My Plan for December and January

1 My Plan in December

After finishing my final report and exam on December 12th, I have been enjoying a relaxing life, meeting many people and reflecting on my days in the fall semester, without feeling the pressure of due dates. There have been many events, including a year-end party of the Japanese Harvard Association and a networking dinner between the Tufts Fletcher School Japan Club and the Kennedy School Japan Caucus. My co-worker from Japan, who is now studying at Cornell Business School, visited me, and we went to eat ramen at Yume wo Katare, a famous Japanese ramen shop in Porter Square. I also held a sushi party in my apartment, inviting friends living nearby, with the cooperation of a Japanese friend from HKS. Today, I will go to a year-end party at the Vogel School, a place where Japanese students and researchers often gather and discuss various issues in Japan. I feel that these networking opportunities I help broaden my perspective by talking with people from different fields, such as business, medicine, and education.

This weekend and the beginning of the next week, I plan to go to New York for the first time in my life. It’s only four to five hours from Boston to New York. During the semester, I often wanted to go to New York, but I didn't have a chance to go there because I was busy with classes and extra-curricular activities. In New York, I will meet a friend from my college basketball club, a coworker from my previous workplace, and other senior co-workers from my current company. I also want to look around major sightseeing places such as Times Square and Ground Zero, as well as watch a musical.

2 My Plan in January

From the 5th-16^th of January, I will take a class for January Term at the Kennedy School. Students don't necessarily have to take January Term courses. Some students will go to warm places such as Florida and California, and some international students will go back to their home countries. I will take a course called "Arts of Communication". The lecturer is Holly Weeks, who is a specialist in communication skills and has taught various communication seminars at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Harvard Business School. This course will train students to be effective communicators, especially focusing on presentations and speechmaking. Each student has to give three presentations during the course. Students will give feedback on each other's presentations as well as reviewing their own presentation videos. For this class, students earn 0.5 credits. In Japan, I didn’t have this kind of intensive presentation and speech training seminar. I decided to take this course because the intensive practice of speaking English in front of audiences will give me great confidence over the next 1.5 years at HKS.

From the 17th-25^th of January, I will go to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as part of a research program at the Kennedy School called The Emirates Leadership Initiative Program.On the trip, students will visit the World Future Energy Summit, Masdar City,  the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency, and the Dubai Expo 2020 Sustainability Team. The UAE is a significant country for Japan's energy security because the UAE is the second largest exporter of oil to Japan and the eighth largest exporter of LNG to Japan. During the trip, I would like to keep in mind an important question: How can Japan and the UAE cooperate in the energy field in the coming years?

Admission to this program was competitive: 27 students were selected out of over 100 applicants. I and a  mid-career student from China are the only Asian students. This year, there are 11 Japanese students at HKS, a small number compared to past years. I am well aware that I benefit from this small number of Japanese students because I can be accepted for this kind of program more easily than if I were here in previous years. At the same time,  it is my belief that these small numbers are a problem: Asian students are underrepresented in the Kennedy School. Discussions tend to be led by Western students. It’s my goal to increase the presence of Asian students in the Kennedy School, and find a way to make our voices heard.

Reflection on My First Semester in the U.S.

Last Friday, I submitted the last take-home exam on trade policy classes, and my first semester in the U.S. finished. I would like to write down several thoughts after finishing the fall semester.

1 Intensive Reading and Writing
Since I graduated from Japanese graduate school, I can compare graduate school education in Japan and that in the U.S. I feel that U.S. graduate school is an institution which provides intensive training of reading and writing a massive amount of English. As for reading, I had to read 30-50 pages of reading per class. Since there are two classes per week for one course, and I took four courses, I had to do reading which amounted to 240-400 pages every week. This number will increase more than double if I take more high-burden courses. In Japan, there were fewer reading assignments, and students did not have to read all of them. By contrast, in the U.S., all classes are conducted on the premise that every student has read the reading assignments. In addition, students cannot neglect the reading because active class participation is reflected on the students' grade.

There were a lot of writing assignments, too. For example, I wrote 4,000 words in the final report of energy policy classes and wrote 1,500 words within 24 hours in the take-home exam of trade policy classes. In negotiation classes, I had to submit a prep sheet and a debriefing sheet when I did weekly negotiation exercises. In energy policy classes, I had to write approximately 2,000 words of a policy memo and three problem sets. In the beginning of the semester, I had a psychological resistance against writing this amount of English. But now I feel less resistance against writing English and have confidence that I can write as much as 1,000 words in one day. Through the U.S. graduate education, I feel that I am receiving intensive training in reading and writing a large amount of English.

