Heathrow, London struck me with its foggy and rainy weather, maybe with a hint of coffee in the air. The scale of the city was a lot bigger compared to my hometown, which was good to what I believe that I needed a change of environment. Since then, I began to believe big, central cities to be my ideal living environment. The people here are mostly senior, however, mostly working people and are constantly working or on the go. This was so much different than my home country where young people (20-30) would be the main age group. I was very thrilled about the hustle environment – the kind of vibe that I only saw in Hollywood movies before where people are always doing something whether it is answering the phone, reading newspaper or eating. Before coming here I kind of expect this however actually standing in London still aroused me and more importantly it gave me a sense of motivation to blend in the same atmosphere – to always be thinking, moving and observing. This enhance my beliefs in having a completely changed environment and the one that can change me for the better and that studying abroad was the right choice.     

  

  

From my perspective, Brighton's dense frequency of cafes and its coastline make it easy for me to commit to my aforementioned habits – mindfully and physically active. I used to think it was just a tourist city and that compared to London it would not be supportive to be an academic nourishing environment, however it came to my conclusion that it was not very much the environment being the penultimate determinants but rather my own beliefs that actually shape my actions.  

  

I will do an PPE degree in university this following September 2018. My course includes all three subjects - Philosophy, Politics and Economics. It has been my dearest dream to do PPE since I was in my teenage years and read philosophers' work in my free time. Politics was actually my gateway to read philosophy, when I found politics (and even science) was heavily influenced by ideas of philosophers it struck me that philosophy studies was the most influential social science of all. I was quite challenged at first since English was my second language thus being a barrier however after committing to my habit of reading newspaper every day, my reading skills improved and I slowly found the beauty of social sciences in general. It was such an empowering process that I went through, the kind of experience when learning a new language that opened up a whole new world. This motivated me to study other languages in my years in University, French, German and perhaps Chinese alongside.  

  

In the future I really want to be a journalist. To be able to discuss problems across fields is really something I want to do as a daily job; and also something I know I can make a difference to thanks to both the exposures that I went through as well as the hope for similar changes to happen once I enter working life – the real hustle environment I saw in London the first day.  

The workload here is certainly less in terms of quantity however in terms of usefulness ad quality, it is much tougher. I used to think it was easier to study abroad than my home education, however, it is actually different once I actually study here. Because it was so much more difficult, it put me in a greater motivation to try my best in every tasks I was given, so that I would not regret anything. It was such an empowering feeling when I was able to receive good results for what I done. On the other hand, the studying here made me felt less sad if I did not get what I hoped for compared to what I gone through in my old high school. It made me felt satisfied for what I deserve to get and more willing to take on feedbacks and fix my mistakes – something I could never handle before. It came to my senses that I still got a lot to learn and fix, mentally.  

I also made loads of friends outside school. I knew extraordinary people in Bellerbys who success both academically and personally while still maintaining good work-life balance. This was so different to my old school when everyone was just focused on performing well academically. It made me realized  even further that being physically active and healthy is equally important, regardless of age, gender or environment. I wish I was able to think like this earlier in life so that I could be healthier and less lethargic as I am constantly, however at east I realized it now before it is too late that it could affect my overall health. 

 The limited class size gave me a chance to express myself a lot more and also to ask for help easier than what I am used to (chalk and talk classes). Although the experience I had did not match my expectation 100%, it was enough to fulfill what I hoped for – the ability to control what I am doing, what I need to achieve and what is expected from me. It made me look forward to studying at university as I knew the environment would be similar which will be an advantage as I would not have to familiarize myself like those who have never came to study in the UK before.  

 
 In general, I feel Bellerbys was the right choice for me even more despite the numerous challenges and emotions I have to go through. However, those emotions were much more encouraging and beneficial than being negatively demotivating. Although I did wish to be more concerned about my health before but overall I do realize it now and will carry on living healthily ever so in the future – which is way more important than regretting.  

