Some things that I want to share…

ERP Class’s company competition

ERP is one of my master’s classes and it basically teaches us about how to use the SAP system to manage the company. We had a practice round for using that system to compete with other groups. At the beginning of the class, I prepared a lot of knowledge and strategies. I did not have a lot of hands-on experience, so I was nervous whether we were losing too much money.

In the first round, the professor gave us some details about this game and introduced it step by step. My role was to look at different reports, such as inventory and sales reports. We had one person for inventory who bought things from the farmer. The second person did the price. The last person decided whether to use the push or pull strategy to send inventory from the main warehouse to the local warehouse.

We got 4th for the first round, and 5 or 6th on the second round. The whole team felt a little stressed when the third round started because we dropped from 4th place to 5th place. I knew I needed to make some changes on my side because I needed to switch the report back and forth. I opened all the reports on each tab to see the reports quickly and help my teammates decide how much they should order, what the price was, and how much should be pushed or pulled to each region.

In the end, we got 3rd place which meant my strategy worked.

---

Why do I want to continue studying at UC for my master’s degree?

UC’s co-op program is so attractive, and it is also mandatory. There is a career coach team where you can walk in for a resume check or make an appointment with your career coach. They have everything you need, and they are so experienced.

I didn’t do a lot of LinkedIn when I was an undergraduate because my major didn’t require co-op. I started to change my resume, LinkedIn profile, and go to career fairs when I was in my master’s program. Every Friday, I have a chance to talk with the company, and I can ask them questions directly. I also get a chance to give them my resume directly. Some of them are recruitment teams, and some of them are the leader of the tech team or vice president.

UC Lindner always help you have more chances to talk with people, and they even have a resume profile book for companies to read. So if a company needs people, they just open the pdf and look for people through their resumes.

I learned all the knowledge from my class. Not only will you gain knowledge but Lindner also gives you a lot of hands-on experience. For example, for each week’s homework, you can do it in a team but you can also do it by yourself. You practice answering simplified real company questions. You need to pre-review the lecture, slides, and videos before you do all those questions.

I did feel really stressful when I did all those work without the professor’s help. However, it is the quickest way to practice self-study and understand all the materials.

Let me give you an example…

We learned about 1st normal form, 2nd normal form, and 3rd normal form. We had homework which was about the 4th normal form and the 5th normal form. My teammate and I were reading books, reviewing slides, watching Youtube videos and professor’s pre-recorded lectures, and even emailing the professor. It was painful when I found all those materials, but I could not be 100% sure if they were correct. After I turned in the homework, my professor talked about the homework and taught the 4th and 5th normal form. When he mentioned something, the knowledge just popped up in my head because I had read that part from my book or watched from the videos. Learning a concept more than two times really helped me memorize it better. I liked this teaching strategy but the process was not easy, and my teammates really got to ‘fight’ with different opinions. (I think that’s the professor’s purpose because different people have different mindsets, and sometimes they see different things than you do)