On the road to my new world
I still remember the CKGSB admission event vividly. I felt like I was in an entrepreneurs' club. It's true that the culture of CKGSB was a culture of entrepreneurs. Cheung Kong aims to groom future business leaders in
We met with a professor, a staff member from the admissions office and a Cheung Kong alumni for the team discussion. Each of us had 30 minutes to study the case and then we went to another room for discussion.
All of us were kind of tight-lipped during the first few minutes. Under such circumstances, nobody wanted to be the first to expose his imperfect ideas to possible criticism from others. I weighed the situation in awkward silence and decided to put in my two cents. Fortunately, my team members were so kind that some of my sensible opinions won support while other flawed ideas didn't draw scathing criticism.
After the 30-minute team discussion, we proceeded directly into the next round of interviews. The interviewers didn't ask why I had decided to pursue an MBA or why I chose CKGSB, instead they let me introduce myself and focused on my past working experience.
Later, I received offers from both CKGSB and another first-tier business school in
In my years of involvement in project management, I realized that on the basis of "personal skills improvement," I also needed to uplift myself in terms of self-cultivation or "Tao" as it is referred at CKGSB. Whoever works in
After my CKGSB entry, I tapped more into Cheung Kong life and was impressed by its unique "Tao" philosophy. As I majored in engineering for my bachelor and master degrees, this caused weakness in terms of my softness, which was a must in project management. Thankfully, the "Tao" ideology soften me in this regard.
Together with some other students, I founded the Chinese Culture and Modern Management Club. Currently, our club, consisting of 25 members, is the largest in our class. I think this means we share a kindred spirit.
(The author is a 2005 CKMBA student)
