Eine Nacht bevor ich Stockholm angekommen war, hatte ich eine der schönsten Nächte meines Lebens. Ich war unterwegs mit einem Kreuzfahrtschiff von Helsinki nach Stockholm. Am Anfang fand ich die Kreuzfahrt, entsprechend meiner allgemeinen Vorstellung von Kreuzfahrten auf dem Meer, sehr langweilig. Aber ich hatte mich getäuscht, denn wie sich herausstellen sollte, würde ich noch viele interessante Geschichten erleben.
Es gab einige Paare, in ihren 70ern, die sehr verliebt waren. Es war sehr süß, Menschen zu sehen, die zusammen alt geworden sind. Es war eine Akustik-Abend mit einem sehr guten Sänger, der sehr romantische Klaviermusik spielte und dazu sang. Silvia und ich hatten nur draußen gestanden und zugeschaut, aber als er (der Sänger) uns sah, lud er uns ein, hereinzukommen, um die Musik zu genießen. Er war super nett. Wir hatten eine tolle Nacht auf dem Kreuzfahrtschiff.
Am nächsten Tag, sind wir in meiner späteren Lieblingsstadt angekommen. Nachdem ich eine nicht sehr gute Erfahrung in Helsinki gehabt hatte, hatte ich keine Erwartung an Stockholm. Für mich war es, vielleicht nur eine weitere Stadt und eine touristischer Ort, denn als ich ankam, sah ich sehr viele chinesische Touristen. Aber ich hatte mich noch ein mal getäuscht., Stockholm war super und ist meine Lieblingsstadt geworden. Der Vibe war gemütlich und heiter, aber was mich am meisten überrascht hat, sind die Leute. Sie sind äußerst freundlich und warm. Sie sind genau das Gegenteil von dem, was ich über die Leute im den Norden gedacht habe: Kalt und nicht gesprächig.
Neben dem Vibe und der allgemeinen Freundlichkeit der Leuten, haben wir viele unvergessliche Gepräche mit Fremden erlebt. Einmal, als ich in einem Teeladen war um ein Geschenk für meinen Mentor zu suchen, hatte ich dort ein sehr interessantes Gespräch mit zwei nette Damen. Sie haben mich viele Fragen zu meinem Mentor gestellt. Ich weiß nicht, warum sie so interessiert waren, aber ich hatte eine gute Zeit mit ihnen. Nach dem Teeladen sind wir zufällig einem Fotografen begegnet, der uns gezeigt hat, wo wir unser gewünschtes Souvenir finden konnten. Wir haben auch einige Fotos mit ihm gemacht. Dann hatten wir ein kostenloses Frühstück, denn weil wir hatten kein Bargeld und das Café akzeptierte nur Bargeld. Also, die Besitzerin des Cafés fragte uns, warum wir dieses Café ausgewählt hätten, und wir sagten, wir wanderten herum und vertieften uns sehr in unser Gespräch, als dass wir uns verloren und dieses Café gesehen hätten. Sie sagte, das Konzept des Cafés sei es, die Leute zu ermutigen, miteinander zu reden, also liebte sie unsere Geschichte wirklich und deshalb bot sie uns ein kostenloses Frühstück an.
Das Cafe heißt Kontempel
Diese Geschichten ließen uns wieder an Freundlichkeit und Überraschungen im Leben glauben. Weiterhin glaube ich, dass ich mich sehr glücklich schätzen kann, weil ich immer gute Leute kennenlerne.
Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature ——————————————- Course: Social Issues in the US Ho Chi Minh City – April 2013
Illegal immigration is a controversial problem in the United States since it has both positive and negative impacts on the US economy. Many Presidential Administrations from George Bush to Barack Obama and others before them admit that the US immigration system is outdated and needs reform. However, there is still little change in the immigration policy due to the important role of illegal immigrants in the US economy. In 2008, illegal immigrants accounted for 5,4 percent of the US civilian labor force (Jeffrey S.Passel and D’Vera Cohn, 2009). In a recent estimate from the Council of Economic Advisers, immigrants in general contribute about $37 billion a year to the US economy (1) and because of this, it is impossible to single out illegal immigrants from the US economy for several reasons. The purpose of this paper is to find out the answer to the two questions 1) How does illegal immigration affect the US economy? 2) Does the contribution of illegal immigrants outweigh the negative effects it has on the economy?
The USA is known as a country of immigrants. The annual level of immigration averaged about 1.8 million between the fiscal years 2002 and 2006. According to table 1, on an average of every 1.8 million annual immigrants, there are 500 thousand unauthorized or illegal immigrants who enter the US unofficially or overstay legally permitted periods of entry and have no legal rights or status. As the Pew Hispanic Center estimated there were about 11.1 million illegal immigrants living in the US in 2012. This is not a small number therefore their contribution to the US economy is considerable and undeniable.
Figure 1.
Source: Pew Hispanic Center There are several reasons explaining why there are many illegal immigrants in the US. Firstly, compared to the past the number of educated and skilled people in the US is higher. In 1965, only 5,921 thousand students attended college programs and in 2012 the number reached 21,557 thousand, over 4 times higher (2). Moreover, the number of US-born working-age adults who had not completed high school is just 8 percent (Gordon H. Hanson, 2009). The number of skilled US-born workers is increasing; the need for low-skilled workers at the same time is also increasing. Therefore, employers see illegal immigrants as an important source for low-skilled jobs such as agriculture, maintenance, construction, and other jobs which require more physical strength than education. Secondly, illegal immigrants can earn much more in the US than in their homeland even after balancing the differences in expenditure between the two countries. The income in the US can be 2.5 times higher. These two main reasons encourage people who do not have illegal conditions to enter the US, trying to find ways to illegally stay and work in this country.
