Passion for adventure -- celebrating my first news report!

These days while waiting for more MBA admission results coming out, I am excitingly picking up new skill sets, in areas such as news reporting, digital marketing, and media relations. I've been working as communication marketing manager at HYSTA (Hua Yuan Science & Technology Association, a leading high-tech non-profit based in Silicon Valley) since Late Feb, a volunteer position that exposes me to fantastic cross-cultural teamwork engagements and learning opportunities.

Below is a news report that I co-authored for HYSTA. It's my first time writing a corporate news report. I was there in the press release, feeling excited to see the inception of this educational & entertaining TV program - a unique showcase & "classroom" for entrepreneurs! Definitely recommend to everyone interested in entrepreneurship or the like.

The Chinese name of this program is "西游计", named after a famous traditional fiction "A Journey To The West". Just as the story told, the journey to the "Bible" is never easy, and the route to success is full of bushes and zigzags. The same holds true for entrepreneurship. That's why the TV program got its Chinese name.

Speaking for myself, I have always been instinctively enjoying adventures. In childhood, words like"scary" was never in my dictionary. I remembered being the only girl in my college class who went skydiving in our Carnivour adventure trip.

As I heard a successful Chinese entrepreneur Joy Chen (a woman, by the way) talked about career path, "The way up is not often a straight line." That echoed in my heart. As a PhD dropout, I have frequently been asked, "why did you drop out your PhD? Didn't you feel a pity?" or one step further "didn't you feel your four years in PhD program a loss?" No, I don't think so, at least no longer. Frankly, there has been a time when I regretted getting into PhD, or a time I was thinking of writing in my failure essay "I should not have gone to PhD". However, when I carefully walked my memory through the years of trials-and-errors, years of self-interrogations, I realized that without four-year PhD experience I would not have such understanding of myself. As I wrote in an early draft of my MBA application essay --

"While I excelled in the coursework and had publications, I realized there are other people who can do better science than me. While I enjoyed reading literatures and communicating ideas with fellow scientists, I would better capitalize on my intellectual curiosity in industry, where I can put ideas into action. I might become a tenured professor in twelve years along the academic track, but that was not my passion. Continually tasting the joy of challenging the status quo and making a break-through, the joy of finding emotional resonance with others and arriving on the same ground, the joy of kindling the spirit of a frustrated teammate, the joy of success under collaborative efforts, I believe business world would be a better choice for me.  My leadership quality developed through years of extracurricular activities, as well as my instinctive desire to help others and contribute to the community, would better position myself to do business than to do science."

Not to mention those valuable transferable skills that I have acquired through PhD training: project management, problem solving, managing up, oral & written presentation, etc.

So I am grateful for my past, whatever the experience. I believe that sometimes a zigzag in career path will be good in the long term. If you're on a fast track, you'll miss lots of treasures along the way. 

As I'm jump-starting my new adventure in business, I am embracing the joy of learning new skills and venturing out new areas. That's what my 1st news report and the TV program "Battle Silicon" mean for me.

Here is the link of the news report. Chinese version is available here