Another year and another class of graduating students will say goodbye to their alma mater and start a new journey. The four years spent at UIC is some of the best years of their life. How many stories and sceneries have been treasured along the way? How much hard work has paid off? The following is the story of Year 4 Government and International Relations graduate Shao Chenhan.
Shao Chenhan is a Year 4 graduate from the Government and International Relations (GIR) programme at UIC. She started playing the Guqin (ancient Chinese musical instrument) as a freshman, which has helped her to find her ‘zen’ when dealing with problems that she has encountered during her studies.
Shao Chenhan loves the beautiful music flowed from her fingertips, and also enjoys how calm and relaxed she can be when she is practising the Guqin. Shao Chenhan’s journey with the Guqin started in her freshmen year. Through several years of practising, she gained a peaceful mindset and has come to understand that Rome was not built in one day.
Shao Chenhan has made her progress step-by-step, and has won several scholarships throughout her duration at UIC. She plans to continue her studies by going to Duke University in the US to pursue a Master's in Public Policy.
In December 2019, Shao Chenhan completed her Final Year Project (FYP), which was a new challenge for herself. For a long time, Shao Chenhan has had an interest in community development research. She also decided to study the impact that UIC Jintong Road campus brought to the social and economic development of the Huitong village.
This is Shao Chenhan's first time in first-hand data collection. With the guidance and help of her supervisor, she kept thinking about how to apply the theoretical framework to analyse the reality of the Huitong village, how to make the questions in the questionnaires and interviews easier for the interviewees to understand, and how to organise the data more efficiently.
Finally, Shao Chenhan’s FYP received a relatively high evaluation from the teacher, which was a huge encouragement to Shao Chenhan. From the literature review to research methods of field investigation, she found the shortcomings that she needed to overcome in the next stage of learning. At the same time, she also found her interest in research and may continue to study the radiation effects of campuses to their surrounding communities, or the development of urban fringe areas/rural areas in the future.
Receiving encouragement from the open and diverse environment
Shao Chenhan also loves how diverse UIC is. From here, she learned about different cultures which opened the door to a bigger world. She felt that her biggest change was that she became more open-minded. She further explained that at UIC, she saw a lot of people who have made achievements in various field, and she could also get to understand and discover the diversity of the world. In such an environment, she kept moving forward by calming down and self-reflecting.
During her freshman summer and first semester of junior year, Shao Chenhan participated in a summer programme and an exchange programme respectively. She obtained personal experiences of different cultures in France and the US. She appreciates being offered the opportunities of doing cross-cultural communication and has learnt from professors about different approaches of doing research. Thanks to the opportunities she has been given, she also started to think about her diverse possibilities in the future.
There are many types of UIC scholarships, and Shao Chenhan has received many of them. She has earned the National Scholarship, Prof Xu Jialu WPE Award, Mr Fung Sun Kwan Scholarship, etc. Shao Chenhan believes that the different types of scholarships that UIC offer also show that the College encourages the diversified development of students and supports those who showed interests and capacities in different fields.
Shao Chenhan was very grateful to the teachers and friends she met along the way, who helped and accompanied her from overcoming the difficulties of learning in English, to understanding the subjects and exploring her interests, to making the plan for further studies, and understanding the society.
From MPRO
Reporter: Covee Wang
Editors: Samuel Burgess, Deen He