The first impact illegal immigrants have on the US economy is that they make the economy’s productivity growth. This impact can be considered a positive one. According to Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California, in the states with more illegal immigrants, skilled workers make more money and work more hours which leads to the growth in economy’s productivity, and between 1990 and 2007, illegal workers had increased legal workers’ pay in complementary jobs by up to 10 percent. (3) However, at the same time, they cause trouble for the US native-born – less educational workers. Employers obviously prefer illegal workers because they can bring more benefits to their businesses. If a low-education worker wants to win over an illegal worker for the same position, he or she will be lowered salary. And sometimes illegal workers join the battle with skilled workers. There are two choices for the skilled workers, they can either accept the job with a lower wage or refuse the offer. With illegal interference, there are definitely undeniable negative economic effects on native citizens. Employers tend to favor illegal immigrants as their workers since these people are not able to be eligible for any kind of welfare programs which make them less paid than low-skilled native workers. Generally, illegal immigrants will create benefits for employers which leads to an increase in national income, and at the same time, they put more pressure on and reduce the earnings of lower-skilled and sometimes educated native workers.
Secondly, there is an argument that illegal immigrants have become a burden on the national budget. In this paper, I will focus on the imbalance between the tax collected and the budget spent on health care and education for illegal immigrants. Even though illegal immigrants help to increase productivity and as a result increase the national income, they also appear to be the group that exceeds the cost of the services they use. To deal with this problem, the state and local governments have to incur the cost of providing services for illegal immigrants. One of the reasons to explain it is that most illegal immigrants in the US have low-income jobs mainly in agriculture, maintenance, construction, etc., and because of this the tax together with other kinds of fees they have to pay for the government is also low compared to US-born native citizen and the costs that the government incur for services they use especially the ones related to health care and education.
Education is one of the most costly expenditures that the state and local governments have to incur for illegal immigrants. In 1982, the Supreme Court stated that children may not be excluded from public school due to their immigration status. The second generation who are born to illegal immigrants in the US will receive the same education in public school as the US-born native citizens because they are considered to be US citizens. The significance of this is that the money paid for their education is higher than the native-born’s. Because they are born to illegal immigrants, their English is not as good as that of native-born students. As a result, the costs incurred for their English proficiency classes will be 20 to 40 percent higher than the native ones (Cardenas, Jose A. and others, 1976) (Albert Cortez, 2004). Illegal students make up about 4 percent of the school-age population (A CBO paper, 2007) and the average annual cost for a student born to illegal immigration is about $7,500 per student and $11.2 billion in 2006 for the total costs of providing education to these students. This number reached $30 billion in 2009 (S&P Study, 2009) and with a steady annual number of illegal immigrants to the US, the costs for education can be higher in the future obviously this number is not small which puts great pressure on the state and local budget spending.
Besides, the budget spending on illegal immigrants using services in the health care system is considerable. The Census Bureau estimates that immigrants both legal and illegal are between 2 and 2.5 times more likely to lack health insurance (Robert J. Mills, Shailesh Bhandari, 2003). However, they still can use emergency rooms and public clinics for health care services related to children, pregnant women, families with dependent children, and elderly or disabled individuals by getting Medicaid coverage. Officially, these illegal immigrants are not able to be eligible for Medicaid due to their lack of health insurance; they are, however, acceptable for emergency cases mentioned. Another reason explaining why illegal immigrants are less likely to have health insurance is that immigrants both legal and illegal are somehow younger and healthier than US-born citizens (Leighton Ku, 2009). The costs they use for emergency health care services will be incurred by the state and local budgets. For all of the mentioned reasons, it usually appears like these illegal immigrants receive more than what they have paid through tax collection. As a result, the amount of budget spending for health care services is increasing day by day due to the fact that the annual number of illegal immigrants is growing steadily.
While reconsidering the positive and negative effects that illegal immigrants have on the US economy, there is an argument that illegal immigrants are exploiting the US economy because they are using services that cost more than the tax they pay to the government. Compared to the US citizens who have to pay higher taxes and pay fees for other services in order to use them eligibly, illegal immigrants, however, pay less and use more. For example, in Colorado, the annual cost of education for illegal immigrants is between $217 and $225 million while the tax collected from them is only between $159 and $194 million (Robin Baker and Rich Jones, 2006) (Elizabeth Burger, 2006) (Baker and Jones, 2006). There is a big gap between the costs and the collected tax, and this causes an imbalance in the state and local budget spending and this causes a great effect on the US economy. Even though there are efforts to lessen the costs of budget spending on illegal immigrants, little change can be made. According to the Congressional Office – a federal agency within the legislative branch of the US government providing data to Congress, in 2007 the costs incurred for the using services of illegal immigrants is higher than the tax revenues they generate for the government and there are limited options or ways to minimize these costs. These costs, however, account for a small percentage of the total costs that the state and local government spent for US citizens in general (A CBO paper, 2007).
According to Chart 1, illegal immigrants are accounted for a small percentage of the US total population. However, its effects on the US economy are considerable and worth debating because it is fundamental to know whether their impacts are more positive or negative. In general, most people agree that there are more benefits than drawbacks. Illegal immigrants come to the US with the American Dream meaning that they want to have a better life by working hard to earn more compared to what they can earn in their own country. Some illegal immigrants try to integrate into the US society by finding stable jobs, and making their own businesses and when having children they will send them to public schools, and this leads to some arguments for education spent on their children. However, this expenditure is just a small percentage compared to the total number of spending for US-born citizens, so it is hard to conclude that illegal immigrants are exploiting and serving as a thread to the US economy. In other words, the contribution of illegal immigrants to some extent outweighs the negative effects they have on the US economy. Moreover, while many people are paying so much attention to legal status, it is better to think more about these illegal immigrants’ education. It is undeniable that illegal with high education makes a bigger and more positive contribution to the US economy.
