Gloria's Blog

This is a speech I delivered in the University of Chicago Booth School of Business when I lived in the US for the first 6 months. I designed a social experiment related to small talk, and was pleasantly surprised by the results. The speech presented the results and insights. It received a standing ovation at the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0V2VQZWWdY Transcript as below: 1. Let me ask 2 questions: Who here genuinely enjoy small talk? Please raise your hand. Who here is like me: sometimes not sure what should come after small talk? 2. Today my topic is about: what could happen after small talk 3. When I arrived at Booth, I was taught how to make small talk. They say people ask “how are you doing”, they expect a 10 second answer. They say when you don’t know what to talk about, talk about the weather. I worked hard and almost become a weather expert. 4. But recently, I feel there’s sth wrong. I feel sad that I still only know my classmates

I recently start a project "asking simple but hard questions". It was yesterday: Me: Michael, what makes you happy? Michael: What do you mean? What kind of answer do you expect? Me: Specific moments that you feel great. Anything pops up to your mind right now. Michael: (he kept thinking for like forever... That was definitely uncomfortable for both of us) ---8 min later--- When I came home seeing my wife watching a tv show just because I like that show.

前几天下班叫了Uber Pool（司机可以搭载多个互不认识的人）。我上车的时候，发现后排坐了两个人。按照惯例朝打了个招呼，然后坐在前排系上安全带。就在车还没开的时候，后排其中一个男生劈头盖脸 热情洋溢地问“你是中国人吗？？？”。当时我瞬间就笑场了。后来得知他们是北京来的新东方教GMAT的老师，来西雅图一周参加活动。我们三个人嘻嘻哈哈的聊了一路，互相留了联系方式。他们下车后，司机很纳闷的说，我从来没见过UberPool的人聊得这么高兴。 西海岸有很多亚洲人，很多中国人。但我走在路上，从来没有人问我你是不是中国人，然后聊起来，我也没有问过别人。大家都习惯了彼此个人的空间。都是身在海外的同胞，如果能打破更多的界限，我想一定能让华人集体在海外更加成功。 我想谢谢这个“陌生人”，他作为一个初来乍到的“游客”，还没有被环境同化，给我带来的启发和新视角。而我们作为“外国人”在这里学习工作生活，如果也能给当地人这样的启发，同样也会很有意思。 最后，想起来上周末看HumansOfNewYork的发起人的演讲关于How to make people talk. 他说，At the beginning, I was struggling with what questions I ask, what words I use. But later, I found that these things just don't matter. What energy you carry and what intention you have, determine what you are going to get out from the conversations.

#Dear Strangers. In San Fran Just now I was talking to Damen. He is an accountant in ComEd, and he has been an accountant for 14 years. - Can you tell me something that has big impact on you? - Yes. It was five years ago. I was in Florida and I saw tornado for the first time. It was very close. That's when I realize how fragile and precious life is.

We are on a trip to New Orleans. In this trip, we visited 8 organizations in education space. It's a very eye opening experience for me, and I can write a ton about it. But this blog, I would love to dedicate to the people on this trip. Day one is pretty overwhelming to me (and to everyone). The days before trip was extremely busy, leaving me no time for extra research. I have little background knowledge about education system in the US. So many things people talk about are random and don't make sense to me. For example, I know what charter school is on "the first paragraph of wikipedia" level, but I don't know why charter schools were set up, the conflicts among different types of schools, etc. So when people ask certain questions, I don't know why that matters, and so what. To sum up, that was a whole day with every minute containing sth I have no idea about. After the team went out of the first company vis