## *Introduce yourself* I am currently a student at UWC Maastricht --> UWC Movement, campuses all over the world --> transferred from UWC China ## *Why transfer?* It has to go back even more to my experience in Chinese public school --> love for learning & PKM VS frustration with school --> wanting to seek more empowering education I think one defining chracteristic of me is my love for learning and knowledge. It might sound weird, but in the sense that I am a very self-directed learner, and I love reading and taking notes. If you give me a free day, I can work on my laptop the entire day, reading papers, articles, and books from eveywhere, breaking them down into atomic notes, and re-integrating / synthesizing them into new insights. I have built a system or just that, and this is actually the field of Personal Knowledge Management, which is short for PKM, that I am really passionate about. In fact I publish all of my learning notes on my digital garden online, and make updates every month. But then imagine me learning on my own, vs another picture of school -- where you have to sit through 50 min period classes, read the textbook and the textbook only, listen to a human being read the powerpoints for you, and everything is within the range of a curriculum and for the goal of an exam. That is essentially the traditioanl education system. I think this helps you udnerstand why school felt frustrating for me, and why I wanted to seek a more empowering education where I can actually learn thigns that matter, in my own pace, and also have the opportunity to not just ist in classrooms but do projects outside. And that's why when I learned baout the UWC movement, it was a no brainer decision for me to apply. And I think the same logic applies when I decided to transfer from UWC China to here. On one hand it's the fact that although UWC Changshu China is a wonderful place that totally re-shapes my view of what educaiton could look like, I still want more -- I wanted to know what does education looks like outside China. On the other hand, it is this very simple fact that imagine a piece of candy swinging in front of your eyes -- you don't know if it's sweet or not, but it promises you a whole new expereince -- I think that just quite beautiflly explains why I decided to transfer here. ## *How do you like it here?* Did you find what you were looking for?* Not really the first few months after I came here, frustrated at the start but quickly underwent two mental shifts 1. realization -- school is not the whole of my education, I still create education for myself outside classes 2. transformation -- Vietnam, not just learning on my own, but building for the world in communities Since I'm already here, within this wonderful *community*, why don't I enjoy my time here out of it, deal with the schoolwork first and then save time fo actual learning and doing projects with people here? --> Start building, doing projects, connect with the world - OpenLearn - started from this very simple philosophy of "learnig in public" -- learning is the best when done in public, progress being shared, and having feedback from other peopl - online communcity of self-directed learners, starting this challenge of something you learned or made (not within school) every day - about 20 daily acive participants, currently in our second cohort - Larc Mini - started from helping others build note-taking systems similar to mine - turned into the idea of building the Cursor for PKM, the scaffolding for the learning process - greater vision = redesigning the human knowledge interface But still I felt somehow restricted and not supported enough by my education. Sometimes I just wished I could discuss the coding details with my friends at lunch, but unfortunately not a lot of people here are sort of really into these stuff. That's why one of my drives for applying to Stanford to seek better environment for my actual learning -- my next stop in my journey to explore the possibilities of education ## *Why Stanford?* - not ranking & prestious, but what it attracts = the density of minds, builder‑mindset, the entrepreneurial spirit, the collaboration - people hoping to change, people who question vs people who just go with the flow and accepts the current paradigm - hoping to find follow conspiartors, an enviornment where im not an outlier, work with people to build great new things to share with the world again you might ask me how do i know if what I described is actually true in Stanford -- what if it's anther place that dissappoints me On one hand, I can tell you that it's mostly based on my experience online. There is this guy I met in a technical forums for Obsidian the note-taking app, Stanford undergrad, lost of wonderful ideas and usggestions. There is another Standford student who is looking for alpha-testers for his app, and I volunteered and worked with them to report bugs. I don't even know they are Stanford students at the beginning, but through our interactions I just felt like they are such nice people to work with. On the other hand, I'd say it's same situation as when I transferred from UWC China to here -- you never know what it is actually like, but what I'm sure is this time it's yet another wonderful new expereince in my life with another group fo wonderful people. And hell yeah I'm taking this chance. --- hoping to bring my <u>in-depth insights of education</u> to the community and turn it into actual working soluionts that help more people learn and live better I hace so many friends who struggle in schools -- both in China and also here. They are all brilliant people with brilliant minds, yet it's the system that's not doing them justice. Some of them dropped out and found laternative pathways, some are still struggling as we talk right now. I really hope as friends I could help them. If not by redesigning the entire system which is extremely hard, but at least giving a space or tool where they feel more at home and empowered compared to in the classrooms. ## *Why Not Drop Out* Team, community Making something great requires teams and communiteis, not lone-wolves. I can self-teach skills, but **skills alone are not enough to scueed in our present-day world** -- what matters more is what happens when building in teams and bouncing ideas off of each other