I am Ting Zhang, who is a student in INTO Mason for Master’s in Data Analytic Engineering. I gained a very pleasant experience in the standard Pathway Program. There are some Pathway courses I needed to take, such as Graduate Communication across disciplines (EAP506, EAP507) and Grad study (PROV 504). Furthermore, I was allowed to take three courses from my discipline. All of these courses gave me an assistance for life and academic performance in The United States.When international graduate students come to another country for their study, they usually encounter a lot of problems. The aim of this paper I would like to present one case of mine when I am in George Mason university and make analysis of them in order to a better preparation for the future formal Master’s program study.

Firstly, I would like to give an example about the academic performance. Last year, I took the first of my major course: AIT 580. The professor Constophy was a very nice person, who taught us the methodologies of mining data and assigned all the students a big group project. At that time, I was designated to a group, which contains five people. All the people in my group are native students except me. Hilton was the team leader, who was responsible for distributing the work to us and make a work schedule. In the process of making the work schedule, he discussed with every team member and showed a respect to our personal schedule. What is more, he gain the understanding of every team member’s skills who could be good at every different field, then he assigned the different work to us. Every people came to library to discuss this project on every Sunday morning at 8 a.m., which was the meeting time that every team member agreed. I remember Samantha who is a excellent girl in the group picked me up on every Sunday morning at 7:30 a.m.，Since there wasn’t any cue bus so early on Sunday. What made the deepest impressions is that every people wasn’t absence for the any meeting for any excuse. Even though sometimes some people will have their own business to deal, they could be a little late for the meeting, they showed up every meeting to make discussions with other team members. At the end of the semester, the professor gave a high score for our project. After reviewing the academic performance of every people in my group, I feel most native students could be equipped with serious attitude for academic achievement, and they are all taking a responsible for their own tasks. For example, I remember, Lynn was in charge of deployment of database. At first, she couldn’t find the most suitable database to our project, although she tried and test many different databases for a long time. During this process, she emailed to the professor once she had problems. At the same time she found a lot of materials online and in libraries. Moreover, she tried to do a lot experiments to find the optimal solutions during her free time. Even though she thought she found the best database that can be applied to our project, she tested it again and again. I thought it is the quality I need to learn from Lynn. Therefore, I should keep a positive sense on my further studying, I should concentrate on my own academic performance more precisely. Also no matter how many problems I would have in my assignments, project or coursework, I should keep a patient mind and spend time doing a lot of research on that.

At the end of the semester, the professor gave every student a sheet that can evaluate your team member. As for the evaluation, I conclude several points. The first I want to make a focus on my team leader Hilton. As I said, he was a wise man that every team member like him very much. He was good at exploration every person’s advantage in different field, then he can know what every person can real contribute to this project. Thus, he assigned different section of this project due to our different skills. I thought this was the key point that made this project so successful. From Hilton, I made some reflections for myself. I get to know If I will be a team leader for a project in the future, the first thing I need to make a talk with every people to obtain the understanding of their personalities and the areas that every team member could be adept in. Then I will consider to assign them the tasks which are different sections of the project according to their characteristic and their skills. I think it is the most important parts in a group project, since every team member could make their every effort to do their work if they do something that they are familiar with or related to their fields. Thus, it will be a good method to improve efficiency of the whole work, also the team members can learn a lot of knowledge. In other word, if someone is a software-engineering students, who should have done the programming tasks and function testing for the system. However, I give him a job of hardware-fixing. He would be confused about all the things and he didn’t how to set out for the job. Consequently, it will waste of time and make the team member upset. Then, I learn as to be a team leader, I should to show respect to every team members. Before taking every action, I should do some discussions with all the members in my group. Because if everyone in a group is willing to do something he likes, he could complete the tasks with more productivities. In addition, what I show respect to others, they can also show respect to me. And every people in a group takes a different roles with their jobs, every section should be matched each other which could be called a perfect project.

In conclusion, I learned a lot from my academic courses, no matter the academic performance or knowledge in my discipline. The case I presented is to show what I need to do for the further study and the reason why I need to do. Therefore. Now I need to make some plan for learning to be a team leader and knowing how to be better in a group project. The first thing I need to improve my communicate skills, I will make an appointment with advisor who could give me some suggestions about how to be better in communicating with native students. Then I should make more observation for other group leaders, then I can combine different styles with my personality to make my own style for the group.