Ok, for a long time I have been trying to talk myself into blogging and here I am, blogging, or nagging.

Even the academic pressure hasn’t quite built up for us yet, but the school shows absolutely no signs of being fun, a typical University of Sydney. For those of you who don’t know about Australian schooling, normally we take 4 courses in each semester, quite unlike China where your entire curriculum is in an official arrangement. We are certainly given all the latitudes we need to schedule our courses, and merely to make somewhat an escape from the horrible failure rate, aside from a few easy–to-pass courses pre-decided, I also ticked off a new unit released only this year called ‘Business cycle and assets market ‘.

When I realized how wrong I was, it was already the second lecture of this new subject. And I definitely had learned what a ‘new unit’ really meant in this case. We were caught off guard, knowing there is no textbook nor lecture slides offered for this course. The subject bases itself on a manner of studying the frontier of modern Economics incorporating the recent Nobel Prize theories. The lectures are understood by everyone but me, for I even have absolutely no idea what some operators mean in the formula, which seems to be formed in a particularly odd way. Our lecturer had no intention of pleasing his students either. He made it public that this course is really on graduate level with a minimum of two years of understanding in Econometrics expected from attendees, and he also didn’t hold back the fact that a simple formula in this course (not too simple probably) took 800 pages for a MIT dissertation. We stood in awe as he went on with Jaimovich and Rebelo who came up with the news shock theory in 2009.

Time plays the best trick that mankind ever came to know. Two years spent in Sydney almost seemed a blank to me and I am already taking level 3 classes now. The implication that lies behind it, however, is nothing even close to tricky—on the contrary, as straightforward as it is, I am giving loads of considerations toward the after-graduation plan. While the result hinges on a few variables, I have been back and forth between whether to stick to what I have learnt in school or to walk in English education business as setting up my own workshop. Either choice bears a price to pay as far as my analysis goes. Upon the fact that I major in Economics, the alternatives for performing a job that has anything to do with it become very limited. Theoretical framework covered in our study is suggestive of a high degree of Econometrics skill which is not perfectly aligned to current China’s demand. Without a doctorate, Economics as a major appears to be only a white elephant in application of transnational companies. For what I‘ve learnt so far, it is statistically suggested that a large portion of graduates coming from Economics in China end up with working on international trade. Apparently they have compromised themselves due to the current state of China. “What‘s not good about doing international trade if you speak decent English?” one may ask. Well, there is nothing bad about doing international trade especially when your English gives you an edge over other potential competitors. However, there is always an opportunity cost associated, and clearly, I am unable to tell which one is better with the information in hand when I have to forgo the other alternative.

English education manifests a significant variance. It carries an un-negligible risk as well as a considerable return. The general market, as everyone is saying to me, is almost saturated with a couple of giant enterprises. However, I personally believe a niche market penetration strategy can be easily applied by adopting a competitive price. I have every bit of interest in one-on-one oral English training, particularly, one-on-one quality training in the overseas student market. The idea is to launch an in-house workshop at which the general cost can be minimized so as to gain a competitive advantage over existing giant companies. For its foundation, I will need three or four partners who possess excellent English skill at the inception stage in the aim of forming my own teaching team. The downside of taking this path would be, should it fail at the first stage, my entire career is likely to be jeopardized.  Besides, finding such partners is never easy and there could also be conflicts upon certain individual benefits.

Only from the aspect of interest, I think I do exhibit more interest in English education. But this would mean I have to let go of my major and thereby three years overseas would be in vain in a sense (of course, not wholly). Even if I’ve been told millions of times that I should never rush into anything, and I never did, I still feel worried over not having enough information to make a decision.

So I guess life is like a box of chocolates indeed.