The Orientation

The company I am working for has a tradition of sending its employees to Dale Carnegie Training courses.  At almost everyone’s desk there is some sort of diploma or recognition from Dale Carnegie hanging at the front it’s crazy.

Dale Carnegie is a program that helps improving your social skills such as public speaking, doing things outside your comfort zone, managing stress, and maintaining a positive attitude. (Dale Carnegie himself was graduated from the same college I attended so hey! : )

So it happened that I got enrolled to the program and I will have to attend the three-and-a-half-hour class for the next 6 weeks or so. And I have decided to write about this as a new series for this blog. My current lifestyle has been preventing me to update this blog regularly and I am trying to fix that. Dale Carnegie is a popular program, so sharing my experience while taking it may benefit many other people.

The “Interesting” Orientation

Last week was the orientation and we had the opportunity to see each other for the very first time. The group that my company sends this time includes two very high-ranked members and I (oops!). The class is a small group of around 20 people, all Caucasians except me (for genuine observation without any racism on my part : D), and everyone seem to be older than me. There is a middle-aged lady sitting by herself at the front row who thinks she is really smart and tries very hard to show that. (Ah! I hope my perception of her would change toward the end of the course!) The instructor is nice and friendly but I wonder if he hates me now: when I arrived 5 minutes early, the class was already started so at the end of the class I asked him if we should come to class 15 minutes early next time. The way he responded has something to do with his watch and mine not agreeing. Yeah, I was already showing an “annoying Asian guy” on the first day – what a great start.

How to Effectively Receive Dale Carnegie Awards

There are two people in my company, Pepsi and Coke (and yeah, I changed their names). They were in the same group of people attending DCP and Pepsi received the highest DC award along with a bunch of other stuff whereas Coke didn’t get squat. The problem is both Pepsi and Coke work closely with me in the company, and I know that Pepsi is not a good public speaker or is he strong with any other social skill. His work attitude is not the best and he still has a lot to work on to be effective at work. Coke, on the other hand, is a charismatic, energetic kind of guy who is an eloquent speaker. Heck, he is an ordained minister who sometimes would imitate Joel Osteen for us to watch (and he would do a really great job!).

So why in the world would Pepsi gets recognized and awarded while Coke isn’t? The answer is simple: the awards go to the one who shows that he/she has tried the hardest or has improved the most. This makes sense in the way I don’t really appreciate. It implies that the students’ pre-existing abilities are irrelevant, that any effort a person makes prior to the course is not to be accounted for at all. You are not gonna be rewarded if you have been learning to improve yourself for a long period of time before taking the course. It’s like an art class in which the first place goes to the one who didn’t know how to draw but now can draw an apple instead of the one who could paint a perfect orchard and now is getting slightly better at digital color compositions.

What I Should Do for the Class

Of course I wasn’t the only one with the “Coke vs. Pepsi” observation. The two bosses/classmates of mine are planning to deliberately appear so “pathetic” in the beginning, maybe with tears if necessary, in order to maximize their “progresses” to others. I have to say that it is a really tempting option but maybe I shouldn't go with that. This is gonna be a large amount of time I will invest in, and I should learn what I can to improve myself to become for effective at work and in Life. After all, I am not one of the big bosses yet. : )

So here is my goal for this journey: to try the best I can to present myself and to learn from others; to impress everyone from the very beginning and not holding back as if I am in America’s Got Talent; to appreciate every moment being in the program; and to make some new good friends if possible.

I am looking forward to what is happening, and will try to share this experience with you as meaningfully and truthfully as I can, and I hope you too will enjoy reading it. Thank you very much!

How Many Words in This List That You Know?

How are you doing on your readings in general and more specifically in developing your vocabularies? Recently I started reading a book for my Finance class called The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein. In the very first chapter of the book – a short 6-page prologue, there were many words that I did not know, and I am listing them here:

destitute
somnolent
bulwark
scrutinize
(to) prick
quiescent
laudatory
salient
fervent (adj)
frothy
parlance
umbilical (cord)
placate
carnage
plenitude
opiate
dictum
stupendous

I was so surprised to see so many new words in such a small amount of pages! How is this Roger Lowenstein guy? You would think that while reading a finance book, the only words you would stumble upon are technical terms or lingos. Or maybe I am just bad.
How many words in the list above that you already know?

