How to Get Your Life in Order

What are your priorities? Do you have a list? For those starting the search for the right universities to attend have you set  priorities about what you wish to learn and how you wish to grow? Are you a helicopter parent or a child of one? Are you an educator who has to deal with stressed out people looking for answers about how to approach college and life? What follows is an interview with a person who has found that setting priorities and being open to change has let him become an independent innovator, leader and global citizen.

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Can you tell us a little about your upbringing and family? What are you from and where did you go to school?

• Made in China, processed in Singapore, upgraded in the South, trained in Wall Street (technically it’s Midtown New York), I’m now working at a tech startup in NYC.  

You are one of the brave ones who left China early on in two ways. First you left to go to Singapore to complete your secondary education. Can you talk about why you wanted to go abroad and why Singapore?

• My parents didn’t want to pay for my high school tuition so they sent me to a scholarship program at Singapore where all expense are covered and I'd receive S$200 per month as stipend.
• Kidding aside, my parents were worried that as a single child, I’d be spoiled if I were to stay at China. The Scholarship program at Singapore was an ideal opportunity to get me out from the comfort zone to live an independent life. 

What were the major differences between the education in China and in Singapore?

• It’s been a while since I studied in Singapore and China so things might have changed. While both China and Singapore focus a great deal on grades, Singapore has an emphasis on extra-curricular activities which enriched my student life and helped me develop many important inter-personal skills. It taught me that being a student is not only about learning in the classroom but also outside of the classroom. Another noticeable difference is the optionality in higher education. While more and more Chinese high schools are providing preparation programs for overseas colleges, most of the Chinese students’ options are still the national college selection system. Singapore’s education system originated from the UK and it provides more options to its students in general.  

How much of a culture shock was it adjusting?

• I wasn’t consciously experiencing cultural shock. It was definitely difficult when you get thrown into a community that you know very little about and also have few friends. But I think humans generally have a strong survival instinct, which guided me to adapt to a more comfortable ways of living. By that I mean I was forced to figure out how everything works. Since it was a part of my growing up, I don’t think I consciously distinguished culture shock from growing pains. 
• In hindsight, one thing that I realized was that going to Singapore was the beginning of my separation from my parents, physically, mentally, and financially. It made me an independent person. That process wasn’t easy as I went through it.   

You then decided to pursue university in the US. Why did you want to do this and how did you go about doing it? Did you have help with the process? Who was it and what kind of help did you get?

• I was thinking about US, UK, or Singapore. I didn’t have many choices--my grades weren't good enough for the very top universities in the UK or Singapore, so I could only play the wild card, US, where schools not only look at grades but evaluate an applicant holistically. The US also seemed more fun to me then (after watchingArrested Development, and American Pie).
• My school invited a college counselor from another Junior College (Parke’s note: In Singapore a Junior College is the equivalent to a secondary school. The JC’s in Singapore have been ranked as among the best secondary schools in the world.) to speak to us about colleges in the US. I approached the counselor afterward to get his advice about US college applications. We then discussed what schools would fit my profile. He was a major help during the process. We went through brainstorming about my identity and interests, and how they’d fit into different part of the application package. 

How did you decide which schools to apply to and how did you decide where to go?

• There wasn’t much information available to me both about what I really wanted to do and what university would fit. Because I grew up in a business family, I was always intrigued by how business works. My counselor advised me that my scores and profile were strong enough for U.Penn, and might stand a chance for UVA. So I applied there.

When you came to the university you graduated from you seemed to know the right way that you wanted to explore opportunities in and out of class that not many students from China were involved with. How did you try to expand beyond the typical student?

• I didn’t like following the crowd because I didn’t think I could compete well and I also always wanted to "be special". So I avoided taking routes that many of my Chinese peers took. It was funny to think I wanted to make myself feel “special”. I’m not sure if that was a healthy mentality. On the flip side, this mentality also drove me to do many interesting things, including taking foreign affairs as a major, taking many graduate level politics classes, getting into our undergraduate business school after my freshmen year (usually this happens only after sophomore year), and working with professors for their business projects.  

Can you talk about what you studied and what you enjoyed most about the intellectual experience you had?