The limitation of this paper is that it lacks generalization. Firstly, most of the information used in the paper is estimates at a certain point in illegal immigrants’ life, meaning that it needs a more forward-looking view. The effects of illegal immigrants should be studied for the entire of their life, not just the time that they can work and contribute to the national income. Secondly, according to economist Madeline Zavodny, for such children who are US citizens at birth, even though they are theoretically US citizens, some studies still consider them as immigrants and this issue is still debatable. Therefore, some may not agree with this when I mention the education and health care spent on these children as US citizens. For decades, illegal immigration has become a debatable and controversial issue in the US. After considering the impacts of illegal immigrants on the US economy, especially on jobs and wages, and budget spending related to education and health care, the effects they create are two-sided. However, having analyzed the data and information, I believe that the benefits that illegal immigrants have on the US economy are more important because they are contributing more and more to the US economy while the services they are using cost a small sum of money in the local and state budget.
Reference Works Cited: A CBO paper, The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments, pp.8, Congressional Budget Office, Dec. 2007. Albert Cortez, Insufficient Funding for Bilingual Education in Texas, IDRA Newsletter – San Antonio: Intercultural Development Research Association, 2004. Baker and Jones, State and Local Taxes Paid in Colorado by Undocumented Immigrants, Issue Brief No. 3, Denver: The Bell Policy Center, June 30th 2006. Cardenas, Jose A., and others, Bilingual Education Cost Analysis, San Antonio: Intercultural Development Research Association, 1976. Elizabeth Burger, Immigration in Colorado: State Impact and Recent Legislation, Legislative Council, Staff Issue Brief No. 04-06, Denver: Colorado General Assembly, 2006. Gordon H. Hanson, The Economics and Policy of Illegal Immigration in the United States (pp.8), University of California – San Diego and National Bureau of Economic and Research, 2009. Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States, Pew Hispanic Center, 2009. Leighton Ku, Health Insurance Coverage and Medical Expenditures of Immigrants and Native-Born Citizens in the United States, American Journal and Public Health, Vol 99 No.7 pp.1323, July 2009. Robert J. Mills, Shailesh Bhandari, Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2002, Bureau of the Census, 2003. Robin Baker and Rich Jones, Costs of Federally Mandated Services to Undocumented Immigrants in Colorado, Issue Brief No.4, Denver: The Bell Policy Center, June 30th, 2006. S&P Study, Costs and Benefits of Undocumented Immigrants, pp.2, Hispanic News, May 1, 2009.
Heute fiel es mir schwer, konzentriert zu sein. Ist es, weil ich mein Leben jetzt alleine kontrollieren muss und es leichter einfacher ist, den Fokus zu verlieren? Heute habe ich einen kurzen Spaziergang gemacht. Ich wollte länger gehen, aber ich fühlte mich unwohl. Viele Gedanken lenkten mich davon ab, den Spaziergang schätzen zu lernen. Aber ich gebe nicht auf. Morgen werde ich es wieder und länger tun.
Es schien mir, dass die Aufgabe, zu gehen und zu schätzen, was ich sehe, höre, rieche, … die einfachste Aufgabe der Welt sei. Aber während ich spazieren ging, dachte ich immer wieder an andere Dinge. Ich sprach weiter mit mir selbst und stellte mir, die einzigen drei Fragen, die ich dann hätte haben sollen. Sie waren, wer ich bin, wo ich bin, und was ich tun möchte. Im dritten Studienjahr nahm ich an einer Diskussion teil unter dem Titel/zum Thema „Wer bin ich“. Es war in einem Kurs über amerikanische Identität. Was sollte ich auf diese Frage antworten? „Ich bin Dai“ – nein, es war nicht nicht nach deinem Namen gefragt; „Ich bin Studentin“ – nein, es war nicht nach deinem Beruf gefragt; „Ich bin Asiatin.” Jetzt musste ich noch einmal daran denken – Wer bin ich? Bin ich nur ich oder noch mehr? Oder bin ich nichts? Die erste Frage hatte mich schon runtergezogen. Ich wollte den Spaziergang nur noch beenden, aber mir war auch bewusst, dass ich so schwach war, wie ich damals aufgehört hatte. Dann machte ich noch ein bisschen weiter. Und es war zu kalt, um es zu genießen. Aber ja, für einen aufmerksamen Spaziergang sollte ich sogar die Kälte zu schätzen lernen. Der erste Tag des aufmerksamen Spaziergangs war nicht so gut. Aber irgendwie war ich glücklich, weil ich wusste, dass der Anfang von etwas Gutem, das bald in der Zukunft passieren wird, nicht immer einfach ist.
Zu Hause schaute ich dann das Deutschheft an und ich hatte deutliche Angst. Ich hatte jetzt noch so viele Seiten, die hätten fertig gemacht werden sollen. Ich muss sie heute oder morgen erledigt haben. Dieses Schreiben könnte das letzte sein, in dem ich frei schreiben kann, was ich will, da ich bald mit dem Testformat beginnen muss. Darum fühlte ich mich ein bisschen traurig. Aber ich war schon zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass ich nicht alles gleichzeitig meistern konnte. Es gibt Dinge, die ich nicht in der Lage bin zu tun oder die einfach nicht geeignet für mich sind. Ich wundere mich wie es möglich ist, dass man sagen kann, “ich bin immernoch derselbe, nur noch selbstverliebter als früher.” Wir sind nicht immernoch dieselben. Wir haben uns verändert. Aber die Idee von “selbstverliebter als früher” finde ich sehr gut. Wir sollten immer in uns verliebt seinen.
Ich muss mich konzentrieren. Natürlich erinnere ich mich jeden Tag daran, dass ich mich konzentrieren muss. Ich muss akzeptieren, dass ich jetzt in Mathe nicht mehr so gut bin wie früher, aber ich kann besser Kontakte knüpfen. Und dass ich jetzt vielleicht Dinge schneller vergesse, wenn ich es nicht ständig überprüfe, aber ich beschäftige mich mit Deutsch, einer der schwierigsten Sprachen. Nur wenn ich diese Dinge akzeptiere, werde ich mir nicht mehr selbst die Schuld für Dinge geben, in denen ich nicht gut bin. Meine Gedanken sind normalerweise sehr kompliziert zu erklären, aber ich versuche es. Manchmal möchte ich nett zu mir sein, aber ich denke auch, dass diese Art des Denkens mich immer schwächer werden lässt. Ich möchte ein Kämpfer werden, nicht jemand, der leicht nachgibt. Hmmm aber man sagt auch “Der Klügere gibt nach.”
