Lesson 1 Reflection

It seems like being late is a bad habit that our culture has yet to overcome. I remember being in the US and notice that people don't usually being late. It is something that in a more developed nation people just cannot accept. Perhaps when a country is more advanced, the value of time is higher and people start to respect each others time. During my lesson with batch 16 & 17, I decided that I shall wait for all to arrive before starting the lesson so as to education the class the importance of being on time. While waiting, we had general discussion about the meaning of money. However, I was also worried that delaying my lesson would unnecessarily punish those being early.

This time, I decided to adopt a more rewarding approach to those coming early. I'll not start lesson proper before all that should attend had arrived but during the waiting time, I'll share tips of how to do well for EN105A. I share on what I would like to see and how I give marks. Hope that those being early for my lesson would benefit from those sharing.

For this semester, I added 1 new slide to my first lesson to the class (refer to Lesson Blog of Batch 16 & 17 for the earlier lesson 1 slide). This is due to my observation that I have to manage the mindset of the participants of EN105A. I title the slide, "Nobody Owe You a Living" with the following pointers:

• • Try to make sure that you propose a win-win solution to any business partner or whoever you got your resource from

  • Others may give you special consensus or extra resource because they see you as student but such privilege does not last long

  • You have to outgrow your studentship someday and let's start the process today

  • Whoever support you on the basis of supporting entrepreneurial spirit, does not believe in your proposal but would like to believe in you

The reason why I want all to think like a real entrepreneur to begin with, rather than depending on empathy of 3Fs, is that practicing real venture creation at this time is lower cost then after graduation. Once you graduate, your opportunity cost will be much higher and your learning much costlier. Many of them feels that since NTU is so supportive of entrepreneurship education, it must also ensure reduction of red tapes to allow student ventures to spunk out within campus. I bet to differ. The way to encourage the testing of venture creation should not based on artificial removal of real world obstacle. Those red tapes will always be there and entrepreneurs need to learn how to creatively overcome them. Once they are able to do so, real lesson is learned. If NTU artificially remove those obstacles to show some successful campus ventures, those are not real ventures that would survive the real world senerio. Is this what we want to see? Once you can recognise this and change your mindset, you'll be more prepared to face the challenge of NTU red tapes if your venture required some form of NTU's partnership.