Vocational Skills Training (Day One)

This article was extracted from my early NetEase blog. NetEase Blog is no longer operating, but looking back, these words are still quite interesting, so I decided to move them over as intact as possible. Mainly as a record; after all, it was a long time ago, so the quality of the writing, images, and links may all be affected.

This article was originally published on July 27, 2009. I was about 20 years old then and was in university.

The summer vacation had been completely ordinary. I had originally already planned to go to Bagong Mountain with everyone, but who knew that in the end some people got sick and some went traveling. There was no choice but to postpone it to August.

There was still some time before August, and with nothing to do, I signed myself up for a 10-day vocational skills training course. I hope I can gain something from it! Because it is summer vacation, most of the students are people who have just graduated from high school, but there are also quite a few uncle- and auntie-level people attending. After all, it is a society-oriented training course! It was my first time attending class in this kind of environment, and it felt pretty fresh.

The course I chose was marketing. I had originally planned to choose my old specialty (computers), but among the training classes that had started recently, there was only this marketing class, which was very far away from it. After thinking about it, I decided to go all in anyway. I do not want to keep doing that kind of activity where life is only computer, kitchen, bedroom in a three-point line, the kind that can drive a person crazy. So I came to today's classroom.

The teacher is called Yang Wei. Just as she said herself, she is the great woman general of the Yang family. Whether in terms of experience or teaching style, she feels pretty good. But no one is perfect, and there are still some places that made everyone not very satisfied…

On the first day of class, although it is only a short ten days, this classroom is still quite formal. First there was the election for class monitor and group leaders. From volunteering oneself, to campaign speeches, to everyone voting, everything looked quite proper. A soon-to-be college student sitting beside me who graduated from No. 4 Middle School also joined this class monitor election. Unfortunately, he was not chosen, but later he still became the leader of our group.

Speaking of our group, it is pretty interesting. There are five people in our group: two "aunties," one young man who has already entered society, plus me and our group leader. These five people together are almost a small society. It really lives up to the name we later gave our group, "Golden Combination." According to the teacher's requirement, we gave our group a name. At first we wanted to call it something like "Golden Partner," but then we thought, would that be too copycat? So we changed it to the current name. We also came up with a slogan for our group that is catchy but full of student flavor: "Gold will always shine; a good combination enters the market." After all, only students are full of enthusiasm for things like making slogans… After reading this slogan a few times, it always felt strange, but in just a few minutes no one could think of anything better, so let it be. We wrote it down and, with a hard heart, handed it in. As for our group logo, we were quite creative. We did not follow everyone's ideas of suns, rainbows, and so on… instead, we drew a shape ourselves.

The morning class basically ended in this kind of simple familiarizing process. In the afternoon, the teacher first told a touching story behind the song "A Grateful Heart," and then led everyone in doing the sign-language dance for the song. But because time was very tight, she taught it very quickly, and I simply did not learn it…

The day passed quickly. After a year away from high school, walking into such a formal classroom again really felt good. Although university also has classrooms, it always feels as if something is missing. There are still nine days left in the training. I hope what comes later will get more and more exciting.