2 The Importance of Professors
When I select courses in the beginning of a semester, I tend to put importance on the name of subjects, but I now feel that focusing attention on professors is the most important thing. In particular, it is important to look at not only the professors' reputations and influence in the area, but also how much eagerness to teach the professors have. For example, Professor Robert Lawrence, who taught me trade policy, was an economic adviser to President Clinton and has a strong voice in international trade fields. In addition, he was very supportive to students' learning and conducted classes with a strong zeal to teach the value of free trade to students from all over the world. Professor Barbara Kellerman, who taught me leadership, was not only recognized as a top scholar in the leadership area, but also had strong convictions and conducted classes with a strong eagerness to teach the concepts of leadership and followership. Now, as I am thinking about what courses I will take in the next semester, I would like to pay more attention to who teaches the class than the name of the subject.

3 Courses Which Give Me a New Way of Thinking
Reflecting on my course selection this semester, I regret that I selected classes from the narrow perspective of how much directly useful knowledge for my career I can learn through the course. For example, I selected energy policy classes just because I will be engaged in formulating energy policy in the near future. The classes were useful because I could learn the overview of oil and natural gas markets as well as other energy such as renewable energy. But, to be honest, I am not sure that the knowledge I learned in the classes will be as useful as it seems. There will be a possibility that new innovation will take place, and most of the knowledge in class might be seen out-dated in future. On the other hand, some classes taught me a new way of looking at things and a new framework for thinking. For example, in negotiation classes, Professor Julia Minson taught me the new perspective that "Everything is negotiable", which totally changed my mindset. In the leadership classes, Professor Barbara Kellerman provided me the new perspective that it is difficult for leaders to lead organizations using power and authority as they did in the past. Instead, leaders should pay attention to followers, who have increasing influence. Looking back at my graduate school days in Japan, I see that I have forgotten much of the technical knowledge I learned in classes, including finance and intellectual properties. Similarly, I will probably forget the technical knowledge I learn in the Kennedy School in several years. By contrast, for many years to come, I will definitely remember new ways of looking at the world and new frameworks for thinking which I learn in class.

Thus, I would like to take courses that will give me a new framework of thinking and change my fundamental way of looking at the world. So far, I plan to take a highly regarded leadership course, a course about democracy which I think is the basis of U.S. people's philosophy, and a course taught by Lawrence Summers, who served as an economic adviser to President Obama.

Last Class in the Fall Semester

This week, I finished all classes in the fall semester. All that is left is to write a final report and take a final examination. The last class of each course was really meaningful because professors told us aspiration and messages they wanted to convey from the bottom of the heart. It was difficult to notice during the semester, but I feel that every professor in the Kennedy School teach because they have messages they are eager to convey to students. Here, I would like to introduce Professor Julia Minson's message to students in her last negotiation class, which is the most memorable.

"Everything is negotiable. Even if you don't feel it is necessary to negotiate, both sides can gain positive results through negotiation. Similarly, just asking often gets you a long way. Some of you might feel that initiating negotiation or asking somebody is not comfortable. But try to get out of your comfort zone and think about why you feel uncomfortable."

In class, through the negotiation exercises, I learned a lot of things, including negotiation techniques such as being conscious about your and the opponent's Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). I also learned the principles of  influencing people such as reciprocity and consistency, and psychological knowledge such as how biased people's perceptions are. But the most impressive thing for me is not this knowledge, but rather the mindset of "Everything is negotiable". This phrase means that instead of thinking that initiating negotiation is a waste of time, you should begin by talking with the opponent, and learning the opponent's interests which may be hidden in his/her position or words. You can then work to find the solution which lets both sides maximize their benefits. When I negotiate with people, I always find it difficult to know the opponent's true interests, especially when the opponent gets emotional, or is subjected to stress from a time limit. From this course, I learned that the most important ways to know the opponent's interests and priorities are (1) to manage emotions and talk calmly, (2) to ask various questions to the opponent, and (3) to throw every item on the table and discuss a package deal.

Reflecting on my life, I have often made a judgment that it is no use to negotiate because there will be a high possibility to fail, and initiating negotiation itself might make a bad impression on the opponent. In particular, Japanese society puts much importance on harmony and conformity. Japanese people tend to think that negotiation has a bad connotation that only the person who initiates negotiation will gain a profit. But through this course, I have experienced many successful negotiations through which both the opponent and I became happier than before without making a bad impression on each other. In addition, as a by-product, I have gained confidence that I can manage to negotiate one-on-one with native English speakers although I think I am far from perfect. As I continue my career, I would like to live a life actively with the mindset that "Everything is negotiable".