Ist es heutzutage schwer, zufrieden zu sein, wenn sich die Welt so schnell verändert? Wir könnten obsolet werden, wenn wir nicht versuchen, uns selbst zu aktualisieren. Ich frage mich, ob wir das überhaupt wollen. Es klingt genauso wie „es ist okay, nicht zu wissen, aber es ist auch NICHT okay, nicht zu wissen“.
Gestern Abend verbrachte ich vier Stunden mit den Umfragen und sammelte ich auch einige Antworten für meine Abschlussarbeit. Aber für etwas anderes hatte ich keine Zeit. Bei einigen Umfragen brauchte ich 30 Minuten. Bei manchen Umfragen fühlte ich mich so dumm. Nachdem ich mit einem Freund von mir gesprochen hatte, entschied ich mich, eine Person einzustellen, die dies für mich tut. Und ich habe eine gefunden. Jetzt muss ich keine Umfragen mehr machen. Ich muss mich nur noch auf die deutschen Umfragen konzentrieren, was zeitaufwendig sein kann, aber da sie ist auf Deutsch sind, helfen sie mir beim Deutschlernen. Ich fragte mich, warum mir diese Idee nicht schon früher gekommen war. Ich sollte meine Zeit für die Dinge nutzen, die mir gerade wirklich wichtig sind: Mein Deutsch und meine Abschlussarbeit. Ich weiß, dass das Sammeln von Antworten ein Teil meiner Abschlussarbeit ist, aber ich habe auch noch viele andere Dinge zu tun, um eine sehr gute Abschlussarbeit zu schreiben. Daher war ich froh, dass es jetzt “vorbei” war. Hoffentlich wird die, die ich einstellt habe, einen guten Job machen und mir genug gute Daten liefern.
My journey to Germany: I got rejected by DAAD, then get rejected again and again before I got accepted to a Master in Convergent Journalism in Berlin, but I ended up with the MBA program at the University of Leipzig.
How I got “my own scholarship.”
Me and my Master Thesis
Update on Dec 13, 2022: I officially finished my Master Degree at Leipzig University with a “Very Good” (in German: Sehr gut) degree.
Four years ago I started to plan my study in Germany. I scanned through all the programs that could be a good fit for me. With my limited financial resources, I put all of my focus only on the programs sponsored by DAAD with the hope that I could get into one of them with a scholarship. In September 2019, I sent my application to the MBA SEPT International Program at the University of Leipzig. For this program, you can apply a bit later but for those who want to apply for the scholarship, the deadline is usually the end of September.
On the first of January 2020 at 6:30pm (Vietnam time), I received a rejection email. It was the first day of the new year. I didn’t get the scholarship. From my guess, one of the reasons is that my career path has little to do with either internationalization of firms or innovation which are the two main focuses of the program. I was extremely sad because my only hope was gone. The door was closed. Just to give you more background information about studying in Germany, schools only accept you to a Master program if your Bachelor degree is in the same field. For example, if I want to study business, I must have a Bachelor degree in business or economics. Me? I have a BA in Linguistics and only this ONE specific program in the whole of Germany accepts students from different backgrounds and I GOT REJECTED.
One might ask why didn’t I apply for a Master in Linguistics? I did. I applied to MA Multilingualism program at the University of Konstanz. But another rejection. Again my guess…one of the reasons could be that I did not write my thesis in my Bachelor…. and instead, I was working on a cultural project. And doing a thesis seems to be a very important part to acquire higher education in Germany. Of course, more than ten years ago when I was still doing my Bachelor, I did not know about it.
I was sad and desperate.
Let’s go back to the journey of preparation for my application. Even though it was a failed attempt, I still want to share about it. Back then I was working in a Tour Operator in Vietnam as a Marketing and Product Supervisor. Everyday started at 7:00am and ended at 11:00pm (earliest): me riding my scooter to work, finishing the work at 6:30pm, heading to german class (every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday) or business administration class (every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), arriving home at 9.30pm, dinner + doing homework and learning Python on Coursera, then going to bed. This is “my everyday life” for more than one year. When I had my free evenings during weekends or holidays, I worked as a Vespa foodie guide to get extra income. For a “normal” Vietnamese to study abroad, I have to say it is not easy. I had to plan everything (academic and financial) really really carefully.
I know that my background in Linguistics might make it extra difficult for me to get into a business program. Therefore, I took extra classes in business after work to improve my knowledge. Despite having more than five years of working in Marketing and Business Development, I still need a certificate to prove my actual knowledge. Moreover, being Vietnamese, I need to have APS (Akademische Prüfstelle) certificate to apply for a school in Germany. The purpose of this certificate is to check “the authenticity of educational biographies and the corresponding educational certificates, and issues certificates if the result is positive” (https://www.uni-assist.de). To make this point more interesting, only candidates from two countries in the whole world need to submit this certificate during their applications: China and Vietnam. It is not very challenging if you prepare it well but IT IS VERY VERY COSTLY.
So, to make sure I pass the exams of APS, I had to review all of my courses in my Bachelor program again. The year I took the APS test was 2019 and the year of my graduation was 2013. The gap is six years – not too long to forget everything but not too short to remember random facts to answer all possible questions; especially since graduation, I had been working only in the Business field – not Linguistics. I asked myself “do you want to get the scholarship?” “Yes” so I worked for it and I got the certificate with the highest ranking of “Sehr gut.”
Together with APS, I also got my IELTS 7.5 (with a reading score of 9.0 and just a little bit more of 0.5 in any skill that could bring me to the band of 8.0 which was my goal back then), my certificate in Marketing, Business Administration, and Python (of course for beginners). And I took a GMAT test but I didn’t get the score I expected due to a short amount of time for preparation.
