Report of Exchange Studies at Queen’s University
Zhiying Chen_ Finance Major_ Business School
First of all, I am very grateful to Shantou University and Business School for giving me this precious opportunity to study at Queen's University. The four-month exchange life is coming to an end and the courses are going to be finished unconsciously. After completing the final exam in December, my exchange studies at Queen’s will come to an end. Now I am reluctant to review the study and life at Queen's University in the past three months.
First, I will give a brief introduction to the studying atmosphere of Queen's University, Kingston is a place quite suitable for study. The downtown is only a street, and there is not much entertainment life here. The students here are very diligent. The libraries are always full of students both on the day of class and on weekends. It is usually difficult to find a seat. Many students only have an hour in the interval between two classes, and they come to libraries to study. The closed time of the libraries are also very late, and they are not closed until 2 am. Because there are a lot of group studies, the discussion room in both the libraries and the teaching buildings are very popular. Students here enjoy group study a lot. I also love the group studies here.
Secondly, I will introduce detailly some of the courses I have studied at Queen's University. Since the Arts and Sciences School encourages exchange students to take courses in different fields, in addition to selecting courses related to the profession, I also chose music lessons that I have never had the opportunity to practice. I have chosen three courses in total, one of which is the Cross-cultural Management of Smith School of Business, and two courses of Art and Science School, named Financial Market and Risk Management and Introduction to Music Fundamentals. The Cross-cultural Management course is a representative course of the Smith School of Business. Lectures and discussions are combined. When discussing, there will be opportunities to communicate with exchange students from different countries, and each time we can discuss with different people. Thanks to these discussions, I have met many friends from schools in different countries in this semester. Due to the different cultural backgrounds of the participants, we often collide with different ideas and can complete reports of high quality in only 20-30 minutes. These discussions are helpful for improving oral and writing skills. At the same time, it also exercises the ability of logical thinking and divergent thinking, because we often need to give rational explanations to the questions raised by the professors, or give feasible and perfect solutions, which are difficult to be found by searching the Internet. To finish these questions, it is necessary to combine the knowledge learned from courses and details from cases to rationalize the inference and thinking, and then answer questions and form reports.
Another music lesson is also very interesting. It is taught by an experienced old professor. He can explain the obscure music theory in an easy-to-understand language, so that even students without music foundational knowledge can accept it well. And each lesson has a recorded video, which is convenient for students to learn and review after class. The regular tests also urge us to review the content of the lecture in time, so as not to worry about the final exam. I really appreciate the combination of this physical class and video lessons, which greatly improves my efficiency of learning.
The last Financial Market and Risk Management is a course related to my major. My biggest feeling is that the professor has higher requirements for the mastery of theoretical knowledge. Although I have studied the relevant knowledge already at Shantou University, I still think the content of the lesson is very deep, not just a brief introduction to the theory of surface formulas. It also requires students to master the inner principles and derivation process. The content of the exam is also not similar questions from exercises from the textbook, but a fusion of classroom content.
I really enjoy studying at Queen's University and I am very reluctant to the end of courses. I am very grateful to the school and business school for giving me this valuable opportunity to experience the learning and culture of Canadian universities! What I learned from the experience of the last three months is that there are still a lot of skills I have to develop. I have to work hard continuously to improve my competitiveness.
