Week 1, Tianzi Xie

Top 5 strength:

learner

focus

achiever

significance

analytical

Interaction between my themes

I was not surprised when I got the results back and I think this test is pretty accurate.

There is no a set of words can cover up all the aspects of a person. but these four words is pretty much represent who I am or at least my current mentality. They explain and complement each other.

One of the key point for being focus is that destination is the standard to evaluate each action. having a clear goal is an necessary part of my life. although I m not quite sure about the final goal of my life but at least I have goals for each specific stage. I m currently a college student and I think to prepare yourself for a successful career is absolutely an important goal but it s more or less too narrow minded. What a college student should aim for is to expand your verizon and learning from every experience. a successful career or anything you may want will be a natural outcome after you make yourself overall a "better person".

What I ve talked above leads to my second strength of being a learner. I use whether or not i learn from something to evaluate each of my action and experience. when i am success at doing something i will learn what i did right and when i fail i will reflect on my action to learn what i did wrong or could have done better. through evaluating each of my experience there won t be a true failure and over time i would find i am growing and become wiser, therefore a overall better person.

by reading through the definition I believe that i am a outright achiever. i have to be productive for every second even though sometimes at the price of burning myself out. it s like a internal fire burning in my mind to keep me moving forward. at the end of the day I would always ask myself what did I achieve today? if I find there is nothing I can say I would feel really bad even guilty.

Why I have to be so productive and even being so hard on myself. Here comes the other two of my strengths. Focus and significance. Because I have goals so I have to move closer to them each day. why do I have to achieve those goals. because I believe in that is what can validate me significance and make me feel fulfilled.

However I think the definition of significance given in the reading is not broad enough. It mostly focus on how other people look at you and it seems that I do what I do is only for my public image or using a chinese term"my face". I need others to think of me as credible, successful and professional. but the problem is you can not make everyone likes. each individual has his own values. Your achievement being admired by some but seems to be unimportant or unworthy for others. Significance is more of a answer to myself rather than to others. as long as i live up to my own values i would feel good and satisfied.

How do you see your strengths contributing to your experience with Board Immersion? Which strengths do you think you'll use the most this year? Why?

learner:

Being a learner I enjoy the process of learning no matter what the specific subject is. What I care about is the joy i gained from knowing very few to become professional and mastering a skill. this class provides me with a wonderful opportunity to learn more about non profit. Even though I have been involved in a couple community service actitives before but I am still pretty ignorant about the inner work of non profit organizations. Learning from scratch about how to play a role in a board and overtime I will find myself be able to accomplish a project with the professionals. How wonderful the process is and the confidence I will gain from it will be tremendous. Such mentally inspires curiosity and i will learn with enthusiasm and take initiative during this process.

Focus: one of the responsitbities for a board member is to keep the whole team on track and make sure the fulfillment of its mission. My strength will enable me to examine each of my action to make sure what I ve done is contributing to the goal of the organization.

Also in a broader perspective. The goal I have for this program is to learn about non profit organization and try to make it better through my effort. Keep this in mind it will guide me through every hard moment I might have during this process.

Achiever: This strength will definitely keep me being productive and effective.

Significance: Civic engagement is my passion. I consider community service and social responsibly not only as a duty or an obligation but rather as self realization. I applied for board immersion program so that I can learn about non profit and try to make them work more effectively so that help more people and make the world a better place. it is not a slogan but something that I truly believe in and am willing to put effort in. by doing this program I feel satisfied and happy. Therefore keep me being enthusiastic and motived.

I don t think there is a strength that I will use the most. I believe that all four of them work together to make this program a better experience for me.

What questions do you still have about StrengthsQuest and your talent themes in particular?

The reason why I did not mention my fifth strength is that I really can not agree with it. I am not analytical, actually on the opposite sometimes I am a little credulous. Probably some of my answer send misleading signal or I am analytical inside but i just do not realize it yet.