Understanding of System Thinking

According to Wikipedia, System thinking is any process of estimating or inferring how local policies, actions, or changes influence the state of the neighboring universe. It considers the linkages and interactions between the elements that make up the whole system rather than the details of all the consisting components. People with systems thinking will believe that the component parts of a system can best be understood in the context of relationships with each other rather than in isolation. Systems thinking techniques may be used to study any kind of system — natural, scientific, engineered, human, or conceptual.

After I get those concepts from Wikipedia, one typical example quickly came up to my mind. It is the principle of traditional Chinese medical science . The t raditional Chinese medical science emphasizes that our body is a whole system. When there is a problem in our body, physicians will think that some parts of the body are out of the natural operating system. So they will focus on strengthening the whole body system and heal the problem with the regulation of our body system naturally. It is essential for physicians to apply system thinking technique since our body is the complicated and interactive system. If we just focus on the specific parts, we will probably miss the running of the whole system.

Actually, beside our body system, most other useful systems, like computer operating system, company operating system and so on, are rather complicated. It is impossible for us to go into every detail of the components of the system. But we can come up with a structure to make every components cooperate better. On another hand, although all components are the best, they cannot work well without a good system. Also, it is ineffective for us to engage in solving all the detail of the problems. That why system thinking is an important intelligence for us.

So how can we enhance our system intelligence? Engineering learning is one of the good ways.

Engineering course provide us a lot of chance to enhance our system intelligence.

For IEG1001, we can get the basic understanding of system thinking. It is the important beginning. If we do not have a basic concept of it, we will never know put it into consideration. Even if we may use the system thinking occasionally, we will never know what it is and why we should think in that way. After the course, we will try to practice the system thinking whenever we encounter some tasks.

Moreover, when doing the experiments of Electronic Circuit Design Laboratory , although we may not know all the working principles of the devices, we will try our best to connect the devices to carry out the experiments. Also, when we find mistakes in the experiment, we will firstly analyze the data got from the system and then locate the mistakes. It is a good training of system thinking since we are actually working out a system to acquire what we need and review the feedback of the system and find out the problem.

The most evident example is program learning. When we do the program assignment, we can never do the specific parts first. It is because some of them may not be necessary in the entire program and some identifiers may not be able to connect to another part. In order to avoid numerous warnings and errors, we need to come up with the main flow first. So we can connect all the detail functions together to complete the task effectively. Our system intelligence will enhance whenever we think about the flow.

To sum up, system thinking is an important intelligence for our self-development. We are lucky that we have a lot of chance to enhance it. We should cherish all the chance to practice more. It will certainly pave the way for our success.

WAYS TO INNOVATE MYSELF

According to the SWOT analysis by myself, there are 4 weaknesses I need to improve. They are poor English, bad time management, lack of programming experience and a bad memory.

Firstly, the only ways to improve my language of English are to read more, to talk more and to listen more. In order to read more and listen more, I planned to spend 30 minutes on reading South China Morning post every day and I will spend 15 minutes on watching TVB pearl news report every night. Whenever I find some useful vocabularies, l will drop down them in my notebook and do revision every day. Actually, I have found a website call BBC English Learning which is very suitable for me. So I will also spend 2 hour on learning English through the website every weekend.

Secondly, for the time management, after the deep thinking, I found that the reasons why I am always attracted by the temptation are that I have too much unscheduled time and I have never thought about the priority of everything. So I think I should firstly identify clearly what things necessary do, what things I should do and what things I want to do. The things necessary do should be in the first priority and things I should do should be second priority. And things I want to do should be done whenever I finished the first two things. And then set up the new time schedule according to their priority.

Thirdly, for improving my programming, I found that the only way to understand how to program is having a try on the codes. So I will spend one hour on practicing programming and doing revision every day. Also, I have some friends who are good at programming. It will be more effective if I will ask them for help whenever I have problems about programming.