How to Become a Teller For Bank of America

I currently am working for Bank of America (BofA) as a teller, and it’s been 2 months now. A little bit about what I am, I am an international student whose first language is not English. When I graduated from college, I didn’t do any internship and had no remotely related experience to banking industry. I was full of disadvantages. BofA’s website clearly stated that they wouldn’t typically hire and sponsor F1-visa students, and, on top of everything, the economy was painfully lagging.

One cannot help but wonder why in the world they would hire someone like me while millions of Americans were being unemployed. That’s why I really think that I should share my story, and that my story might be somewhat beneficial for some of you who are now reading it.

The first and foremost reason was because I was interested in BofA deeply. When I was in my junior year, I was reading my Marketing textbook. The featured story of chapter 8 was about Bank of America, the history of the company, how as a tiny local bank they surpassed many competitors and became the current largest holding bank in the world, and how BofA is one of the best places to work for. I said to myself, “this company is great, and I will try to get in there!”

You certainly can stop reading this post right here, because I have shared with you what probably the only thing that matters most. As an applicant, I had nothing, and the only thing that made me stand a chance in the competition was that I was interested in the company the most, that I was the most passionate among the applicants. This is basically the key to success: Love what you do, and do what you love. If you truly love to work for Bank of America, then go for it.

If you choose to continue reading my post, I’ll also be very delighted, because now I am sharing about what I did with that passion. Actually when you truly desire something, you’d want to learn more about it, and things would be so much obvious beyond this point. In any industry, you got to be a “grunt” first, so aiming for the teller position was reasonable. Then of course I would have to find out what it would take to be a good teller. A teller has to be good at customer service (mostly) and sales (sales skills are important for so many things in life). So how did I achieve these two skills, I took part time jobs. During my three and a half years in college, I served food and cleaned things in a buffet restaurant, processed barcodes and maintained an inventory in a library, sat at a reception desk, kept track of other people’s documents in a school office, and gave tours around campus to groups of new students.

How do these help at all, you say? I saw the benefits of each job when I took it: giving tours helps me present things better; filing and barcoding helps me become detail-oriented and also better with long numbers; serving food and cleaning stuffs teach me endurance and customer service; and sitting at the desk makes me know by heart of how much each roll of coins worth. Even though I had no related experience with banking industry when I applied, these “trivial” jobs made me fully ready to absorb whatever it would take to do a good job. So to be prepared is essential. The hiring process was about two weeks, but my success was constructed many months before. No experience is irrelevant at all, really. If you see something that can help you to get closer to your goal and is relatively easy, then it’s great! Do it!  

The third important reason for me to get chosen is that I was lucky the entire time. I was called for the interview at the right time, had the right interviewers and the right competitors, enjoyed the right questions and answers… The weather itself was right, too. On the day I had my last interview with the branch manager, at the last moment there was some problem with the street address. I tried to calm down, walked to the nearest computer and looked up the address for the destination. The bus came and took me away, and I arrived at the interview 10 minutes early. I was blessed.

I truly believe that humans can only try so hard, and in every success lies some sort of luck. One can try to prepare so well, yet his very ability to be able to think, move, and act is already a very great blessing. I didn’t have a car, but I was lucky enough to be able to run to the bus: a person on wheelchair might not make it to the interview like I did. We don’t really control our luck, but I do believe that each of us has our own kind of luck, and what we can do is to appreciate and utilize it.  

So it is it, then. There was no secret to it: I found out what I liked to do; I prepared; and I was lucky. Guess what? The title of this post should instead be “How DK becomes a teller for Bank of America”, since it’s mostly about my personal experiences and thoughts. But guess what? This can also be “How one can become successful in so many things in Life.” Yes, I do believe that Passion, Preparation, and Providence are important as much.

IBE the Journey - Part 07

To read from the beginning, click HERE
(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.

IBE the Journey - Part 06

To read from the beginning, click HERE
(Continued from Part 05)

The Recognitions

In any business, feedbacks are critically important (even in love). I was born to be a person who wants to hear feedbacks from others even more than normal. In IBE, we learned about giving useful feedbacks, and we had several chances during the semester to get feedbacks from others.

