Culture Puts a New Perspective In Organizational Behavior
Luckily one mediocre professor isn’t an indicator of the quality of teachers at NTU. I have been very impressed with my Organizational Behavior professor. He is a short, passionate, enthusiastic, Asian man who had foot surgery the day before our first seminar class, yet that didn’t prevent him from bouncing (realistically it was more like limping I suppose) around the classroom as he gathered class participation and encouraged opinions. It wasn’t until I found myself literally LOL (laughing out loud) during this class did it occur to me how much of an influence one person can have on your entire outlook towards a subject. I easily could have been in another organizational behavior (business management) classes attempting to stay awake as a teacher regurgitates terms from the textbook in the background. What truly makes this professor standout from others is his ability to utilize the diverse backgrounds of his students as he looks for opinions and experiences that relate to the text.
Picture the classroom, approximately 4 round tables equally spaced around the rectangular shaped room, two tables consisting purely of students from Singapore. A table made up of a student from India, Siberia (but she studies in Italy and is currently on exchange at NTU) Singapore and Germany. Then the next table “Europe” as the professor refers to them (2 guys from the Netherlands, 1 from Sweden, 1 from Finland). Finally there is my table (2 Malaysian friends and 1 Indonesian) and of course me (the ‘Western Influence’). I love how this professor has taught above and beyond what the text reads, he has taken every concept and puts it in context in terms of culture. He frequently asks why/why not this would work for a company in Asia or the U.S. receiving answers in the form of students’ personal experiences. This class alone has brought new meaning to the saying “you can’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.” I left the first 4-hour class session of organizational behavior with a new appreciation for diversity and realization of how blessed I am to have this amazing opportunity and experience to spend half a year living and studying in Singapore!
Luckily one mediocre professor isn’t an indicator of the quality of teachers at NTU. I have been very impressed with my Organizational Behavior professor. He is a short, passionate, enthusiastic, Asian man who had foot surgery the day before our first seminar class, yet that didn’t prevent him from bouncing (realistically it was more like limping I suppose) around the classroom as he gathered class participation and encouraged opinions. It wasn’t until I found myself literally LOL (laughing out loud) during this class did it occur to me how much of an influence one person can have on your entire outlook towards a subject. I easily could have been in another organizational behavior (business management) classes attempting to stay awake as a teacher regurgitates terms from the textbook in the background. What truly makes this professor standout from others is his ability to utilize the diverse backgrounds of his students as he looks for opinions and experiences that relate to the text.