Lastly, to improve my memory, I will try different memorizing methods such as picture, story, and association and so on. But I found that I may spend more time on building up the associations. So I have to practice more to improve the efficiency.

In addition, I have found a way to change one of my threats into opportunity. Originally, it is difficult for me to use the time for traveling by MTR because it is too crowding every day. I have no space to do revision and read books. But I can make use of my ear. I can add some sound files into my mobile phone so that I can practice my listening every day.

Obviously, by using the methods above, I will enjoy the effective and efficient learning every day.

SWOT ANALYSIS OF MYSELF

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and Weaknesses are some internal features whereas Opportunities and Threats are some factors from external environment.

With the SWOT analysis by myself, I can understand more about myself and be able to develop a strategy for improvement. Now I would like to use method to analysis my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for learning.

Strengths:

I can speak and listen to Putonghua and Cantonese well. These abilities are useful for communicate and share learning experience with tutors, students and professors from both local and mainland.

Also, I have learned Applied Mathematics, Physics and Pure mathematics. Hence, I have enough fundamental knowledge for learning most of the IE courses.

Most importantly, I am a hard-working person. It means that I am willing to spend my time on my weak areas and practice more on my strong areas so that I can do my best within my capability.

Weaknesses:

I am weak at using English. It is the fatal weakness for learning because most professors are speaking in English and also many good reference books are written in English. The weakness in English deprives me of many opportunities for learning from different kinds of sources.

Also, I do not have any programming experience. It is very difficult for me to keep pace with other students for learning course of programming.

Moreover, I have a bad memory. It vastly wastes my time to remember things so that I have less time to study them. Also, I am weak at time management. So I will be easily affected by temptation such as online games and I will wrongly spend much time on them. Together with the bad memory, I especially have not enough time for studying.

Opportunities:

CUHK provides us the best facilities for our studying. I can use the latest software and experiment devices for my study. They can enhance my learning effectiveness and efficiency.

What’s more, there are many outstanding students and knowledgeable professors in the university. So I can solve my problem with help of them easily.

Also, only CUHK provides us general education for our all-round development. Within knowledge from different aspects, I can enhance competitive ability.

Lastly, the demands of IT talents are increasing in the recent years. So I will be easier to gain the working experience so that in the future, I can easily get a good Job related to IT and be familiar with it quickly.

Threats:

There is too much temptation around me, for example, free online games, television programs and comics. They will probably occupy most of my time and affect my study easily.

Moreover, I do not have a hall to live so that I need to spend extra time on travelling by MTR and also on recovering when arrive home.



The analysis shows that my external environment of learning is very good because I have many opportunities to learn and a few threats to face. So I need to deal with my weaknesses, especially the weakness in English, in other to catch the opportunities for learning well.

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About myself

Hello! Nice to meet you all!

My name is LI JUN AN. The Cantonese Transliteration is Lee Kwan On. You can call me Simon or Ar On. I am an optimistic people and I like thinking. But sometimes, I may be too calm because of thinking. I am not a sporty people but I like one sport very much. It is shuttlecock. During my primary and secondary school life, I always played shuttlecock with my friends for a long time. If you also like it, I am pleased to play with you.

This year, I am a fresh undergraduate of Chinese University of Hong Kong majoring in Information Engineering. I belong to Chung Chi College. I don’t live in hall. Actually, I am not qualified for living in hall because I lived in Choi Hung, which is too close to MTR. Every day, it takes me about 40 minutes to reach CUHK by MTR. So every morning, I need to overcome the devilish problem --- sleepiness. It is an unfavorable change when I attend to university.

However, besides the bad feeling of sleepiness, the new life of University really brings me a lot of happiness. I like mathematics and physics and I would like to apply them to my life. Information Engineering brings me the chance to do so. Now, I can study my favorable subjects in a charming campus, join any interesting activities, do investigations and make friends with people who have the same interest. I think my dream study life has come true.

I hope I can make friend with any one of you and enjoy the wonderful univeristy life together!