Arvin English 110 22 Sep 2014 Meet the Firm As a junior but a “freshmen” here in the United States, I exposed myself to most of the activities happened in my school every day. Tried to get myself familiar with the US culture. I tried every method to join the club or other interests group in order to help me survive in the United States. Most of them turned out to be meaningless, since I am from a different culture that I can barely understand what they were laughing at. However, there is one activity that is so useful for me to learn how to survive in the US culture as a business student, that is the annual career fair “meet the firm”. The first time I heard about this activity is from my accounting teacher. She paused when she was giving us a class. “By the way, here’s a very important event that I want all of you to remember!” she said, with her finger pointing on her head and eyes turned rounded. “Meet the firm! Tomorrow at 5 pm! You would not want to miss this chance! And I want to see every one of you in the event.” She pointed everyone in the class firmly with her finger and shouted. I took her word and showed up at Trabant with my suit. Although I was a little bit earlier, there was already full of well-dressed people. They looked smart with a small suitcase or a nice file folder carried on their hands while I brought nothing with me. Although there was a lot people, the order was so nice that every people was waiting in a line while chatting with some friends they just met. Even though the line was too long that some people had to wait outside of the building, no one broke the rule. Just waited patiently at the end of the queue. You could see confidence, intelligence, hard-working all writing on their face. “They must have prepared long time for this”, I whispered to myself. By the time I was thinking how I was not qualified for this event, the door of the hall opened. At that specific moment, everyone stopped talking and turned to looked inside the door. Time seemed pause at that moment, as people watching, holding their breath and waiting for the upcoming things. Soon, some of the firms’ managers came out and greeted us with a simple Hi and a strong handshake. Then every well-dressed man and woman walked inside and found his or her favorite company to talked about. The hall was soon turning into the ocean of noise. Students were busy introducing themselves as well as the companies were busy showing them some appropriate program, others were standing in the queue, craning their neck, standing on their tip-toe, seizing every opportunity to see what those employee asked about. As for me, I was standing aside watching all of this. I started to learn how to sell myself to the employee. As I had observed, most of the people used thirty-second to make their pitch. So I spent sometime to make my own pitch, and then stood into JP Morgan’s queue. Time was passing so slow that I felt my heart beating faster and faster and my breath is becoming hurried. Finally, it was my turn, I took a deep breath, made a step further and sent out my hand. The conversation was not that successful but still I made my first try and I thought it was worthwhile. I had tried a couple of new firms later that day, but all came up with they were not having much interest on me. However, the happiness of learning new things in this event was exceeding the painful I had suffered. Through this event, I have learned several great rules that will guide me on my life here in the United States. Being punctual, being polite, being professional and being confidence are all what an American students showed, and most importantly is the ability of social networking. The US society valued people who can talk, who is willing to talk and who can talk well. So I think practicing how to talk and how to make friends is the ideal thing that will help me survived in the USA. Several days after the “meet the firms” event, I decided to join the Blue Hen Leadership Program to enhance my social networking. Until now, I am making great progress on that. As I am looking back, the impression of the event is still left in my mind, exciting and unforgettable.