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“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” —— Steve Jobs

Part One: First Time Living Abroad

• Independent Cooking

It’s our first time living abroad for such a long time. We can not but live by ourselves.

Cite cooking for an instance, when we wake up, we have to think about what to eat for breakfast and lunch. After finishing classes, we always plan to go to the markets to buy food materials and other ingredients.

It seems quite interesting to cook by ourselves. We are delighted when we made a delicious cuisine, and also feel upset for an overcooked dish.

Now, let’s see what we had been cooked!

• Travelling

There are lots of leisure time we can spend on travelling. Because of a nearby train station located in the centre of Leeds, it’s convenient for us to go to any cities by trains.

But Daisy got a terrible experience when she visited Chatsworth House. It was raining in the sky and the road of the garden became very muddy. Her friend complained why such a luxurious house had such a muddy road. One of the reasonable explanations is that the rich owners did not have to walk, they went out by carriage.

• Exploring and Discovering

For students who come from different countries, everything in the United Kingdom is fresh to them. The buildings, the foreigners, the street performances, the culture and many other new things attract us.

We enjoy keeping curiosity in spite of an unchanging life.

Cheney found some gorgeous colorful flowers behind her accommodation on the way to our classes, which help her relax and adjust the new environment.

From our perspectives, British people stay in a slow and joyful life step. We can hardly see people get in a hurry, but lay on the grass and enjoy the sunshine. The attitude towards life is worth respecting.

Part Two: Learning in Different Ways

• Courses

It is a very meaningful experience before our postgraduate courses. We explored the different educational experiences and learned critical thinking at the same time.

During the last three weeks, we have learned varieties of academic studying skills, like distinguishing different types of genres and how to use the library sources and module reading lists to explore different reading skills and strategies (skimming, scanning and reading for details).

It was the first time for us to write an English blog and wait for our tutors’ feedback. When we receive disadvantages, we are likely to pay more attention to grammar and structure. And we are aware of the importance of proofreading.

These days we had a basic preparation for our master’s programs. And also we finished several tasks, for example, reading some academic articles, improving critical thinking abilities and writing a genre analysis report.

• Seminars

We participated in many discussions, especially in the first seminar, seated in a circle and talked about Pang’s journal article with other partners. Some of us felt a little bit nervous, but still trying to be open-minded and sharing own opinions about the topics of the academic text. At last, everyone gain a deeply thinking.

After that, we took part in a seminar relating to a critical thinking article, written by John Chaffee, a director. We possibly know that individuals’ independent thinking is influenced by personal experiences and one’s mature mind. When people want to explain something, they are likely to use reasons and evidence to support their ideas.

We can not only find the facts, but also the answers from our questions before reading articles and discussions. Attending an independent seminar which we never had before is quite a big challenge for us. Because we didn’t have a teacher or a tutor, just discuss with our partners. That’s so different from Chinese education.

We shared our studying methods and talked about our own master’s programs and different major areas. What’s more, we tried our best to explain the author’s opinions and our own thoughts to the counter points. With careful listening and deep thinking, it is a good chance for us to meet new friends in SSA7 and know other discipline areas as well.

• Self-studies

There is an important part in our studies which called “self-studies”. It divided into several parts: listening, self-reading, the Language Zone studying(which we mentioned above) and so on.

We listened to a short lecture online about “How to Have a Beautiful Mind” by one of the pioneers of Brain Training, Edward De Bono. The topic is about ‘A Beautiful Mind ‘, which made a point that our thinking depends on the universities thinking in the Renaissance period.

With different colors of hats, we can think specifically in six diverse ways: information, intuition, criticism, value, creativity, and organization. This can help us elaborate on our ideas.

Part Three: Difficulties and Challenges

• Problems in Life

Before coming here, I had never gone abroad. The different lifestyle here is strange, which means we have to face the unfamiliar foods, another driving direction, and the British accents.

The foods here are so oily, we can hardly eat vegetables so some of us usually feel no appetite. But we consider that fruits and juice are fresh and delicious. Well, every disadvantage has its advantage. Because of the unremarkable foods, I eat less here than in China. Recently I perceive that I am slimmer, that’s not too bad.

Another side is about the traffic rules, we have to press the button to change the light color, and we have to tell ourselves the vehicle will come from the left lane every time. One day we walked on the wrong side, a policeman came and told us we would be dangerous. However, because of his accent, we did not understand him until we arrived in the residence.

Based on the awkward circumstance, we remind ourselves that we have to overcome these difficulties.

For Chinese students, cooking must be a necessary duty every day. And that is the best way to rescue our Chinese stomachs.

• Difficulties in Studying

We think, probably for international students, the most difficult thing is language. We have to face unfamiliar professional vocabulary and grammar. Worse still, there are so many words in the articles which we should learn in the reading list.

In addition, the new studying method confused us for a long time. At the beginning of the language classes, we didn’t know what we should do when we were looking at the journal articles. But after one week, we learned ‘critical thinking’ which leads us to analyze the structure and paragraphs by ourselves. Actually, we usually plan to discuss with partners, and sometimes we ask for help from our teachers or a dictionary.

After we arrived in Leeds, library became our second home. There are too much knowledge that we can explore. And also, we are able to organize a discussion after classes for any questions in contents or our tasks.

• Challenges in the Future

In fact, although we met lots of difficulties, that’s just a beginning. In September, we will go to a totally fresh area, our major is not just for language, we have to face more complex challenges. Before that, the most important thing is preparing thoroughly.

We make a plan that we can go to the language zone every week, which would help us improve our language skill. About the major in postgraduate, we can find the reading list before the terms. We all think preview is necessary before class.

Everything here is new for us, and everything is worth learning. Life in Leeds is so fantastic, and we certainly will benefit a lot during this year.

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🔖 Thanks for reading. Hope you have a nice day! 😛