Back to the moment when I received the result of being rejected by DAAD, I was sad but I did not give up. I was prepared to accept the fact that without a scholarship, I would have to pay school fees and living costs by myself. But if there is one thing that I would never hesitate to make an investment in, it is my education.
So I continued applying to one more school in Berlin for the major of Convergent Journalism. It was in June 2020. Besides common documents I had to submit, they asked for a writing portfolio. I submitted my essay on Social Media. If you are interested in reading it, it is here. I guess they liked my portfolio, so I got an invitation for the second round – doing an interview with the head of the faculty. There was one part of the interview where I had to answer different questions as soon as they were finished by the dean. I would say it was very challenging and vast as it was about journalism history, the works of many well-known journalists, and also the history of Europe. I could not answer them all but somehow I managed to show the other sides of me to convince him. I GOT ACCEPTED. I had some time (around two months) to decide if I should go ahead with this program. Part of me was very happy but also part of me was extremely stressed. Then…
I hope you still remember the MBA SEPT Program at the University of Leipzig that I got rejected early. After saying that I was not qualified to get the scholarship, they asked if I wanted to do the program as a self-financed student. I said YES. Months later in June 2020, they replied saying that due to the huge amount of applications that year, they could not offer me a study placement. But I was not as sad as the time I knew that I didn’t get the scholarship. Partly because I was busy thinking about my “Journalism” future. I love writing and telling stories but there was something in my heart saying that I need to think more about it…
In August 2020, one week before I had to answer the school of Journalism, I got an email from the MBA program saying that after consideration, they wanted to talk to me – more like an interview. To be honest, I thought it was mainly because someone from Vietnam whom they accepted early could not come to Germany due to COVID-19 (yes, 2020 was the worst year of COVID-19) so I was their second choice. I do not want to sugarcoat things, if I am the second choice, I will just state it out loud…like this hahahaha. Yes, another background information, this International MBA program usually selects only one candidate from one country so if the selected candidate in Vietnam for some reason could not come to Leipzig for the study, they might pick the second one on the list and it was…me.
The interview went well so the next day, they sent me the acceptance letter stating that I would become an official Master student in October 2020 at the University of Leipzig. From my experience, it seems like most of the time people would like me a bit more when they really talk to me rather than just read my CV in which I was brutally honest about everything and I guess people sometimes find it “not impressive” enough hahaha. So… if you want to know me more, talk to me 😉
Then I had to make a very difficult decision: Berlin or Leipzig? You know… what is your first choice is always something dear to your heart. I do not say your first choice will be the RIGHT CHOICE but usually, it has some meaning with it. So I went to Leipzig as a self-financed student.
Being rejected by DAAD “offered” me a chance to have a scholarship of my own. I got this thanks to a miracle and it happened almost overnight after I finished one of my part-time jobs back in 2018. It was just a normal day working for me but as every other day when I work, I put my heart into it. Maybe someone noticed it 😉 And it is a loooooong story for this special day so I will not write everything here. In short, that day I met my mentor who has changed my life in so many ways.
I have heard so many other stories about a random encounter in life that changes everything afterward. So my advice is that always work with your heart, be kind, never stop learning, and be a good listener so that you will always be ready for opportunities that come…sometimes unexpectedly. I know that not everyone is as lucky as I am to find a mentor for her/himself but…. never stop looking. The universe listens. I remember when I was in high school, I took part in several academic competitions and the highest prize I could get was a bronze medal… even though most of the time my teachers saw me as a strong candidate. When I was in college and had a random talk with my Maths teacher in high school, he told me that I was a bright student, I was determined, and had a very good capacity to accomplish things but back then I did not have anyone to guide me. He wanted to be that one by offering me free extra classes but for some reason, I did not accept the offer. I was alone discovering things by myself. Self-learning was good but it took time to master. From that moment, I know the importance of having a mentor and I kept looking for one. It took years and years and years but I found him in the end.
I would like to send a HUGE thank you to my mentor (if you’re reading it, this 💖 is for you):
“Being your mentee is the most amazing thing that has happened to me; it is almost a miracle. You made it possible for me to achieve this superior educational opportunity and explore Europe to the fullest. You have shown me what unconditional love really means and how beautiful the world is. Thanks to you, I have had a life of a true traveller where I have learned about empathy and cultural diversity and never lost my faith in my career in hospitality and tourism. You are my inspiration and my second family.”
The door to the DAAD scholarship was closed, but many other doors were opened for me at the same time. These doors gave me more freedom to continue my lifelong learning and inspire more and more people who come from a normal background like me to continue dreaming and making their dreams come true. What does it mean when I say a “normal” background like me? I grew up with my grandparents in a small village and I am the first one in the family to get to university. I grew up with difficulties but I was happy most of the time as I had the best grandparents I could ask for. I would like to write a short message to them. They might read it now in heaven.
“I am very thankful to be born as your granddaughter and to have grown up with you. You gave me the most valuable lessons about being independent, hard-working, and striving for excellence. Thanks to you, a little girl from a small village could learn different foreign languages at a very young age, which later opens for her several opportunities to discover the world. You taught me to be disciplined and kind and always do things with care and responsibility. Because of you, I could go this far and live a life that I have nothing to regret.”
My study in Germany would have been impossible without the support and encouragement of many important individuals in my life. If I have to write all the stories about them, it would take me forever. Every single person is a gift.
During the preparation and my journey in Germany, I was also thankful for the support from my colleagues at work, who helped me unconditionally. My boss… despite knowing my plan of studying in Germany, still gave me a chance to do a business trip to London in 2019, from which I learned a bunch. In the most difficult times of the company during COVID-19, I still have my job. Sometimes I complain and ask myself why it seems like I am not lucky in getting any scholarship, but now I do realize that scholarships can be created through everyday’s activities.
And as my friend said, “sometimes we forgot miracles and kindness of life”, so remind yourself often that they do exist. If I can get it, you can get it too!
[An essay belonged to a bigger topic on “A blessing or a curse? How democracies should deal with social media.”]