• I majored in Economics and Foreign Affairs.
• The most enjoyable part of my intellectual experience was being in classes where I had no idea what I was doing, be it political theory, art history, and graduate level classes. 
• One of the most memorable experiences I had was a class on critical argumentation. I was taught by a very well respected French professor. I remember learning about different approaches to forming an argument by watching the film "12 Angry Men”. I didn’t find myself doing very well in that class but still picked up  the wisdom to know that one should always try to think, write and communicate logically and critically. 

You ended up doing research for one of the more high profile professors, Ed Burton, at your University. Can you talk about how you managed to this and can you describe what you did?

• More like his IT guy. Professor Ed Burton’s class was one of the most popular economic classes. He usually offered to take students to lunch for free. How can I refuse to get free lunch? At one of the lunches, he mentioned that his computers had some problems. I started taking computers apart when I was 13, and have always been a computer DIY (Do-It-Yourself) fan. I offered to help him fix his problems and eventually that turned into multiple mini IT and non-IT projects for him and his friends. It was a fun experience and I felt very fortunate to have met Professor Burton. He later became a mentor in my life; he has given me much useful advice that changed me a lot. I feel forever grateful for what he has done for me. 

You were also involved in a significant leadership position in the mainland Student Network. Can you talk a bit about this group and how you helped to expand its mission and its goals?

• MSN is a group founded by a few Chinese students in UVA a few years before I came. What differentiated MSN from other Chinese student group was that its activities weren’t solely for Chinese students. It has served as a platform to help Chinese students get more involved with the bigger UVA community.
• During my junior year, I served as the Internal Vice President of MSN. During that year, we were fortunate to have a very strong leadership team. The President was this great guy called Gary Chen (I’m writing this on the flight to his wedding). He’s a very empathetically minded, which I later found that is one of the most important qualities for being a good leader. We both wanted to build something different. We changed the structure of the organization and provided members of the leadership team more liberty to run their own projects.

Do you have anything you would change about the way you approached your education?

• Despite wanting to be different from my peers, I still fell into the trap of self-doubt and insecurity (or maybe self-doubt drove me to want to be special). I remember I was still caught up with securing a high GPA, getting internships/jobs, and earning distinctions. I wish I could have gotten away from that and taken more opportunity to explore what UVA offers such as studying overseas.  

You secured a great job with the Bank of Tokyo and worked in Manhattan. Can you describe the job search, the interview process and what your job was like?  

• There wasn’t much “process” for the search. One of the “clients” at my small IT practice was very connected. I was introduced to a Managing Director at the Bank of Tokyo by him, and was invited to the interview for the analyst program at the syndicated loan capital market group. The interview process was quite typical. I went through a few rounds of interviews with different members of the team. The rest was history.
• The business of this group was to identify and secure for the bank suitable lending business opportunities with corporations in the Americas. The group would then earn a fee for these leading transactions. My role as a junior analyst was mainly preparing the marketing materials both for pitching clients, and for the internal approval process. 
• I was lucky to land this job right after my graduation. I didn't know what I wanted to do and wasn’t as prepared or focused as some of my classmates in job searching.  The most valuable things I got from this job was the professional training, learning soft skills and becoming familiar with the general knowledge of the US business world. Because the group was growing rapidly at that time, I had the chance to work with different clients from different industries including technology, general industrials, energy, healthcare, real estate, transportation, and chemicals.
• Going into my second year, however, I started to feel that my learning was slowing down and I wasn't a great fit to the dynamics and culture of the company. I began to explore opportunities for my next stage. In the next 18 months, I advised and invested in 8 different business projects, and have learned many valuable lessons through these diverse experiences. 
• By the time I was promoted to associate, the only upside for staying 2-3 years was a raise in pay, which wasn’t the most attractive thing to someone who wants to start his own business one day. I gave myself 100 days from May 15, 2014 to quit my job at banking. It took a lot of effort but I succeeded in my goal.