As I was facing disapprovals and unfairly treatments from other members, I expected nothing from their recognition toward me, even though I was still contributing my best. There were many outstanding people in the company, and I knew comparing to them I was pretty far behind.

Our first feedback activity was in the mid of the semester. The company officers were separated from the company members, and each group would give comments about the other, in a friendly but serious way, so that any issue occurred might be fixed immediately. We both were provided some large sheets of paper to write down what-ever comments about the other group, then we would come together and explain, discuss, or complain about anything for the other group to hear. When our group of members was finished, we met with the officers’ group. They hung their paper on the board just like we did, so the whole room could see what was written. In their papers, they wrote down the names of significant members in their opinions, and there were about five names were mentioned. As I could see with my surprised eyes, under Mike, the most devoted guy in our company, was my name. It was like this:

"Anh – High Spirit!!!"

Then they went on and explained how positive and friendly I was, how I cheered up when everyone was down, and how other members were feeling good when they were with me. I was speechless. So they actually noticed me, huh, I thought.

It’s always important to do a good job all the time, I know that. But when others tell me that I am doing a good job, it’s a whole different story. When I get recognized, I’ll be encouraged and motivated so much that my always “good” job will became a “great” job in no time.

As I mentioned in part 1, we weren’t only working in a company, we were having teams also. And I also had a chance to get feedbacks from my own team, team 11 of six people. These feedbacks were somewhat more meaningful than the company’s one, because we did so many things with our teammates: sitting in class next to each other, together doing our RATs, assignments, and projects. I could barely know the names of all 29 company members, but among six of us, we knew each other much more deeply and more personally. We rated and gave each other feedbacks via a website, and later on we could read our feedbacks on the site. The ratings and comments were anonymous, but it was only six of us so we really could guess who was who. This was my result:

Anh Tran

Person	Attendance Rating	Attendance Comments
mem 1	9	he has never missed a meeting
mem 2	9	always there
mem 3	9	He's always enthusiastic about projects
mem 4	9	he attends every day from what i can tell
mem 5	9	Anh is always in class and never really late
self	9	I've been attending every single class and meeting.
	Preparation Rating	Preparation Comments
mem 1	8	he always is ready for the tests
mem 2	9	always prepared
mem 3	9	He's always prepared and gets the highest scores
mem 4	9	he is ALWAYS prepared
mem 5	9	Anh is always prepared for the RATs and knows the informations very well
self	9	I've studied a whole lot for any RAT, as if it was a real test. And I always have the highest score among my team.
	Input Rating	Input Comments
mem 1	7	he always has something to say but its not always meaningfull
mem 2	9	always has smart reasoning
mem 3	9	If he's very confident about an answer he will try to persuade the team in a fun way
mem 4	9	he is very smart and prepared, very helpful during team assignments
mem 5	9	Anh always gives us input and is very convincing with his answers. During other team assignments can become easily off track and spacey.
self	7	I am called "overly passionate".
	Listened Rating	Listened Comments
mem 1	7	he is a very respectful person
mem 2	9	listens and responds
mem 3	9	He always listens and provides input
mem 4	9	He is respectful and understanding
mem 5	8	Anh listens carefully but it is hard for him to change his mind and listen to us.
self	7	I think I was a pretty good listener.
	Attitude Rating	Attitude Comments
mem 1	9	he is always in a good mood always laughing haveing a good time.
mem 2	9	very positive and energetic
mem 3	9	I think he makes the team overall happier with his antics
mem 4	9	he always has a good attitude and is positive in meetings
mem 5	8	anh is always in a positive attitude for doing work. however sometimes can not stay focused on what we are doing and starts walking around
self	7	I am a positive member.
	Contributions Rating	Contributions Comments
mem 1	8	the group would be very different without him thats for sure
mem 2	9	awesome
mem 3	9	He makes teamwork fun
mem 4	9	he is a great asset to our team, very helpful and prepared
mem 5	9	always willing to help and put in input. always can put us in a good mood if we are having a bad day.
self	7	Overall, I have done a pretty good job.
	Rating Summary
mem 1	48
mem 2	54
mem 3	54
mem 4	54
mem 5	52
self	46

