Defining Futures...

Our adviser from USC has been in Beijing over the weekend to meet with various Chinese universities, students and alumni throughout China. Friday night we had a dinner with everyone from alumni to prospective students and met a lot of interesting people. The Moore School has a greater presence in China than I would have imagined. Some alumni are VP of companies like Sony or Apple, while others are opening restaurants, managing information systems, doing marketing consulting, etc. It was an inspiring experience that also left everyone wondering...which path do I chose? We were given this diagram back in the U.S. to outline different specialties and organizational structures we might want to work under. However, this is only the beginning of the decision making!

Our lunch and private meetings with the adviser brought more hours of discussion. Which functional specialty? Large multinational or local Chinese company? What location? What industry? How to start deciding and looking? These are all things that we are hammering out these days as we try to keep our minds on the goal and the MBA and not get caught up in the relative ease of our daily language study. After three months of break-time and fun it is interesting to watch how everyone has shifted into a search for productivity. We are searching out ways, whether it be part-time jobs, volunteer work, etc. to utilize our skills and create results. I have gone ahead and paid my deposit for next semester at the University of International Business and Economics, which means I will continue to study language there until December, but I did so knowing that it will have to be accompanied by business classes in Chinese, private tutoring, or a part-time job. One step at a time...but I will keep you updated with the plans for the next 15 months as they unfold.