Student Spotlight
Jiqi Yang This fall, the University of Alberta welcomed 2,789 international undergraduates to its campuses, marking a 20% jump from the previous fall’s recorded enrolment. With 9% of the current undergraduates at the UofA registered as international students, Lazy Faire was delighted to sit down with Jiqi Yang, an international student at the Alberta School of Business. A third year Accounting major about to complete her eight month Co-op placement at Enbridge, Jiqi shed some light on what it means to be an international student and the importance of getting involved outside the classroom and workplace, whether you are an international student, undergraduate, MBA, or simply someone who strives to seize a promising opportunity. Before we discuss your experiences as an international student at the SoB, could you tell us what extra-curricular activities you are involved in? I volunteer most of my time in SIFE- it is a new student group and I started as co-president of operations. I am also working for the Assistant Dean of International to set up some programs for international students to help them better their education. What was it that first attracted you to these activities? I heard about SIFE when I was in high school in China. In second year, our previous president introduced SIFE to the Alberta School of Business; that’s why I got involved. This year, I didn’t do much in the Fall term and then one of my friends told me that our Assistant
Dean was looking for someone to organize something for international students. When you look at the U of A, there are so many institutions helping international students with really basic things-where to hang out, what to eat, how to practice have activities for them. English-but not many teach you about this culture. This is why we came up with this idea. We also find that many international students are not confident. They can do a very good job, but just because of the language they do not have the confidence to talk to people. What we are going to do is have some workshops and dinners to teach these students to do some networking. I guess another big problem is that they are not pro-active and they don’t know how to search for that kind of information. We are going to let them know that it is important to be confident, pro-active and involved in business. It’s great to hear that the University dedicates multiple programs to support these students, but what about student clubs? The biggest barrier for international students is their language. They only speak with their families and friends so they don’t speak very good English and it is really hard for them to start. The International Student Centre and CAPS help them get jobs, find accommodations and practice their English, but I don’t think that’s the big problem. The first step for the student groups is to understand international students. Last year I worked with a program in Lister Centre for international students and I found a big problem is that most of the students here don’t really think to CHINA We’re interested to know more about your home country. Where in China are you from? I’m from Jiaxing, in the southeast part of China. It’s a small city so not too many people have heard of it. What is your favourite memory from your home town? Or what do you miss most? I think it’s going out with a group of friends for Karaoke (laughs)! We don’t usually go out for Karaoke here. Were there any aspects that you were glad to leave behind? The working environment. I did my internship in China as well, but there are a lot of people and competition is huge in China so they don’t really help you develop as a student. If you are a student, you just go do documentation. Here I am doing my Co-op with Enbridge right now and my supervisor will treat me like a regular employee. The best thing about Enbridge, and my team, is that they try to help me develop and learn more, so, besides my regular work, I went to volunteer for the United Way campaign and I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity- during work hours. And then I took a lot of training in Enbridge. I took Sharepoint training because it’s related to my work, and an ITIL (Infrastructure Library) certificate. And then I told my supervisor that I am interested in project management, so she sent me to the PMO training. They support you. I always tell my supervisor,
“Thank you so much for doing this” and she says, “Oh no, don’t thank me because this is part of my work” and so their culture is really good. I guess I am really lucky (laughs). CANADA What was your first impression when you came to Canada? It’s really cold! I don’t really see snow in my home town because it is in the southern part and it never snows. Overall, what was the transition period like and what was the most difficult part? When you don’t speak well in the language, you don’t really want to go out and use the language. In my first term here, I didn’t really talk to a lot of people and it was a very difficult time. The best thing for me was that I lived in Lister and so my good friend, and her friends who are immigrants to Canada, helped me a lot and they took me out for dinner and introduced me to more friends. And then when I came to the School of Business there were a lot of opportunities, like competitions and conferences. GPA is really important, but a main part of business is to network and meet people so I took those opportunities. I remember my first networking opportunity was a dinner organized by CESA. I didn’t really speak much that time, I was like, “Uhh, I don’t really know what to talk about”, but if you go to more and more networking events you will learn what to talk about and then how to ask for business cards and how to follow up after the event. OPPORTUNITY What opportunities have you experienced here that you think you may not have had access to if you hadn’t moved to Canada? I think people treat each other more equally. When I just started working for Enbridge, we would have a team meeting every week and I have a co-worker who was late one day. He came in and there were no more chairs left. In Asian culture, what you do is you usually go out to grab another chair and give it to your co-worker. I was going to do that, but my supervisor said, “No, stay there. It’s his fault because he is late. Don’t think that because you are a Co-op student that you are second class.” So I thought that that was a really good thing, because you treat each other equally and you get more opportunities. Do you have any piece of advice for international students, maybe something that you wish someone told you when you first started school here? Since Canada is a very diverse country, if you are an International student, you have that diversity, so don’t think it is bad or that you have to change anything just because you are in Canada. To fit in a diverse society is really hard and something that you have to constantly work at. You need to learn to lose face. I don’t know if people talk about that here, but you need to learn to not be shy and learn to make mistakes. Learn to take all of the advantages and take all of the opportunities you can in the School of Business.