Over the past several years we have talked many times about the need for students from China to realize how important it is to develop soft skills and to get outside of the Chinese bubble that exists on some campuses.  Can you talk about why this issue is so important to you and what you think needs to be done to help students from China best prepare to get the most out of their education?

o   Until recently, I used to think it was the lack of soft skills that hindered Chinese students from growing and taking advantage of the rich opportunities the US schools and communities. While this is accurate to some degree here are some new ideas: 

o   Most Chinese students come to the US between the ages of 15 - 25, which was mid- to late-adolescence-- the most fascinating and challenging period of one’s life. Values, social status, race, gender, fame, prestige, money, ego, self-existential need...a long list of external forces started to occupy our minds. One became more exposed to these forces because he or she left the comfort shell at home.

o   It was challenging when you have to think about so many things all at once. That’s what happens to some Chinese and American students. What made the process a bit easier for some other American students is that the environment the students were in allowed them to become more independent, and a bit "more experienced" in handling their own life priorities. 

o   For most Chinese students, however, it’s significantly more challenging because we were used to "following a path”.  There were few life decisions one had to make besides which school to apply to when you graduate from the previous one.  So when Chinese students come to the US, many more external influences that they weren’t prepared to deal with flood into their minds. That was stressful for me. Adding to this were also the high expectations from family, as well as the need to adapt into a new culture. Not all students are equipped with the ability to deal with such stress. Many thus chose to follow their mental inertia and stay in their comfort zone, doing what they were good at doing: math, studying, hanging out with other Chinese students. 

o   Fortunately, an increasing number of the 90-generations grew up in an environment where more non-classroom activities were provided at schools and parents were giving them more hands off on the children’s life decisions. They seems to be more equipped with the skills to cope with the stress and more clarity in their mind on how to get what’s important to them out of their US education. 

You have always been interested in innovation and business and start-ups. Did the visa restrictions in the US limit you significantly in looking for opportunities? Do you think the visa issues will begin to hurt the number of student pursing study in the US?

• The Visa process for foreign national is not, to put it nicely, convenient. It was stressful when I had to remain employed while looking for a new job. I wouldn’t be able to easily quit my job and start my own business. But as an entrepreneur, it doesn’t matter how many ways things don’t work, it matters that you find a way to make things work. So it’s a problem, but I don’t think it’s unsolvable. It’d be nice if the process can be easier but many in my situation have succeeded in their endeavors.  

You were very thorough in looking for other opportunities outside banking in New York. You had many chances to move but you wanted to find something that would stimulate you and provide you with great experience. How did you develop the strength and patience to wait for the right thing?

• It was a growing process with lots of painful learning experience. When I started the job searching process for opportunities at startups, I wasn’t 100% clear what I want. I had no concept of “prioritization”. But luckily at many of the occasion where I have to make a decision if I want to join some company, I asked myself if I’d be happy to working with the people there. The companies that I didn’t join were those that I answered “no”. Admittedly, many of them were close call and I still at times fantasize the “what if” scenario. 

At one point you went through a period of self-refection about what you wanted. Could you describe this a bit and share what you learned about yourself and how what you learned might be helpful for others

• I was forced into a self-reflection because of things happened in my life have put me into despair. One thing I learned is that such a process never ends. What I can share are thoughts I’ve learned so far. 

You have now moved on in your career. What is it you are doing? Can you describe it in some detail? In talking with you sound very happy and excited about your job. What do you look forward to doing each day?

• I am now a data product analyst at a NYC-based tech and data startup. We collect and analyze publicly available Internet companies, and provide these data and analysis to institutional investors. I’m responsible of developing our new data product pipeline. More specifically, I have to investigate the business models of different public companies, understand what matters to them, and how publicly available data can track the performance of the companies. I love what I’m doing for many reasons. Just to name a few: the people are nice, smart, and driven. In addition, the business is something that I believe in; my role prepares me well for being an entrepreneur some day. 

What advice do you have for students who are thinking of coming to the US for their education? What advice do you have for those students who are here and who want to land a great job?

• For students who are thinking of coming to the US for their education, it’d be helpful to think about what you want to get through this experience. List the top three things and focus on the 3 during your time here. These things can change as you get here and learn more about your external and internal world. But at any given time, it helps to have some things to guide you forward or things that aren’t important to you will drive you. 
• When you are here, pat yourself at the back and say “good job!”. Regardless which school you go to, what major you study, and why you are here, it takes guts to take the first steps and actually make it to the US. Remember the feelings you had when you first come. Hopefully such feelings come to you often during your life in the US, it’d be important what keeps you going. 
• The last part of this question is hard. Everyone has his or her own definition of a “great job”. You have to first ask what does “great job” mean to you? High pay? Good brand? Smart people? Great industry? Learning opportunities? Again, it’d be helpful to know your priorities, what’s important to you when you make those decisions.  

