Wu Ruijie, Class 3, Grade 2, Shenzhen Xin’an Middle School Instructed by Yin Lin Tang Ying

    深圳市新安中学高二（3）班 武瑞杰 指导老师：尹琳 汤颖

    This summer vacation, I attended a summer business course called “Venture For All” at Columbia University. I made friends with elites from all over China and met some erudite professors. Although I encountered great culture shocks, I still had a fantastic and valuable experience at a top American university, which really meant a lot to me.

    We were asked to finish a venture plan for our course. Students who had the same plan were to form a group. Our first mission was to introduce our own venture plan in order to persuade others to support our idea. Because all of the following tasks needed to be finished as a group, it was critical to let us realize the importance and advantages of group work. It also taught us a lot about the key points of how to work in a group — cooperation and debate. Cooperation combined our skills and efforts while debates showed us where we were lacking. It was not common to see us all agree with each other when we worked in a group, so being able to accept opposing views or even harsh criticism was key for good team members.

    Then our course was divided into eight parts. Business model, customer, market, industry, product, campaign, budget, team and pitch. My favorite part was the business model and marketing sections. In our marketing process, every one of us was allocated a task separately. Two of us were responsible for market research and another person was responsible for advertising while the others were responsible for developing products. My task was market research. I searched for lots of information on the Internet and asked tutors for help. Finally, our group won the first prize and we were all very proud!

    Through this experience, I have learned many very helpful skills for my future career. And I am very proud that we won the first prize via our efforts and cooperation. I will never forget this unique experience.