“If a republic be small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large, it is ruined by an internal imperfection.” wrote Montesquieu (Montesquieu). Considering democracy as a large republic, social media is an internal imperfection, especially in the time of modern democracy. The question is whether this imperfection is offensive to democracy. The openness and easy-to-access nature of social media facilitate the potential of “mass collaboration” (Leadbeater, 2008). In terms of democratic culture, implementing control or fact-checking at a large scale is almost impossible. Therefore, democracy should focus on educating citizen-users and raising their online literacy than on controlling social media because social media is merely a tool that can be used for a good or bad cause depending completely on its user.
Democracy provides an ideal environment and conditions for social media to flourish; to be exact, social media is a product that vividly depicts the essence of democracy which is freedom. As its name suggests, social media were born for everyone and people are free to share their ideas, opinions, and criticism without restraints. Those are the core elements of free speech. Most importantly people feel heard when they “speak” online and “how much heard” can be visualized by numbers such as shares, likes, comments, reactions, or tweets. Moreover, social media have become so popular thanks to its open accessibility and instantaneously attracted billions of users; there are about 3.81 billion active users globally with the most popular social network being Facebook (Clement, 2020). Having been an eminent part of such a huge community, several parties see opportunities and are taking advantage of the principles of democracy and trying to be benefited from the nature of modern social media platforms. Democracy is usually referred to in the context of politics in which social media has gradually become an authoritarian medium (Beauchamp, 2019). This “truth” is understandable but not easy to accept. The two most undeniable examples of it are: the winning of President Bolsonaro who successfully led a well-funded campaign to spread false information about his opponents using WhatsApp propaganda in Brazil (Isaac & Roose, 2018); President Trump of the United States won the presidency by using the social networks, mainly Facebook and Twitter (Bump, 2018). Even though Mark Zuckerberg has always refused the heinous role of Facebook in the election(s), the answer to whether Facebook is capable of influencing the results is obvious to many.
Democracy should not try to deal with social media but instead, learn how to live with it. Social media itself is not necessarily bad. They connect people, facilitate movements, and make information acquisition more friendly. However, everything comes with a price, and so do free speech and democracy. How much freedom of free speech is too much? Is there true “free” speech on social media when more and more people are concerned about: (1) the interference of big corporates which try to manipulate users with paid content to serve their interests; and (2) the rapid spread of false information? Currently, there are no good solutions to these two issues. Trying to control can create counterintuitive effects. Mark Zuckerberg once argued that: “In a democracy, I don’t think it’s right for private companies to censor politicians, or the news.” (Vaidhyanathan, 2019). Here comes the danger of spreading false news. Comparing false information on social media to COVID-19, people can either choose to study what it is and its consequences or simply accept what appears on social media as “facts.” The virus itself might not be as dangerous as the ignorance of people. A lot might argue it’s the users who decide to believe the news or not. There is nothing wrong with this argument. However, through this perspective, it’s important to mention collective consciousness.
Collective consciousness, once seen as one of the prominent factors making Homo sapiens superior to other species (Harari, 2015), has increasingly become a disadvantage of the modern era.
It can be used to explain why people are more attracted to false news and spread it more rapidly. We might be suspicious of a piece of information until our friends share it. Humans normally think in groups (A.Sloman & Ferbach, 2017). It is also human nature to think we know more than we do although we know very little. We do not process knowledge alone but in the minds of others (A.Sloman & Ferbach, 2017). In a research review about “Automation, Big Data, and Politics,” Samantha Shorey and Philip N. Howard collected several interesting facts, such as: in 2008, during the election of Mr. Barrack Obama, the former president of the USA, Facebook launched the “I’m voting” button—a nudge to promote voting that generated voting behavior data for millions of people (Sifry, 2014). Later, big data research based on 61 million Facebook users indicated that the positive social pressure of the voting button encouraged friends to do the same (Bond et al., 2012).
Social media users are coming from different backgrounds and use platforms to serve their interests. They have their own stories to care about, some carry with them the stories of survival. A user in the Philippines will see news from a different perspective than a user in the USA does. Putting effort into identifying and studying what is misleading and what is authentic is not their priority. It takes one second to hit the share button while it might take days or months to study a matter to come to a conclusion. It is impossible to stop people from seeing false news, but it is possible to educate people to increase their rationality before sharing something. It could be on a personal level but it’s doable.
To survive the information war of the 21st century, democracies must raise the digital literacy of the users focusing on helping them to understand artificial intelligence and data science. For example, news displayed and shared multiple times does not mean it is true; it’s all about algorithms and automation. Due to the immense amount of users worldwide, raising digital literacy would be easier in some countries than in others. Programs could be implemented in varied forms such as adding a compulsory subject at school for kids or designing appealing courses, be it online or offline, for adults. The reason this seems to be easy but takes “forever” to realize is that it is but a national issue, it has far reached the international level. When talking about the issues related to social media, the first and foremost solution to be proposed is to put constraints on institutions owning big data such as Facebook. However, there has been no consensus on vetting content and limiting “the power” of social media, especially in democratic countries and territories. The question is whether we should wait for social media to be constrained or take action to educate ourselves today.
Is social media a blessing or a curse? No matter what the answer is, it would be dangerous to exploit social media or absurd to blame it. The wisest thing to do is to have individual rationality, to understand the rules of the digital world, and to be responsible for the content we share so that we do not become a “slave” or a “tool” of social media.
