Reflective Journal 1

Having gone through two terms of CDE last year, I am more prepared this year for the upcoming assignments and discussions. The main theme or topic last year was about the cultural differences between the East and the West. We analyzed the "Google Way" of management and innovation, which is the 20 percent strategy; the difficulties which Lenovo and other Chinese companies face when developing and expanding into the global market; the Confucian ideology and how it has impacted China today; how the Western ideology shaped the current economy of Western countries; and how the two contrasting cultures affected Singapore. I feel that the numerous lessons learnt last year were very interesting and has given me an insight of how culture affects the world today. I have also gained a new perspective on the differences between the cultures of the East and West. Indeed, the overall programme was an effective one and I was looking forward to the CDE this year.

For the first lesson this year, we took a Cultural Quotient (CQ) self-assessment to analyse how much we understand cultural differences, and also to emphasize the importance of cultural intelligence. With the knowledge of this, it can greatly prepare us when we enter the workforce which is becoming an increasingly competitive global market, as we are able to handle situations in any culture, and also to interact with people of different cultures without offending them. Though I had already taken it last year, I felt that I should retake it as a gauge of my takeaways from one semester of CDE last year, and to find out whether I have become more culture-sensitive and culture-tolerant.

For the remaining upcoming lessons for this year, I hope that we can delve more in-depth into the topics covered last year, not only as a revision of the stuff we learnt, but also to probe into areas of that topic which were not discussed due to the lack of time. Of course, I do not mind learning new topics as they will broaden my perspectives greatly. I am very supportive of the free discussions as we can voice out our opinions without fear of blurting out a wrong answer or getting penalised. However, I would like to make a suggestion that was unfortunately not implemented last year. I hope that notes summarising the particular lesson would be given out so that we can refresh the information learnt at home. Furthermore, I felt that the research essay topics were a little restricted. It would be better if us students had the freedom to craft our own topic. 

Despite the few flaws present, I still believe that CDE is a unique and wonderful subject, where the knowledge learnt is very much out of the mundane textbook. And Mr Karplus is undoubtedly both a humorous and a great teacher. I hope that my takeaways this year would be as much, if not more, than last year.