Blue Sweater (Pt.1)

Jacqueline Novogratz, the author of Blue Sweater, showed us what is a real social enterprise. In the first half of the book, she mainly described her experiences to open up a micro-financing organization in Rwanda, Africa. I was very impressed by her decision because she graduated from Stanford MBA, and worked in New York city afterwards. She said she was a "middle-class kid" so pursuing after a nonprofit organization would seem too challenging for her. When she interviewed with a bank, she was asked why she wanted to become a bank. She directly answer, "I don't want to be a banker." Not a lot of people had the courage to directly speak of their dreams about changing the world during an interview but Jacqueline did. When she moved to Chase, she was given a chance to work in Africa. She made a quick decision without hesitating that if she wanted to change the world, she needed to work in Africa. I admired her courage of chasing after her dream at all costs. And that's every college student should have learned - be brave enough to chase after one's dream.

The following chapters each told a story of the difficulty she encountered in developing business in Africa. I respect her enthusiasm and her energy that she put under such poor circumstances. She heard a 8-year-old girl saying that solders had taken all of their dresses in the war, so these young girls wore their best dresses every day in case they were going to lose them one day. She couldn't find anyone to support her as well since in Rwanda, African women were against girls from other countries. They thought one shouldn't deal with their issues if she was not an African. A lot of people were trying to poison her in order to scare her away from work even though she was working for women rights. After all, she realized that compassion was not enough to change the problems in Africa. She had to devote herself in so that people would respect her work. I think this book gave us the power to work in a startup since all startups started from many problems. One would only succeed if he/she learned how to put all efforts in and how to sacrifice.

Very Random Thoughts on Presidential Debate

As a person who is not interested in politics, I have watched both of presidential debates in order to keep track with the public (watching the second one right now). I don't have much background knowledge on American politics or the two candidates (nor voting rights sadly). I simply wanted to learn something about how presidents are elected through debates and how presidential candidates behave in such important events. My very first impression on Donald Trump was his interruptions. In the first debate, he interrupted both Hillary and host for over 50 times. What I felt was his lack of confidence. He was so eager to express his ideas and defend himself. However, these interruptions did not make good impressions. Mr. Trump failed to use concrete evidence or convincible examples to prove his opinions which made his statements more like jokes. Beginning with "Let me tell you something", Donald Trump often argued with the host since he never answered questions directly. These actions really made me to question his quality. Another technique Donald Trump loved to use was to attack different groups of people. In the first debate, he mentioned China for eight times and Mexico for seven times. He blamed China as the main cause of global warming. He blamed Russians as hackers. These are absolutely absurd statements to me personally. Countries are so connected in the world right now that it is impossible to isolate any one of them. I cannot believe how he is going to develop inter-country relationships if he is elected. I was also shocked at his disrespect on females in the first presidential debate. Even though he did not say it publicly, Donald Trump apparently looked down on Hillary Clinton since she is a woman. He believed that man should rule the world and I don't know how he is going to win the debate with this attitude.

But it doesn't mean that I totally support Hillary Clinton. Since her husband used to be the president, she has more experiences in building good public image. I can tell from the debates that she is polite, respectful, and logical, but I am more concerned about whether she is consistent in and out of the spotlight. Due to Bill Clinton's scandal, Hillary perfectly knew how important it was to have a good image in public media. In both debates, she also proposed many wonderful plans on how to make the United States better but we all know politicians love to exaggerate their abilities. Especially after private emails exposed by WikiLeaks, the public began to hesitate on Hillary whether she is as consistent. She might be good at constructing image and debating, but a President should be far more excellent. Through the two debates, I do have a lean on Hillary Clinton just based on their performances, but she is also not a perfect candidate to me. I will try to be updated with presidential elections more often and if there is anything wrong in this blog, please correct me.