Some thoughts for these months.

Going abroad for further study is a romantic idea for many people.

If you do / did, you may read this sentence with a subtle smile. Is it true?

When I told some people that I got the admission to some USA graduate schools, some of they laughed and said, "Wow! You are so lucky! you will play hard and have fun all the time, right?" 

Cultural shock/cultural differences is the first thing I have to face. Since participation in class is needed in most of my class, I have to force myself to listen and speak carefully. I have a lot of pressure in group discussion time. It is the first time I didn't know how to express myself. It is like heaven and hell. 

When I was in "comfortable zone", I like to write essays and poems in mother language. It is not hard for me to use rhetoric phrases/words to depict opinions or express feelings. However, I keep silent in class most of the times.

After oral presentations in the end of the semester, I gradually release the burden.

Because of budget and preferences of food, I cook a lot at dorm. I really love cooking, and it relieve anxiety and pressure from daily life. Kitchen is my game room. Strolling to supermarket is one of the best thing in week days. I tried some vegetables which are not common in my hometown. 

Traveling to New York countryside in Spring break is unforgettable. The air is so fresh, and star shines on the sky. All things are in peace. I'm planning for more trips next semester. :)

3 graphs and interpretations

(1) Resource: Robert D. Buzzell, Bradley T. Gale, and Ralph G.M. Sultan (1975). Market Share-A Key to profitability. Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb, pp97-106

Exhibit V shows Industry variations in the share/ROI relationship. As can be seen, graph A shows the comparison of market share and ROI (rate of return) between frequently and infrequently purchased products. During the interval of market share from under 10% to 40%, frequently and infrequently purchased products have similar trend. That is, market share and ROI has positive correlation coefficient. For infrequently purchased products, when market share is over 40%, the ROI will be stabilized.

In graph B, for industries have fragmented customers, there is positive relationship between market share and ROI. However, for industries have concentrated customers, market share and ROI have negative relationship when market share is between 20% to 30%. It is shown that in the interval of 20% to 30% market share, ROI declines when market share increases.

(2) Resources: Nile Khanfar and David Loudon(2008).  Adams Jewelry. Journal of the International Academy for Case Studies, Vol.14, No. 7, pp 109-119

Table 3 shows the record of precious metal prices from 2003 to 2006. As can be seen, it shows the lowest, highest, average prices and change of the prices of gold, silver, platinum and palladium. All of the prices are calculated by US dollars. For example, platinum is the most expensive among the 4 precious metals. The highest price of platinum is $1331 which occurs on  May 17^th  2006, and the lowest price is 692.50 which occurs on 2003 September 17^th  2003. The column of “change” means the difference between highest and lowest prices. Because of  the scarce of natural mineral resources, prices of precious metals reveal a upward trend. In this table, it shows the highest price in 2006 for all of the precious metals. The price fluctuates over every time period but presents upward trend if it has been observed for several years.   

(3) Resources: Frozen Food in Europe(2014). MarketLine Industry Profile.

(MarketLine is a Datamonitor business. This article does not belong to specific author)

Figures 3 shows market share of different categories in Europe frozen food market by pie chart in 2014.  Market share is calculated by US dollars. As can be seen, frozen ready meals has the highest market share (20.4%). Other category (18.7%) and frozen fish/seafood (18.2%) occupy 2^nd and 3^rd place of market shares respectively. Frozen bakery products has the lowest market share (4.7%). This pie chart may reveal diet habit and robustness of industries which has large market share, like frozen ready meals industries. However, more details are needed to analyze Europe frozen food market.

Summary for "Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are"

Body language, academically called “nonverbal language”, plays an important role in daily communication and also affects how people judge others. Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist, raises a view point that our nonverbal languages can alter our psychological status. Amy takes testosterone and cortisol experiment for example to illustrate this concept. Testosterone and cortisol are two hormones related to power. Powerful people show high testosterone but low cortisol. In the experiment, people change their gestures to pretend powerful for several minutes leads to increment in testosterone and decrements in cortisol. It is said that nonverbal language influences our mind. Moreover, Amy Cuddy shares her own experiences to reinforce her point of view and encourage the audience who want to change their lives.

Comparisons of Azuma's and Xia's articles

I choose audience, authority and argument to compare Azuma’s and Xia’s articles. I will illustrate comparisons individually according to the three criteria.

-Audience:

Azuma’s article focuses on computer science students who consider to pursue a PhD degree. The readers may want to know the “journey” internally (mentally changes) and externally (what happened to him) Azuma encountered before, learn experiences from this article, and take advices from the author. On contrary, Xia’s readers focus on a specific and narrow field. They are researchers or students who study supply chain, and they mainly take this article as reference to their study or as a supportive material to their research.

-Authority:

Authority of Azuma’s article is from his/her observations and real experiences. Proverbs, idioms and well-known sayings are added in the beginning of every section to integrate the ideas he/she wants to explain later. For example, “To know the road ahead, ask those coming back” and “Remember the Golden Rule: Those who have the gold make the rules.” are sentences/proverbs in Azuma’s articles. In contrast, authority of Xia’s article is from literature review, model description and “order space segmentation sensitivity analysis”. It means Xia utilize previous research and verification of models to support his/her article. In an objective angle, Xia’s authority is stronger than Azuma’s because of the background study, literature review and findings in Xia’s article.

-Argument:

Azuma illustrates his/her argument in a linear way. That is, to illustrate them like chatting with friends. Several important views are provided, for example “Graduate school is a different ball game”, “tenacity” and” flexibility” to be subtitles in different sections. Experiences, observations and personal aspects are the resource of his/her argument. What is more, Azuma’s argument is fluent and easy to read but not well-organized as academic articles (of course there’s no necessity that way). Until the final page, readers know all of Azuma’s perspectives. On contrary, Xia’s argument is based on clear resource, literature review. He/she also utilizes models to make assumptions and do analysis to support his/her argument. Xia’s article put abstract first, then introduction, literature review, model, analysis and make conclusions at last. Readers know “result” of the research from the beginning and the end of the article.

To sum up, Azuma’s article is direct, informal and easy to read for public. Xia’s article is formal, academic, mainly for research purpose.

Say hi and a brief introduction

Hi! I'm Ingrid, a new GWU student from Taiwan. I'm in Project Management(PM) program in 2016 Spring semester. I'm eager to recognize the "linking" between words and words and to get used to the speed of speaking here. Writing concise and precise academic sentences is also what I want to learn. I study business, and I am also interested in fields about cooking and design . I am also interested in martial arts like Tai-chi quan. It's nice to see you all in EAP class. Hope we have a lot of fun!