Kate Winslet - the Titanic actress was playing thus attracted me to see the movie at first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mountain_Between_Us_(film)#Casting 

Although it was never stated in the course outline, studying economics to what I believe was a way to understand the wider environment that businesses operate. I did find drawing the diagrams confusing and difficult to distinguish but it did helped me understand different concepts a lot clearer. For instance, learning about externalities and fixing it using government taxes and subsidies made me realize how the government actually estimate the amount of money they could receive or lost were they to adjust the price. I used to think it was done using lengthy complex documents and calculations however now I know it could be done via simple multiplications. I felt it was very encouraging to learn as it was different to every subjects I had done before. The kind of social-problems-logic that could be related to (and be solved using) maths, geography and even psychology fascinates me greatly. I was thrilled that I could use this as a way of understanding different subjects at the same time but also I was worried that it could be too overloading. But I overcame this by assigning small manageable tasks every day such as reading about the subjects using a list of key words one by one and only move on once I am confident as saying it to anyone.  

Although I did learn about the subject before, I was never fully mastering the principles but Mr. Gray explained so clearly that I am confident at my understandings like never before. I finally found out why I was never able to score full marks on exams – it was because I never explaining concepts clearly and two sided; all of which made my essays both non persuasive and biased. It was quite difficult at first to change myself for the better even when I knew my mistakes but I find it a lot easier to change under the support of Mr. Gray than doing it independently. I guessed it must have been because I was always too afraid to change and stubborn of my ideas, and also not having a clear guide and advisor. Now that I had known my problems inside out, I am positive I would not make the same mistake in university, by always asking for the best materials and support from lectures and professors.  

Mr. Gray did told me to improve on my class participation and it changed me quite subtle. It was great and motivating that I was able to talk a lot more and telling my friends my ideas. Had the talk not happened, I would have been stuck in the same attitude my whole year and made the class a lot less interesting. It also made me feel more responsible as class representative to offer my less able friends academic support and encourage them to be more active in class like me, and not only academic class. I think it was because of cultural differences that I found my friends who were more shy were living in their home country in Asia a lot longer than my European counterparts. Thereby, I felt proud that I found the core reasons and plan on fixing the problem even further by inviting them to after school study meetings.  

Overall, I felt massive changes both academically and personally as I studied Economics. My passion can be pursued, I can fix my old mistakes and help friends – all of the actions and skills I can apply university. I am positive that all of which could help me deal with problems in my future degree course greatly and even rise to become a leader. Had I was able to be this confident before, it would be a lot easier for me to handle the tough workload in my last course; but, now, I am positive that I can move forward in life with even greater confident. All thanks to Bellerbys.  

I came to realize alongside the content of the final decision itself, being able to include other people in the conversation and trying to reach a decision from different opinions is much more difficult. We practiced with a sample list of university accommodations and compare them individually. Our group decided to categorize them according to convenience, costs and the number of students living there. I felt proud that I shout out my ideas and not just taking on opinions. Had I not contributed, my group would take a lot of time trying to decide what to do. More importantly, I began to trust my ability to lead and doing teamwork a lot more after the simple exercise.  

On the other hand, by comparing and evaluating the different choices regarding daily lives conversations I felt even more attached and blend in the UK's learning and living environment. As regard the academic side, it helped a lot in realizing the depth and variety of words which can be used to describe the architecture, facilities and general appliances. I would fond to know more about how this difference in facilities available to college students in my country and the UK actually make a impact to study.  

I enjoyed the synthesis exercise most challenging due to the various rigorous steps we have to go through - reading comprehension, correct referencing, extrapolating information, condense them in to a list in such a short period of time. Despite my advantages in English with an IELTS 8.0 overall and 9.0 in Reading, I still find this challenging especially when the texts given were highly formal and academically written. However I believe I can overcome this by practicing on synthesis past papers. Had I now done the synthesis in specific, I would struggle a lot in university in trying to summarize things effectively. However I did regret that I didn’t improve after my first synthesis feedback. But, after the second paper, it came to my senses to change and as a reward I improved my score massively from 60 to 85. The changes was difficult but I felt much more relieved after which. Had I not done so, I would have stuck in the 60 level and score badly in the real exams (as they are often harder than practice papers) 

In general, I learned that in university, English skills are very difficult even when I have high IELTS. Also I came to trust myself more thanks to the simple exercise I done in class and became more motivated to learn about the UK's cultural differences. In the future I am positive that by keeping these reasons and motivations on my side, I would become a much more well rounded, prospective and successful international citizens. 

I very much enjoyed the Excel part of the course as I found them not only useful but also challenging. By learning how to calculate the average or percentage of  any given data I felt incredibly empowered as they massively shorten my usual data processing time. Normally I would need to calculating using my calculator and take up to 5 to 10 minutes but now I can do so just in a few seconds. Although mesmerizing these formulas and conditions can be time consuming but the reward for me, is far much greater. I used to think Excel I only need to learn when I had graduated but now I learn that I am demanded to know these by heart even before.  