I was really pleased with the feedbacks. My teammates said a lot of good things about me, and their ratings were much higher than I rated myself. In fact, they gave me “9” – the maximum score – in almost every aspect. This was great. I needed to show it to my girlfriend! :D

(to be continued...)
Part 07

IBE the Journey - Part 05

To read from the beginning, click HERE

(Continued from Part 04)

Things besides glasses

Selling was fun, but some other things were fun, also. Most of the other activities were about doing stuffs for BBBS (Big Brothers Big Sisters), the non-profit organization that we chose to donate all of our profit to. We also had to donate at least 30 hours of work to them, doing whatever. One big thing was raising the fund by selling doughnuts, pizzas, and baked goods. We were raising the fun too.

I didn’t participate in our first fund-raising, the Pizza Hut one, due to the fact that I had no car. Since I didn’t have a car, it really was not easy for me to join in with activities as I would. A member, Maria, gave me a ride for the following time, when we were selling doughnuts. Krispy Kreme doughnuts were really tasty, far better than the Wal-mart ones, and I wanted my girlfriend to try them someday. We were selling for two days in front of the supermarket under the BBS tent. Americans were always good at donating for others, and the kids loved doughnuts, so we sold surprisingly fast. Many of the passengers didn’t want any doughnut; still put money into our pot. The first day was a nice experience.

The second day was not that enjoyable. It was raining, and the rain was really heavy. Our customers dropped drastically. One member, Ryne, had a brilliant idea: using umbrella to escort the people who went to Wal-mart, and when walking them, telling them about our IBE program and the fund-raising. The two guys doing that were him and me. So I had fun running back and fort in the parking lot and helping old women. People were thanking me, and feeling sorry for our bad luck of raining. Also, we could sell some more than we would have had. Ryne became the only member in our company that I admired for the rest of the semester. Coming up with a good idea in a bad situation is always amazing. And so, the second day turned out to be a nice experience too, as well as the bake-sale in the end of the semester.

Besides raising fund, we also helped with maintaining the building for BBBS. I helped with painting the walls, which were pretty fun to do.

We came there at noon, and painted under the brightness of the sun and the last warmth of the autumn. I could hear the laughter of the little children playing close by, and the wind was hanging there, dancing with the leaves in some endless spirals. It was simply a bliss.

What we also did for the kids was the game night, an evening when we brought PS3s and Wiis, Guitar Hero III and many other games for the children to come and play. Many children did come, and the place was crowded with joys.

In the end I had donated 10.5 hours – 30 minutes more than the goal. Lol It was fun anyway.

(to be continued...)
Part 06

IBE the Journey - Part 04

To read from the beginning, click HERE

(Continued from Part 03)
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SALES

It’s all about selling something. It always was. In fact, nothing would have happened if no one had had not sold anything. It’s where all of the fun, the excitement, the competition, the challenge came from. Selling glasses was just like that.

Since we chose to sell glasses, the company’s name became FrostPint Glass Company. According to some calculation of Break Even Point analysis, each one of us FrostPint had to sell at least 12 glasses to be able to even the cost. Number twelve didn’t seem much, but it was not easy to go over. I calculated in my head, “Let see, twelve. If I buy two, my friends hopefully will buy five, and I will have only five left to sell. Easy!” Unfortunately, I was wrong again.

$8 for a glass was too much for any of the international students, especially Vietnamese. (Sometimes occasions like that made me hate how poor we Vietnamese were). My Korean roommate, having his leg injured, wasn’t willing to buy any. Other friends from other countries were just going shopping and bought a lot of clothes and perfumes, so they weren’t helping much neither. My selling career in the beginning was not so pretty at all. One day I came to class, and Levi my teammate told me that I just sold 10 glasses in the previous weekend, for his girlfriend’s grandmother! Another teammate, Jennifer, whose mother was a principle of a school, made most of the teachers there buying some glasses. I was so far behind. I friends were poor, and my families were so far away that they couldn’t help. I was alone, totally.

