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Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With a Single Step: A Student’s Reflection After the CTB

April 27, 2018

Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With a Single Step: A Student’s Reflection After the CTB

Back in October last year, I was approached by a friend of mine to start a China Thinks Big team, and me, being a ‘green hand’ at that point, agreed with it immediately and wished to have some innovative experiences. I gained a lot of new and wonderful experiences throughout this competition and got a chance to go to the United States to compete.

During the first phase of the competition, we were asked to choose a topic that we would be working on for the coming 6 months. And our team, Red Dragon, chose the topic of how to reduce the wastage caused by parcel services. Within this topic, we went through countless possible solutions, but each one of them was either too impractical or too naïve. Although our solutions were all imperfect, we decided to hand out cardboard boxes when the deadline was shoved against our faces.

We carried out our new plan by going to superstores and asking for permission to hand out cardboard boxes there. Luckily, a store called Decathlon accepted our plan and permitted us to go there every Saturday. With this, we did all our best to further perfect our plan and expand it. And with all our efforts made throughout October to January, we passed the national round of China Thinks Big (CTB) by getting second place, and were given the privilege to go to the US for the Finals.

After getting to the United States, a set of classes and challenges were given to us and we were to complete all of them within 7 days. The classes that it included were taught by Harvard sophomores and professors. All the classes were eventful and interesting. Within the classes, there were things taught that ranged from general researching to how to run businesses. It was wonderful to get refresh our skills. After each class, we needed to hand in our homework to get further improvement. When the classes were all done, we used our learned knowledge on another competition called a ‘Hackathon’, and our cardboard project.

Within the Hackathon, all the China Thinks Big participants were recombined into larger groups. Then, we were assigned to places in Harvard to make it more symbolic. Our group was assigned to the Harvard museum, and we chose to add a waterfall to it. During this process, we had to cope with other groups that may have had different opinions from ours. For example, there was one time that I wanted to go with a move on to the ground project compared to the waterfall, but because the whole team was already driven by it, all I did was to go with it and assist them during their presentation. Another important part of this competition was how we must learn to take advantage of the individual strengths each member has, and use it for the team. For me, I helped the team draw an ‘exceptional’ artwork, while some others helped with research and presentation. In the end, these lessons that came with it satisfied me.

Continuing to the project presentation, we learned to deal with what we have and make the most out of it. Going into this competition, we knew that our project may pale when compared to the others, but we used our own efforts to make up for it. Through the 2 days we had for our project presentation, we dedicated all of our time to ‘repackaging’ our project. We made posters and videos presenting it, we ironed our outfits to give ourselves a better impression, and we rehearsed our lines countless times.

Although our China Thinks Big project had come to an end, our project at Decathlon had not. We, by partnering with Decathlon, promised a provided reliability to them. This reliability will guide us to improve our project at Decathlon by learning from other projects at CTB. We, by using the name of our school, felt determined to continue this project in the future and make it more successful than ever.

I gained a lot through being at Harvard itself, and that is thanks to the Harvard professors that taught us, the teachers that designed our schedule and the parents that financially supported us. Through this competition, there is a lot to be gained, and you may go participate in it next year as well. I learned how to be more lenient toward others’ ideas and more efficient when it comes to completing tasks. And the most important knowledge that I had gained from the Harvard professors is that refreshing existing knowledge is as important as learning new knowledge.

(Written and photos by Aldrin Cheung from 9(6) Supervised by Sophia Yang)