Words was also very interesting to learn however I think it was not as challenging and varies as Excel. I mastered Words before as I spent lots of free time typing and writing essays online. Only until now had I realized the benefits of doing so. I did learned new concepts that only applies to university such as learning how to format a graduation speech paper or a research paper in the correct format. The number of operations I had to perform was certainly a lot more than what I expected. For definite sure I am going to look at academic materials in a much more different way from now on once I had understand the length process of adjusting the correct format.  

I was taught by practicing a lot which was certainly different than what I was to in my old school where I did not have a proper computer and had to do similar tasks like this however only in theory and mesmerizing sequences. It was a lot more easier and motivating to be actually doing the exercises on the machine rather than just plain writing. The fact that I was able to see them in context (e.g. a real university speech) makes it a lot more interesting to imagine and realized its importance – everything I wasn't able to think of before. 

This kind of application motivated me to learn how to format things like dissertations and editing newspaper article – all out of interest, which was absolutely exciting to do and it never made me felt bored. I believe these kinds of motivations would even motivate me further in my other subjects as it lays a foundation to trying to do things in class at home without feeling any negativity.  

In conclusion, I would say the fact that I learned CIT definitely changed my perception of IT literacy in my academic career. Not only that I would appreciate the people doing these type of works (e.g. secretary) more but also changed my thinking of presenting my works, my notes on real paper. I wish I knew these skills earlier as they could had saved me so much time on processing data but knowing these skills now deletes all of those regrets away.  

Another positive changes example would be the economics module when i realized the importance of using market information such as the state of the economy to determine when to produce the sufficient quantity of goods and services. The subject itself brought me great joy as it showed me the greater picture or environment that a business operate in. I used to think that economics is just drawing diagrams and explaining things. But now I knew that it is related to a whole wider range of subjects and fields also. Although it was quite challenging at first to change my self and take on new ideas, I am in better control in Economics than ever now (and even in the future) thanks to Mr. Gray.  Not only so, It became a lot clearer when studying Business as it gave me a different perspective to look at businesses, both far and wide. 

Not as technical as the Business Maths module or broad like Economics, the module gave me not only a sense of commitment to the subject but also a chance to use all of my gained knowledge in my business’s essays. The module actually put me in a better position in terms of understanding the business major as compared to other students who did not had the same prior exposure to the vast amount of subjects I learned in Foundation. 

Implications 

I used to use real life examples in my coursework or class essays; but now, I started to incorporate concepts I learned in Economics and FES 1 and 2. One of my business essays was about the successfulness of a new start up independent coffee shop in Brighton. I was able to use my English Skills module’s skills to set out the format of my essay more clearly and use macroeconomics concepts in the PESTLE analysis section; in specific, the economics part of the analysis where I mentioned the current interest rate for borrowing and lending for small business as being very low at the moment (0.25%) thus being very viable as a long-term source of finance for the company. I further did some investigation on the topic of interest rates and in specific the history of the Central Bank and found many interesting facts to supplement my studies. My trip to the Bank of England organized by the College helped me greatly in studying my Economics and Economics module and further independent research on the Business major as a whole. By knowing the link between the economy which businesses exist in and how the UK thrived to own the highest valued currency, I began to form my own picture of the UK economy – both through what I learned and what I researched, something I had never done in my home education before I came to the UK. It came to my senses that I never done so because I did not have the time or the right environment. Now I am sure that I am in the right place, even though it can be difficult to realize sometime. 

Helpful in class

I brought this idea of combining theory with real life to my Economics teacher and got a long straight away. Andy and I agreed on the ground that interest rates being a crucial factor in deciding how long businesses survived but he stated that it was only one factor, not the determinant factor. Whereas I believed sources of finance being the most important element in helping the business survive. The idea then brought me back to see the UK economy as comprised of different firms as such – entrepreneurs. This did scared me as first as I found so many information about entrepreneur alone however, it did inspired me to look into firms in different stages in the UK economy – Medium to Large size. From this, I was able to made slow but solid progress into understanding the UK economics environment as a whole, thereby helping me relate my course’s concepts to real life in university. It came as a bliss when I found out that the reason why I was able to summarize information so effectively was because I was using skills from my Foundation English Skills 2 Synthesis practices.  