But I wasn’t giving up. Maybe if there was anything that I had to keep up with others, then it was the fact that I was always trying. I calmed myself down, and new thoughts came to me. “Wait, there is not many international students in the whole class, so I can actually take advantage of this!” I tried the International Office, and my current boss, Suzanne, simply told me, “Sure, I’ll buy one!” And so, I had my very first customer. I got more sales from the other faculties in the office, and in one day, I sold five. It was a great day, and I had new hope in me.

Whoever has hope has everything. It was so true to me. After I sold my first glasses, things only got easier. Cody, my closest friend in UCM, decided to buy one. Dan, another friend of mine, succeeded in selling some PS3 games, bought another one. My roommate DongKyeong was told by the doctor that his leg didn’t need treatment, was happy enough to buy two of my glasses. And that wasn’t the best of it. One day I was told that there were people selling glasses for me, and they wanted four! It was just, “Wow!” I had heard about people who could sell a lot of products, but no one had others helping him selling like I did. I was not only fortunate. I really was blessed.

In the months of October and November, people saw me going to class and cafeteria carrying a white box all the time. Some girls sitting close to me when I was having lunch one day were so curious about the box. “What does he have in there?”; “Is it candy?”… “It’s a UCM glass”, I told them, explaining about IBE and all. It was fun doing marketing sometimes. I kept selling and selling. One time it was twelve glasses at once for a business department! My sales were soon getting over the Break Even Point.

There was some miscalculation among our company, and we were short on inventory. The glasses were nearly out, and we didn’t have enough time to re-order anymore. Many members of the company didn’t sell many. Some of them didn’t even sell any, and they were in trouble. Therefore, any unsold glass needed to be returned to distribute to those who needed more sales and for the pre-sales (got the payment but the products have not been delivered). At that time, I was keeping four glasses, and had already promised to sell two of them. But “already promised” wasn’t “pre-sale”, so I decided to return all four of them to the company, and apologized to my two customers. My first selling career was closed with 34 glasses.

34 wasn’t any outstanding number, since some other members had sold nearly 100 glasses. But more than half of the company sold less than 30 products, and 34 was nearly three times as much as the original number 12. For an international student like me, the result wasn’t bad at all. It would be something worth-telling to my girlfriend, too.

(to be continued...)
Part 05

IBE the Journey - Part 03

To read from the beginning, click HERE (Continued from Part 02)

The war with the RATs

IBE wasn’t just about working in a company; it was still a course consisting of other three classes. It means that we also had to deal with tests and quizzes a lot. One new thing in this semester was the RATs – readiness assessment tests, for which we had to do a test about stuffs that we were going to learn (in other word, we hadn’t learned). They were hard, and they were abundant. 

It didn’t make sense anymore to ask myself if I was gonna have a test soon: I always had some test everyday! So I kept reading and reading, feeling just like the time in Petra (Montana). The Management book and the Marketing one were pretty well-written actually. I have learned a lot of new information reading them. The MIS (Management Information System) text-book, in the other hand, was downright clueless. The book had a horde of technical terms that in no way I could remember them all. Couldn’t do anything else, I kept reading more and more, hopefully that I would get some As which were so rare in the RATs. I didn’t get many As, however, since half of each RAT we did in team, and no one in my team was as prepared as I was. So we did decently, and sometimes the rest of the team disagreed with me in questions that I was so sure about. There were situations that I had to stand up against my team and tried to persuade them so hard. I succeeded, actually, and gradually I became the most significant member of team 11. Sometimes we got an A for the RAT, I was so happy and… break-danced right in the class. Many times my teammates would say, “We didn’t get an A, but I want to see Anh break-dances.”

The tests was another battle

The RATs were hard, by the tests weren’t jokes, neither. Real tests were bigger, fewer, and therefore more decisive (each worth 100 pt.) The Marketing tests were particular hard. The first test I got a B. I told that to my girlfriend, she said, “Next time you get an A and let me know, ok?” So for the next one I tried harder. And I got a C. It was just wrong, as if the more I tried the worse I did. So I talked with the professor, he said, “My tests are supposed to be uneasy. There ain’t many As in my class, historically.” I couldn’t give up anyway, I had to get an A to tell it to my girlfriend! For the third test, I spent even more time studying the book, and tried to study differently. I got a high B. It was great, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to find another way of study. I did. When I finished my last Marketing test, I handed the scantron to the professor to run through the grading machine. The machine graded my test and the professor looked at it. He was smiling mysteriously and… ran my scantron once more! Then he gave it back to me, and it was a solid A right there. Yes, I was happy. “Arwen, I got an A for my Marketing test!...”