Anything else you want to add? 

• It’s okay not knowing what you want to do. But start doing small things, and ask yourself “What do I like and dislike about this?” As you repeat this process, you will learn more about how you feel about different things and get the closer you are to what you want to do in life.
• As the years go by, I learned to appreciate the importance of knowing priorities of my life. 
• Always try to be grateful and helpful for the people around you, family, friends, colleagues, mentors, and classmates. Ever since I graduated from college, I have grown drastically, and have been through many ups and downs. I have made it this far because of the people who believe in me, support me during the downs and cheer for me during the good times too.

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I am lucky to have known Mu for quite some time. As you can tell from his remarks he is more than just academically smart. He approached his education in ways that all students should consider when looking at schools and looking to develop successful approaches to research in school and jobs afterward.

He emphasizes what some call ‘soft skills’ but I think this term is a bit misleading. For some learning to find mentors, trying to network with many companies and colleagues, and setting priorities is hard. It takes preparation and patience and dedication. It also takes independence.

I mention the latter trait as there have been a number of books that have been published recently that question the wisdom and actions of what has become known as 'helicopter parenting' in the US (and other places too). The most recent book, written by a former Dean at Stanford, examines whether this kind of parenting actually hurts a child's transition into becoming  an independent adult:

Did the safety-conscious , academic achievement-focused, self-esteem-promoting, checklisted childhood that has been commonplace since the mid-1980s and in many communities has become the norm, rob kids of the chance to develop into healthy adults? What will become of young adults who look accomplished on paper but seem to have a hard time making their way in the world without the constant involvement of their parents? How will the real world feel to a young person who has grown used to problems being solved for them and accustomed to praise at every turn? Is it too late for them to develop a hunger to be in charge of their own lives? Will they at some point stop referring to themselves as kids and dare to claim the “adult” label for themselves? If not, then what will become of a society populated by such “adults”? These were the questions that began to gnaw at me and that prompted me to write this book.

Lythcott-Haims, Julie. How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.  Kindle Edition.

Parents in the US might learn some things from parents in China. Students might learn some things from Chinese students too. While many Chinese parents may push their children hard to do well, they are also willing to send them off to other countries for the chance to develop themselves in and out of the classroom.  The 'common wisdom' about parents from China (and Asian parents overall) as Tiger Moms and Dads does apply in some cases. On the other hand, my experience advising hundreds of international students coming to the US has taught me that once students are out of their country they often have to figure out things for themselves. The parents are not there to visit and in some cases the students do not have the money to go home over breaks. Some students do not see their parents for years. Parents from China are often not familiar with the US system of education and so step back and let the students themselves grow and mature.

Mu was challenged in leaving home to go to Singapore for secondary school, but the experience gave him the confidence that he could do well on his own. It did not come, however, without many challenges and this is part of the point. He then continued to grow and explore on his own when he came to the US for school and then once he was out in the world. How many of these so called helicopter parents would let their children go abroad for this many years, across time zones, cultures and language? The data is clear on this--not many.

Mu also has an internal drive that pushes him not to settle. By this I mean that he has the skills that a lot of companies want, but he did not settle for the first job that came along. This is even more impressive for an international student as they face far greater odds in getting a spot. He took the time—nearly a year—to find what was best. During all that time he was contacting people, asking questions and searching inside himself to discover what he really wanted. We talked a lot about this during that time and I can say I know very few who have been as thorough about getting to know himself and the landscape of business both in the US and around the world. His understanding of what makes for a great job is far ahead of many people I know. He walked away from a job in banking in which he had risen quickly to a promotion because he wanted to do something that spoke more to his own passions and dreams. This took courage and self-knowledge, two things that not all of us have. I hope that Mu’s example will, however, inspire others.

I want to thank Mu for sharing some of the ‘secrets’ to success that really are not secrets. Things like setting priorities sounds easy but in the real world and in our ever-busy days and nights sifting through our minds often doesn’t happen as often as it should.  Mu has always been generous with his time to help others with advice about things. His ability to care about others while looking to become alder in his field makes me confident that he has an exciting and bright future ahead of him.