Reputation

I started working in a psychology lab since this semester, and have developed a reputation of a hard-working and helpful RA in the lab. At first, I was the only new RA this semester, so I was little nervous when I stated. Despite I had relevant experience, I was still not familiar with many lab tasks. In order to be involved in the lab, I tried to be quick learner.

One of the examples was to use a survey tool called Qualtrics. I’ve never used it before, but quickly picked it up after watching some tutorials myself even before my supervisor trained on it, and my supervisor was very pleased that I was willing to learn new things on my own. Things like this helped me developed reputation of hrd-working in the lab.

Recruitment was our major tasks during the first half of the semester. We needed to recruit 150 participants to fill out a 30 minutes long survey for a research, and unfortunately we had only $100 of funding for recruitment. We set a $100 drawing for all participants, which is not attractive enough. As a new RA, I contacted a student club that was organizing a fieldtrip to Six Flags, there were two buses, 90 students going to the trip. So I bought many snacks – homemade cookies, donuts for those students and asked them to fill out the survey on the way to Six Flags. I recruited about 30 participant that time, and my supervisor was very impressed.

Another thing developed my reputation was that I’m willing to help others. Once another RA was sick but had an urgent lab task, so I volunteered to take up his task. As return, he took up some of my lab tasks when he recovered.

I’ve never “cash in” my reputation. I believe that individual’s reputation develops slowly, and the development of good reputation takes a lot effort. People can gain priceless things while developing good reputations, such as trust and friendships, and these are what immediate gains cannot be compared with.

In my case, it is also very unwise for me to cash in, because I want to continuously work it this lab, and gain research experience.  “Cash in” can also be immoral in some case too, so I will avoid “cash in” in either career or relationships.

                                                                                                                                             

Triangel principal agent

Last summer, I worked in a summer camp in China. It was a camp for elementary students. Most summer camps in China are different from ones here, they are usually operated by some certificated education institutions other than schools, the camps usually play a role that is similar to summer schools, where students can take classes. The content of classes can be either be an advance of school courses, or reviewing of school courses.

I taught English and Math to elementary students. The class size was 8 to 12 students, which was small, and not hard to control. It was an enjoyable experience, because I always like to work with children. Despite I liked my job, I’d encountered some problems. I would have to admit that some of the problems are caused by my lack of experience as a teacher, for example, did not know how to deal with children when they were getting moody, and some of the problems were caused by the triangle arrangement.

Despite I worked as a teacher, I’ve been so used to consider things from a student’s perspectives, especially when I was working with elementary children, I did not want to push them too hard on studying during their summer break. Besides, they would have the class very day for one hour and a half (with a ten minutes break in between) for a month, it would be hard for them to stay for one hour and a half. So I went a little slow while teaching my students, and added some educational games, and video-watching in my teaching. One of the games was role plays in English classes, students could write their small English plays using words we earnt, and act them out. My goal was too let them have fun while learning.

My students, and most parents liked my classes, but there were some parent complained that the children did not learn as much stuff as expected in the camp. My boss understood my concepts, but she also thought that I should make the course more efficient, so parents would believe that paying for the camp was worthy. She and I talked to the parent who was complaining, and solution we had after the talk was to cut down the time for games and video watching. There will be one game/video watching every two classes instead of in every class, and I also promised the parent to finish the teach content I supposed to teach every single class.

In this case, I made my lesson plan majorly based on students’ needs, which was not completely consistent parents’ expectation for the camp. We solved the problem by negotiation, and each of us gave in a little bit to make things work. I would believe that was the best solution I could think of, and in contrast, if I tried to satisfying the students while ignoring parents, parents would be less likely to choose our camp.