The CIS tests were hard too, but it was just another effort of mine trying harder and with different ways. The results were good also. My instructor was smiling when she asked me, “Are you satisfied with your grade?” “Yes, I really do.” I smiled too, for a moment to forget all the struggles I had to deal with.

(to be continued...)

Part 04

IBE the Journey - Part 02

(Continued from Part 01)

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From a wrist-band to a pint glass

As the main goal of IBE is “to sell something”, we needed to know what we were gonna sell first. It could be anything, which made it just so excited for me to imagine about the product. As creative as I had always was, I should come up with something so unique, so appealing that there never was before, and everyone would love to buy it, and buy it a lot. Now I think back about it, my creativity wasn’t big enough to keep up with my day-dreaming ability, as things weren’t going as I thought at all – again.

The first idea I got was to make T-shirts, but make them “combo”: there would be three different designs of the three parts of a mule, that when three people wearing them stand together the mule would appear. What do you think? My teammates didn’t think the idea was good, so it was given up.

As days passed by, the people were having ideas of typical products such as clock and flag; I came up with another “weird” idea: a wrist-band with a plastic ring connected to it, like this

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This idea of mine shared the same fate with my previous one, and at this point I was truly sad. If innovative ideas were not gonna be considered, then we would sell normal products; and anyone could come up with that so I didn’t need to try imagining anymore. And so, there was no more new product idea came from me.

After some time they had a list of about 10 products, including clocks, flags, playing cards, pint glasses, stickers (wth?), T-shirts, (normal) wrist-bands, and some other things. We then tried to conduct a survey of customers’ opinion. Each person stood at a place on campus and asked people passing by which ones they would like to buy. It was the first time I actually did a survey so it was rather nice. I felt awkward with the first few people and then got used to it. However, I felt much more comfortable when I saw the people I already knew before. There was a huge and scary American dude with a scar on his forehead walking by when I came to him. When I was just starting, “Hello, I am from the IBE…” he said, “I am in a hurry,” then walked away. I felt like I was disturbing people like how those shampoo marketers used to disturb me back in Vietnam a long time ago. But that’s just how marketing worked; I needed to be more shameless about it. During a couple hours I had asked so many people that I couldn’t remember. Then on the next day, I came to a friend of mine and shoed him the survey. He said, “You asked me yesterday, it’s still ‘C’ and ‘E’.” I didn’t remember asking him, kinda embarrassed but that’s ok.

The results of the survey led us to the top five choices: wrist-band, T-shirt, playing card, pint glasses, and flag. Since there were five teams in the company, each would do some research about one product and then we could compare among them. Our team’s product was… wrist-band. Since I couldn’t get my unique wrist-band approved, I at least tried to make the typical wrist-band somehow unusual. And so the new idea appeared: wrist-bands that are glow in the dark! Yes, glow-in-the-dark, baby. I could see in my head how awesome glowing wrist-bands were. I could wear them in any dance party, and my hands would shine along my break-dance moves (Step up 2, that’s right). How did my idea turn out? Nowhere, as you may guess. I already knew what my role in the company was not: I was not going to be a decisive factor. Any thought that I had by days and nights thinking would not be acknowledged. Then why try?

Eventually the final product was the frosted pint glass. I didn’t even know what a “pint glass” was, too much for the notion of being “frosted”. However, when some company officer showed the pictures of the product, it didn’t look bad at all! Maybe their ideas were just better than mine, sure.

So the next step was to design the glass, which was more clearly stated as: which UCM logos would we put on the glass. I soon forgot my question of “why UCM logos but not something else”, and joined them to see which ones were good. I would love to have something small at the front and something bigger at the back (come on, it’s not even a new idea I just created, it’s a basic for many things!). I could care less for the small part, and I wanted the picture of the tower at the back. The Friendship Tower is our college’s symbol; you can see it on UCM flag, walls and other places. But my idea was once again refused. “The tower is ugly!” they said. So in the end, the product we were gonna sell was a frosted pint glass, with two UCM logos on each side, a product that I had absolutely no contribution. Oh my, how in the world I could sell something I didn’t have any passion about, I wondered.

