Nov 23, 2013

chin up..

sometimes you need to have a complete break down before you can pick yourself up..

i think i've learned my lesson..and i'm ready to move forward..it's a brand new day!

i still don't know where i'll end up but for now, all i need to know is what i'm going to do today and tomorrow..

-llen-

lost

perhaps i knew that i was lost but all i can say is i never thought i would be so off track..

i guess there comes a time when you really have to hit pause and think about how you got to where you are in life.
i don't know if i just have a very negative self image but there doesn't seem to be anything that i can confidently say i'm good at that would allow me to have a career..

i don't market myself very well..i don't talk a lot.. i don't have inspiring awesome wonderful fantastic ideas that could change the world or contribute to humankind.. sometimes i feel my brain is just empty..
i don't read up on things i should to engage in intelligent conversation.. all i do most of the time is live in a bubble i suppose..

i guess at the end of the day i brought everything onto myself.. i didn't put in enough effort.. maybe i didn't love it enough to put in the effort.. maybe i'm just not cut out for it..

whatever the reason.. it's in the past.. the only thing that i can do now is make lemonade..

-llen-

Nov 6, 2013

Citi trading game @ Teviot

One of the things I find enjoyable/beneficial about studying abroad is the events you get to attend. A lot of them are networking events and while I have to say I haven't been to each and every one of them, the ones I've been to are usually pretty interesting.. and of course still a challenge for someone like me (many a time I think I've learnt to speak up more I'm still quite shy unless approached by someone else :/ I suppose it's something I'll always be working on..) 

Anyways..  the other day someone posted about this Trading Game by Citibank and I didn't exactly read through the details at first so I was expecting computers set up at a hall and we would be playing a trading simulation... only AFTER signing up did I notice it was in the format of a card game (the first word that came to mind was interaction...) I did regret the decision a tiny bit but thought to myself, what do I have to lose? All I really wanted to get out of the experience was a taste of trading...

At a previous networking event I was too early and just felt so awkward and out of place.. so I thought, this time I don't have to go so early! well..this time I was wrong.. when I got there people were already seated looking at instruction sheets... thankfully they went through the rules again and we had 2 practise rounds to familiarise ourselves with the game..

I was pretty nervous at first because I didn't really know what to do..but as we played I started to get the hang of it.. unfortunately the best round I did was the first practise round..after that I just made huge losses and was short/long by too much.. which I guess in part had to do with how I don't know how to make people not accept an offer..hmm..

But what I learnt from the experience was, and this is if the trading floor can be likened to what we were experiencing, the trading floor is intense! buying, selling, asking for a price, keeping track of what you've bought/sold..
there were more guys than girls in each group so i suppose it wasn't surprising that all the finalists were guys.. i do wonder if there are many ladies actually working on the trading floor and doing well or if it's still mostly a man's world...

I guess another thing I learnt was..by observing the people there you kinda get a feel of how corporate life is gonna be like.. if someone doesn't see your worth they won't be wasting their time talking to you.. it's a lot about putting yourself out there, starting conversations and I guess sometimes, being artificial..

Ok, I guess the artificial thing could just apply to me because I've always believed in honesty and staying true to yourself, being genuine 
that's not to say I'm not willing to adapt to situations and change certain things about me but I certainly won't want to appear helpful just to score brownie points..I'll be helpful because I genuinely want to help someone.. but I suppose these things aren't really valued in corporate life coz it's all in the appearances and your performance..

At this point it's a little too early to say if the corporate world is for me..but I really hope that if I manage to get into such an environment that I can find some way to do well but still stick to my guns at the same time.. but all in all I think it was a great experience after all :)

-llen-

Nov 3, 2013

Mendeley!!

So..it's the final year of my undergraduate degree and I can't believe I just discovered this now so I just wanna get the word out there for all you folks writing essays and dissertations :D

Previously all my assignments were just essays and I didn't have loads of references to put into a bibliography.. so I used to go through the journals/articles and refer to my citation guidelines to compile the bibliography..
But now with my dissertation I'm expected to have lots of reference articles which makes things a bit trickier/more tedious or rather, I just suddenly came to the conclusion that it's gonna be too much work to go through each article and work out how to list them out in the bibliography -.-

The first thought that came to my mind was..hey, I've heard of this magical thing called EndNote..maybe I'll finally use it! But to my dismay you need to pay to use EndNote...

Then my good pal Google introduced me to Mendeley~~
Since it's free I downloaded it just to give it a try..and I'm just so glad I found this wonderful piece of software :'D

All I had to do was dump all the pdfs I wanted referenced and Mendeley separated the name of the authors, the journal, the year etc..
In an ideal world there'd be a software that would give you the reference ready to put into the list but we don't live in an ideal world so for me, it's good enough!

So give Mendeley a try :3 

-llen-