Reference A.Sloman, Steven & Ferbach, Philip. The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone. New York: Riverhead Books, 2017; Green, Mortal Tribes, op. cit. Beauchamp, Zack (January 22, 2019). Social media is rotting democracy from within. Vox, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/22/18177076/social-media-facebook-far- right-authoritarian-populism. Accessed on May 27 2020. Bond, R. M., Fariss, C. J., Jones, J. J., Kramer, A. D. I., Marlow, C., Settle, J. E., & Fowler, J. H. (2012). A 61 million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization. Nature, 489(7415), 295–298. http://doi.org/10.1038/nature11421 Bump, Philip (March 23, 2018). All the ways Trump’s campaign was aided by Facebook, ranked by importance. The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/03/22/ all-the-ways-trumps-campaign-was-aided-by-facebook-ranked-by-importance/. Accessed on May 27 2020. Clement, J. (May 18 2020). Social media – Statistics & Facts. Statista, https://www.statista.com/ topics/1164/social-networks/. Accessed on May 30 2020. Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. New York: HaperCollins Publishers, Chapter 2: The Tree of Knowledge (pp 20-39), 2015. Isaac, Mike & Roose, Kevin (October 19, 2018). Disinformation Spreads on WhatsApp Ahead of Brazilian Election. The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/technology/ whatsapp-brazil-presidential-election.html. Accessed on May 27 2020. Leadbeater, C. (2008). We-Think, Profile Books, London. Montesquieu. The Spirit of Laws: Book 9, http://www.constitution.org. Accessed on May 30 2020. Sifry, M. (October 31, 2014). Facebook wants you to vote on Tuesday: Here’s how it messed with your feed in 2012. Mother Jones, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/canvoting- facebook-button-improve-voter-turnout
Vaidhyanathan, Siva (November 02, 2019). The Real Reason Facebook Won’t Fact-Check Political Ads. The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/opinion/facebook- zuckerberg-political-ads.html. Accessed on May 30, 2020
Topic: The analysis of Critical Tacit Knowledge Transfer Management and a proposal of developing a Critical Tacit Knowledge Preserving and Transferring System for Saffron Travel, a Destination Management Company in Vietnam.
One of the essays I wrote during my Master program. Topic: The analysis of Japanese and South Korean knowledge and technology transfer in innovation process and lessons learned for Vietnam.
As a “tradition”, when I need my focus on my master thesis the most, I want to write a blog instead 🙂
It’s been quite some time since my last travel in May (to Paris) and I miss traveling but the past three months, it was crazy with work and many things had changed…significantly.
Sometimes I just wanted to sit down and write about my lovely trip to Paris where I tried so many good things and how my dream to visit one of the most beautiful cities in the world came true. But soon I will write about it, I hope.
Early this month, I drafted a trip to the Southern (and Western) part of Europe for three weeks. It was inspired by my trip to the North, also the same amount of time. 😉 During the planning, I was amazed at how magnificent the places are and I could already see myself enjoying a cup of coffee in Rome or taking photos of Ponta Delgada as the airplane slowly makes its landing. Still, whether or not this trip will come true depends on so many factors.
I also find October a perfect time for traveling to this part of Europe, below is my draft of the trip and hopefully, I will “seriously” come back to this when I am done with my thesis. It is still a draft and looks a bit rush but… I’ll see 😉
Day
Date
Country
City
Day 1
October
Croatia
Frankfurt – Split (flight)
Day 2
October
Croatia
Split
Day 3
October
Croatia
Split – Dubrovnik
Day 4
October
Croatia
Dubrovnik
Day 5
October
Spain
Dubrovnik – Barcelona (Flight)
Day 6
October
Spain
Barcelona – Granada (high speed train)
Day 7
October
Spain
Granada
Day 8
October
Spain
Granada – Servilla (high speed train)
Day 9
October
Spain
Servilla
Day 10
October
Spain
Servilla – Lisbon (Flixbus)
Day 11
October
Spain
Lisbon
Day 12
October
Portugal
Lisbon – Porto (Train / bus)
Day 13
October
Portugal
Porto
Day 14
October
Portugal
Porto – Ponta Delgada (Flight)
Day 15
October
Portugal
Ponta Delgada
Day 16
October
Portugal
Ponta Delgada
Day 17
October
Portugal
Ponta Delgada – Lisbon – Berlin (flight)
In order to make this blog not-so-boring, I decided to insert two cute photos of Paris here hehehe
Every corner is….a coffee shop 😀Things I miss the most about Paris 😛
I have been so lucky to have the opportunity to visit several cities in Germany; still, there are a lot of places I want to explore, Germany is big. Below I recommend some routes that I have traveled to and loved. In most of my trips, I combined different cities or places together because:
It helps you save a lot of money. You can buy regional ticket and travel around using all kinds of public transportation. Of course, you have to read the terms and conditions carefully because it can be different from time to time. I remember, for example, express trains might not be included. To buy regional tickets, you can check DB app (regionale Angebote) and literally “the more, the cheaper.” I usally travel with just one or two of my friends but if you have a group of four or five, definitely it’s the best option for you.
It’s convenient. There were trips that we visited two or three cities in one day – yeah yeah, I know this could be rush but if you have traveled within Germany quite a lot, at one point everything will become a bit similar to you so visiting different places gives you the chances to see them briefly and if you like the place, just come back later. For some of your first trips, I would recommend seeing things slowly.
I will not write about all the places I list below because it would be too long so only places which have special places in my heart will be featured (hahahaha)
Trip #1 – Sachsen and Niedersachsen
From Leipzig, I have visited Dresden, Weimar, Torgau, Harz (Herzberg am Harz and Hattorf am Harz), and Halle. I love Weimar for its artistic vibes and Harz for its nature. Dresden is very beautiful, especially at night but be prepared that you might see a lot of constructions around, which is understandable because the city was heavily damaged during WWII. You can read more about it here (in German) or here (in English). When you are in Dresden, don’t forget to plan a trip to Saxon Switzerland (German: Sächsische Schweiz) – it’s beautiful in all seasons but could be a bit slippery to climb up during winter. I want to come back here and explore a more off-the-beaten route and maybe do overnight camping.
WeimarDresdenHarzSächsische Schweiz
Trip #2 – Nordrhein-Westfalen and Rheinland-Pfalz: Köln, Düsseldorf, Essen, Aachen, Trier, Cochem, Mosel and some small villages
I traveled here in April – already spring, but it was still cold and snowing. Some highlights:
Köln / Cologne – I quoted “Cologne is a beautiful town (of which unfortunately most part of the medieval city was destroyed by the bombing during WWII.” Make sure you visit the Dom, splendid and huge. I attended the Holy Mass also, a very interesting experience. So if you want to do it, make sure you check the schedule in advance. In my opinion, Köln is more beautiful at night. We went to the other side of the bridge and observe the city from different angles. The photos below are from the other side of the bridge.