I feel positive that I can apply the same process in the future and do better than my peers. Had I not combined the theory with my teacher, I could never be so inspired and do that much of a research compared to before. I felt a lot more grown up and less scared to take on challenges, independent learning in particular thanks to the skills I learned in my Foundation English skills lessons. In the future I am certain that whenever I find some useful real life example, I would share them immediately with my teachers and friends, as I trust that it could bring me even more inspirations to do greater things. I personally felt that Bellerbys Foundation Course had already prepared me enormously in the future, more academically advantages than students in other courses. 

https://www.reddit.com/
The truest news i can read. More informative than BBC, CNN and Financial Times combined; more participation than any social media sites - FB, Twitter, Google. 

https://section.blog.naver.com/BlogHome.nhn?directoryNo=0&currentPage=1&groupId=0
Beautiful blog with beautiful graphics. The Korean/Japanese version of Twitter.

https://www.archdaily.com/
The architecture site that offer detailed informations in and out including the floor plan, designer, dominant materials and styles 

A very though provoking book with interesting ideas linked that motivated me do do further research and ultimately, studying Philosophy in University.
- Metaphysics: The principles of motions.
- Birth of "Epistemology" - Facts become Knowledge only when it is constant (true) if the criteria used to measure it is at the same structure. 

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1. The author wrote the Oxford Dictionary for Philosophy and 54 other Philosophy related books

2. The Author is a alumni at Trinity College, University of Cambridge

3. His Personal Website: http://www2.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/

Written by David Harvey, a Geography and Anthropology professor at CUNY, USA who did his Geography PHD in University of Cambridge gave fascinating view into Marx's ideas from the view of modern society with the analysis of a geography professor. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harvey

The book was launched in LSE, London School of Economics and Political Science in November 2017 and caught huge success.

Event site: Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason - LSE

Video: https://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/publiclecturesandevents/20170918_1830_MarxCapitalAndTheMadnessOf.mp4

Having previously read his works, most notably his companion into reading Marx's Das Kapital 1,2 and 3 I would consider the book to be key summary of Marx's Ideas. Despite the notorious amount of jargons and concepts, his presentations of ideas still fascinate me greatly.
Although he never intended to, I find his interpretations of Marx's idea relevant to modern day concepts. Such as, "if the productivity double then I have to produce and sell twice the volume of commodities to keep the total value avsilable constant".

More advance, the way he break down Marx's complex ideas intrigued me. For instance, he quoted this "inflation" was due to: "The value of labour power, was equivalent to the costs of the commodities needed to reproduce the labourer at a certain standard of living."

I would say the book is fundamental to any economics students looking forward into deeper understanding of Marx's legacy.
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Reference:
Picture: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/capital-150-part-two-the-economic-reason-for-madness/

Future goal
Earning a Master/PHD/Doctorate degree here in either Philosophy, Politics or Physics. 

The book was certainly an economics breakthrough in the economics field from my perspective. The way she capture the essence of economics ideas over the centuries showed me her extensive understanding and researching experience as well as her knowledge depth.
The fact that i happened to know that she was doing the same university degree I was doing this year in Warwick/Durham/Edinburgh fascinated me even further as it inspired me to know her thinking as a PPE graduate.
The way she focused on the aim of economics as being a positive reinforcer that should tribute to the natural cycle of environment and social value amazed me. Her illustrations of ideas in different shapes and concepts also expanded my mind, in a way I never expected before.
On the other hand, the fact that she drew up the ideas of today's most influential books and theorists: Capital in the 21st Century, Bowling Alone, etc.. makes her ideas, for me, very balanced and non-biased.
That is a very important factor for me whenever I read any academically intensive books as it shows the rigorous personality of the author (Professionalism)
I was first attracted to the book after I came across her live book launch in the LSE.

Link: http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=3938

Her book launch was perhaps the one that left me with the most feelings. Although her key ideas overlap her book's, it still was a very soul touching presentation. She explained the idea of growth (economics growth) as should not be a country's primary goal as growth in her opinion, was unsustainable and unnatural.
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Reference
(*) www.kateraworth.com

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The international bestseller book really did not disappoint me but certainly did not very meet my expectation. 
In contrast to the spiking book title, the book deliver ideas that resemble much more aspects of life skills rather than business skills. There are still many business ideas in the book that i never encountered before, but not something new, but rather referenced and what McCormack studied in his management career.
Overall not a very satisfying book that were thought provoking as its title.