The thing is my life had been worse than that, so I wasn’t totally disappointed. Somehow I managed to learn to love the glasses, and found for myself some confidence of selling them. As I understood myself a bit more, I wouldn’t hold such a dream like “being the best seller in IBE history”. I would simply do my best to sell as many as I should. Until then, I would at least achieve something and show it off with my girlfriend.

(to be continued...)
Part 03

IBE the Journey

IBE stands for Integrative Business Experience, one of the most important programs for my management major. It’s a four-hour period in three days a week from 9am to 1pm and it’s not just long. It’s huge and it’s like nothing I have even got into before. For many reasons, it makes this semester (fall 2009) become the toughest semester for me until now. So I’ve decided to write about it, believing this will be an interesting story for me and for those who read it.

The confusion

My first feeling about this program was that it’s so strange, so new, and yet so confusing. From absolutely out of nowhere we students were told that we’d make a real business on the very first day of the class. “Doing real business” means setting up a real company, having loan presentation before the real bankers asking for money, and working with real vendors to be selling some real products. It was a bit too “real” for a student like me, who had been only listening to lectures, reading textbooks, and writing papers (if they weren’t real, then were they all fake?!) Moreover, all of the people around me seemed really excited and confident, leaving me to be the only one who didn’t know what’s going on. My biggest question at the time was, “Did I miss something?”

Soon after that we were set into 15 teams, and then the teams were grouped into three companies. My 11^th group had six members and it’s still six until today. The group belonged to the company “West” (the other two were “Central” and “East”). “West” was the temporary name, and the real name was yet to be decided later, when we have decided the actual product to sell. Each company had a meeting for an hour after the class in separate rooms. And the first meeting was the peek of my confusion. There were 29 people in my company, and most of them didn’t seem any friendly or nice at all. What worse was the way they conducted the conversation didn’t appeal to me any bit, and I was totally discouraged to contribute any opinion (which was rare if you know me). Those days were hard, and I kept wondering if this was what I wanted to do; if I’d have to work with unfriendly people like that – for my whole life!

I then went to see my advisor, to tell about my worries. She said that I wasn’t expected to know any of these “real” stuffs before, and I would be taught all that. I also shared my thoughts with my mother and my girlfriend, which eased my confusion somewhat. But nothing had ended there, more like everything had just begun and the adventure ahead of me was still too big.

The first great failure – or was it?

One of the first things we had to do for the company was to have the hierarchy, which means to have people filled into positions, such as President, Vice President, etc. The method was: self-nomination and votes. Knowing myself and knowing the uneasy environment of the company, I nominated myself for the Marketing manager position. My opponent was Jeremiah. Who the heck is Jeremiah? I didn’t care, must be some random guy, I thought, having no idea how much insignificant myself also was.

So I put some effort preparing the speech I would give in the next meeting. Using what I had learned in my Business Communication class before, I thought of some arguments to protect me from my disadvantages (such as being non-American, etc.) I was pretty confident, because even though they may not like me much, I would beat my opponent since he shouldn’t have prepared anything beforehand like I did. My girlfriend would be so proud of me.

But all what I pictured in my head was not true at the very least. In the meeting, I realized that Jeremiah wasn’t “just a random guy”, but one of the most involved people during the discussions. But his toughness was yet to reveal later, as we got to wait for the President and other higher positions first. One candidate for the President was a girl that I thought to be too lame. The way she looked at people, how she only read from some paper when having her opinion about something, made her become a very inadequate person in my opinion. So I voted for the other person, a strong guy with a bright face and a responsible attitude. But then the lame girl got the seat, only because many people in the company knew her more than him! The same situation happened for other positions: whoever I thought to be more able didn’t get voted. Then it was my turn finally.

