Nguyen Dac Minh Chau is a Global Business Journalism (GBJ) freshman from Vietnam. Minh Chau can speak fluently four languages, including Vietnamese, English, Chinese and Korean. Let’s hear her story on how she became a student of the GBJ program at Tsinghua University.
The interview was conducted and condensed by Nguyen Ha Linh.
1. If you have to choose one thing in Hanoi that defines who you are or forms your characteristics, what will it be and why?
I’d say it’s the competitive environment of Hanoi. You may find it strange that I talk about Hanoi as “being competitive” when the city is often described as “peaceful” or “tranquil." I guess your view of a city is different when you are categorized as an “outsider."
I was born in Son La, a province in the Northwest of Vietnam, because of my dad’s work. I came back to Hanoi when I was in the third grade. I started my life here as a newcomer, or an outsider. My classmates would occasionally talk, as a joke of course, about the fact that I was not from here and was a rural girl. What started as a joke eventually became the root of my insecurity.
I felt the constant need to strive for higher goals. A practical overachiever is how I see myself as. I wanted to excel in both academic performance and extracurricular activities to earn recognition and draw people’s attention away from that “non-Hanoian” tag.
2. How did being a “practical overachiever” affect your choice of education path?
I went to a very normal public middle school. My classmates all came from lower-middle-income families with most of their parents doing blue-collar jobs. Vocational schools or low-ranking high schools were their common choices.
I was the only kid in my class applying to a gifted school. I wanted to study Chinese and went to China to study later, and the school that I applied to had just what I needed.
My teachers told me that it wouldn’t be possible, that it was out of reach. But I didn’t listen (laugh). I had a clear goal and I couldn’t see why I should not go for it. As I said I was an overachiever in everything, so at that time I was on top of my class too. I guess that also boosted my confidence to fill in the application.
3. So is your choice to go to Tsinghua also a practical choice?
Yes, it is. It’s partly my teenage dream but also a choice I made based on strategic intentions.
I’ve always wanted to study in China, but I actually went to a Korean university for undergraduate study instead. China didn’t have what I was looking for at that time.
I always love Asian cultures and want to understand how those traditional values have become the inner strength of many Asian nations. I don’t want to see things only from the dominant Western-centric viewpoint, but I also don’t want to focus entirely on one single country. At that time, an international program in an Asian country was what I was looking for, and I didn’t see a lot of suitable undergraduate programs in China. They were all too China-focused. So I decided to temporarily put that dream aside.
When I applied to graduate school, I saw much more options that suited my need in China, and GBJ was one of them. A global program offered by the most prestigious university in China was exactly what I needed.
4. Did you go straight to Tsinghua University after finishing college?
That was the original plan. I first intended to start my graduate study in 2020 but had to defer by a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And then I took another gap year for personal reasons. So the plan has been pushed back by two years.
5. What did you do during those two years?
Many things happened during the last two years that made me become the pillar of my family, both emotionally and financially. The Tsinghua which I’ve always longed for is suddenly no longer my top priority.
I just needed to earn more and more money to support my family. I did some full-time jobs and got a real experience in corporate life. There was this one point when the burden became so big that I had actually considered giving up on Tsinghua and graduate school altogether.
6. I heard that you’ve finally decided to resume your study starting this semester. So what brought you back to Tsinghua?
It actually should be who brought me back. Had Ms. Chengzhang not contacted me to ask about my plan for next semester, I wouldn’t have considered going back to school. To me, her WeChat message is a meaningful, bordering on life-changing, reminder that Tsinghua is still an option for me. But I don’t think she knows that (laugh).
Other personal and family issues had kind of fallen into place at that time, so when I received her message, I immediately knew it was the right time to go back to school.
7. Giving up your well-earned and stable full-time job to pursue graduate study must be a hard choice. How did you come to the final decision? What do you consider to be the hardest thing to give up for graduate school?
It’s indeed a difficult choice with many trade-offs. I think the hardest thing to give up is the sense of being financially secure. I couldn’t imagine myself quitting my full-time job because it means no more stable income to support my family.
I finally had a sit-down talk with my family to discuss this. That’s the first in many years. I was too used to solving things on my own that I forgot how I could seek advice and support from other family members. Their support gave me a push to focus more on what I could gain rather than lose from going to Tsinghua.
From my own experience, the mere fact that I’ve been admitted to Tsinghua has helped earn people’s recognition and respect. Since I work a lot with Chinese vendors and business partners, that actually comes in handy and makes my job somewhat easier. So I believe that if I put aside my career and financial worries for just more than a year, I can even advance further in the future. It’s like taking one step back and two steps forward.
8. Can you talk more about how being a GBJ student can help you advance further in the future?
Actually, for me, the selling point of GBJ is the “business”, not “journalism”, part. I’ve been working as an account manager for two years in two different industries. I mostly work with large enterprise clients, which can be significantly different from dealing with retail customers. The job requires me to understand the needs of the whole partner firm with proper financial analysis of their business strategies and flow of cash. And the fact that I don’t have a background in finance can limit my ability in analyzing and promoting the right products to my customers.
I believe that GBJ can provide an amateur like me with sufficient finance-related skills without digging too deep into the more advanced parts, which I don’t think I can process. It will also help me understand how communication in the business world functions. I hope I will be able to understand my customers better after graduating from the program.
Nguyen Ha Linh - 2022280335