It took a little effort to find the route to reach here but it was amazingly beautiful, wasn’t it?
How small I am compared to the Dom
The details…
Aachen is spring is super lovely and the city itself is cute too. People who love small places like me would love Aachen. I visited Aachen on the last day of my trip in this area so I did not expect much; I was thinking “Well, just another city.” But when I arrived, I was surprised by the vintage vibes, the scenery, cute alleyways, and extremely unique coffee shops – talking about this, you have to go here!!! Aachen is also known for being one of the most innovative cities in Germany. Good schools like RWTH Aachen are here.
Aachen in spring Cathedral of Aachen
Kettwig – I LOVE THIS PLACE. Well, people say the most beautiful things that come into your life are usually the most unexpected ones and yeah, Kettwig is one of the gifts that life has surprised me. I remember it was a snowy day and after visiting Essen (really really short time in Essen), we arrived here. When we stepped out of the train, it was like a scene in a fairy tale – perhaps the snow helped a lot in making the scene so romantic. Kettwig is a very small yet authentic town and it has THE BEST WAFFLE that I have ever tried in Germany. The owner of the waffle shop has a sister-in-law who is Vietnamese.
Isn’t it lovely?Kettwig with its best waffleWho does not love spring when it’s this beautiful?Hidden restaurants are here
Trier and Cochem along the Mosel. These are my top three recommended places in Germany and I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. If you love nature, biking, good wines, and want to do a romantic trip with your beloved one (or like me with my best friend in Germany 😉 ), you have to go here. Also, if you are tired of city life and want to have some slow time, these places are perfect for wellness. Besides biking, you can do hiking – Mosel hike, where you can explore vineyard trails and mountain trails. If these activities are too adventurous for you, a relaxing wine tasting experience is worth trying or simply sitting on a train and appreciating the landscape is already a worthwhile experience. I don’t want to combine everything here in one blog because these places need their own blog where I can share more tips and photos. 😉
Trier stole a piece of my heart (just like someone who used to live here did to me hahaha)Mosel – I did not have much time to explore the other bank. So have to come back!!! Sunset
In my last blog about sports, I shared lessons I have learned from basketball and tennis; some help me create new habits while some I am still struggling to find a solution – overcoming my uncomfortable moments on the court is one of them. Last week I played a tennis match and lost it…again. I was extremely angry at myself because I could not hit the ball and every hit was ugly. What I hated the most was in the middle of the game, I thought of giving up… I never wanted that but I could not let go of my negativity during the match. Just so you know, even sometimes I can write lesson-learned comprehensively, it does not mean I can already apply and successfully implement the lessons for my problems. It makes me think of social media nowadays where people can share tips about how to be happy, how to be successful, etc. buuuut what is behind all the tips is still a secret. It’s quite easy to compose a list of things but doing them is another matter.
A “good friend” of mine asked me why I wanted to share things on my blog because it seemed like all of my stories were very personal, especially in the context of the Internet where impossible (bad) things could happen. I also do not know exactly the reasons why I love doing this. But I know I enjoy writing a lot, it’s a way of organizing my thoughts and perhaps I also enjoy documenting the process of improvement which I have been struggling with. But this is a bit out of the topic, so I should get back. Hahaha
So, this week I have played some games and I felt so much better even when I lost. I was so proud of myself for the courage I had to throw myself out there and try again and again and again AND the courage to say YES to any invitation for playing a game. Of course, this does not happen overnight. I watched an inspiring video of Kobe Bryant and it helped me a lot in improving my sport-mentality. I was so inspired that I wrote a looooong text of how I apply his five pillars into my personal life and I think everyone can use the methods. Buuuut I need to discuss this with one person to see if it’s okay to publish =)))))))
I can share I point that I loooovee the most, it’s RELENTLESSNESS – never give in, always go after, go after, go after. Kobe said when he was eleven, after moving from Italy to the US and in one of his very first leagues there, he could not score a point, not even a free throw. It was devastating for him but he vowed to be better. I talked to myself “Do not be afraid of competing!” because “Maybe I’m not good today, tomorrow I will be better, but I would take the chance to measure my skills today.” If I do not join any competition, I will never know my level.
I made a test for my first week applying this principle, I set more realistic goals – instead of winning a tennis match, this week I only need to accomplish one or two games, then later three, then four, then one set, step by step. With this plan, winning the whole match was no longer my target. In the end, I managed to accomplish four games in the second set, my partner was one game ahead of me – it’s now 5 – 4 (which also means in the first set I lost to 6-0 hahahaha). We will finish the game this week. I realized the change in my mind, I was soooo happy when I reached my tiny goal and the rest of the game no pressure, just immerse and be present in the moment and play.
I am going to apply this to my German, speaking skill – I will take every chance to speak German. If people do not understand me, I will do it again and again. I will initiate the conversation and if people end up speaking English to me, I will explain that I am learning German and I am trying all I could to use the language. The goal is to initiate the conversation in German and keep it last for at least one or two minutes; of course, it also depends on other people if they want to talk to me or not hahahaha. Also, instead of only answering the questions people ask me, I will ask them back. Another goal is to make phone calls, it could be anything from asking for information to complaining – I already have one case that I could do it hahaha. I can start simply by saying simple things CLEARLY and CORRECTLY, for example wishing a cashier at a supermarket a nice day or asking a librarian the information, or always ordering food in German. Let’s see how it goes.
And today 13.02.2022 is a very lovely day. I just went out to play basketball and did two games. Really!!!! my life in Germany has taught me a lot.
I also plan to continue writing about my travels. This time it will be about my trips around Germany and my favorite destination in Germany. I still have a lot of pending writings about my trips to Scandinavia.
Hi, I'm Dai and I'm from Vietnam 