I went out of the room for Jeremiah to give his unexpectedly long speech. Besides being international student and all, I didn’t know any single person in the company; I clearly knew my chance wouldn’t be high. Any rational person would choose to give up doing such a hopeless thing. Unfortunately I wasn’t smart, so I thought that win or lose didn’t matter any more, but if I gave up, I’d regret it forever. I gave my speech anyway. It wasn’t a satisfying speech, but I am now always glad that I did it. We two candidates then were waiting outside for the others to discuss, which of course mainly about my opponent. It was quite a long time and when we got in, we were told the victor. Jeremiah became our Marketing manager, and even though already anticipated all of this, I was a bit surprised and sad that I lost. The candidates couldn’t know who vote for whom, but I wished I could know if there was any person did vote for me.

But now I am not sure if it was better off for me if I have won. Jeremiah later on appeared to be a much capable person for the position than me for various reasons that I may mention later. Sometimes love and determination still need some rationale. So I should just do my best always, and leave the rest to God. “But what am I gonna tell her now?” I wondered.

(to be continued…)

Part 02

Twenty dollars

It’s easy to drop some money. A couple dollars is irrelevant to talk about. A huge amount of money is just unlikely. Therefore, if a person drops some money, it ought to be about twenty dollars.
The elderly are so careful that they won’t drop money, and children shouldn’t carry that much money around. People have jobs to do will be too busy to drop twenty dollars, even if you ask them to do it sincerely. So if someone drops some money, he/she should be a college student, and college students tend to do unwise things on campus. So if there is someone ever drops some money, it’s really likely to be a college student drops twenty dollars on campus.
Either a twenty dollar-worth pile of coins or a twenty dollar bill, it’d be noticeable, so a college student will see it. Let’s say this person is a “he”, just because it’s shorter and therefore more convenient to type than “she”. So he sees this money, and because he is in college, he is clever enough to stop and think. Do you see now why I have to spend a whole paragraph to make sure that he is a college student? If he is anyone else – think about it – he’d be either too busy or too ignorant to deal with this situation, and I’d have no incentive to talk about such insignificant incident. Now what this college guy thinks and decides is the matter. It’s simple enough: to ignore, to take it and use it, or to return it.
If that college student ignores the money, he can be either too rich, or he doesn’t know how to read, or he doesn’t know what money is, which are extremely unlikely. He wouldn’t have to be a college student, would he? College students are really special people, mostly because they would stop in front of twenty dollars, instead of ignoring it and join the rest of the world.
Then what should he do with this money? Of course he should return it, and I want him to return it, or else this blog of mine would be more inappropriate than it already is. Since kindergarten we all learned to return dropped stuffs, because “stealing is bad”, and it’s bad indeed. One can even relate to the Commandment of not coveting neighbor’s twenty dollars. So this decent college guy, after awhile hesitating, decides to give up his desires of music and movies and turns the money in at a front desk of the nearest dorm. The front desk person happens to be another college student, because who else would want to do such a job? So this person goes through all the process of thinking and because this world is perfectly good, this college student finally chooses to put the money there, waiting for the owner to come and take it. How great is that?
Talking about the owner of this money, after about three weeks he will realize of the loss (it’s “he” again, sorry for my laziness). He then will think and know that it’s unlikely for his money to be untouched until now. But because people are nice so he still has his hope. Now when he wants to find it, he has no idea where to get to. Should he go and ask every single front desk in all of the buildings on campus? Because he is a college student, his rational thinking will undoubtedly tell him, “No!”
So what’s the result? The money will stay at a desk forever, untouched, forgotten forever. A romantic middle school girl will consider it as a proof for the goodness of human beings. A college student studying business like me will say it’s a waste of asset of society, especially in this economic depression. So should the guy who saw the money have really returned it?
What if we return back to the time he saw the money and have him change his decision. Now he is standing there, taking twenty dollars and then goes to a CD store. He chooses and buys the album that he has been staring at for weeks. He’ll feel so happy and lucky; he’ll work harder and study better: his life can be changed! The store manager will also be happy, and he will be nicer to his wife and children when he gets home at night. The author of the album will be happy even more, because his/her work is paid off and he/she knows that there are people out there appreciate his/her music. There can be many other people whose lives will be better but I’ll stop here because you already get the idea and I am bored.
If you really read this post until here, then I’m surprised and grateful. But really, if you see twenty dollars dropped somewhere on campus, then just keep it and use it. I already did a whole statistical, philosophical explanation for you to defend yourselves from being guilty. Remember though, twenty-one dollars is a different story, and I won’t talk about it.