Editor’s note:
Graduation season is once again upon us.
We celebrated the Class of 2021 with a graduate commencement ceremony which featured the conferral of 5,650 master’s degrees and 3,168 doctoral degrees.
Let’s fly high, Class of 2021 graduates!
Meet some of our graduating students who are about to step into a new chapter of their life, wrapping up their Tsinghua journey. They share their thoughts on what brought them to Tsinghua, what they learned during their time as Tsinghua students, and their future plans.
Making the most of Tsinghua
When she came to China for the first time in 2015, Tamar Kvlividze from Georgia had a chance to visit several universities and interact with local students. However, one university particularly impressed her above all others.
“I saw that Tsinghua University created a lot of activities and opportunities for students to get a high-quality education and live a full and exciting life,” she recalls. Hooked by its campus culture, all she now wanted was to get enrolled at Tsinghua.
Her wish came true in 2018 when the University's Institute of Education accepted her as a graduate student.
Once at Tsinghua, Tamar set out to make the most of her student life. Long interested in gaining research experience, she carried out her research work with rigor, often traveling to cities like Shenzhen for field studies.
If the experience taught her to be diligent, to take on new challenges and to become emotionally stronger, the guidance she received from her supervisor and the support from her friends and classmates along the way helped her grow both as an individual and as a researcher.
“It’s the people who make Tsinghua so unique,” she says.
Outside her coursework, she actively participated in various educational, cultural, and sports activities both on- and off-campus. One such activity was a cultural tour that took her to Shandong and Hubei provinces, where she gained first-hand knowledge of Chinese culture and history.
And the opportunity she got from Tsinghua to travel to Estonia and participate in the Tallinn University Summer School, attended by students from all over the world, made her university experience only more enriching.
As much as activities like these helped build her confidence, they also widened her social circle, enhanced her cross-cultural understanding, and expanded her global vision.
She spent the first three of her six semesters on campus and completed her remaining semesters online due to COVID-19.
Now that she is graduating, Tamar hopes to take what she has learned at Tsinghua and use it in the education industry she aspires to work in.
“Along with my professional activities, I will continue to live by the values Tsinghua has given me: help those who need it, reduce my ecological footprint, explore the world, and stay open to innovation,” she says.
Seeing the world with new eyes
Nico Gous from South Africa was in eight years of his journalism career when he considered taking a career break. Then, a close friend told him about the Global Business Journalism (GBJ) program at Tsinghua University.
“I wanted to experience a new country and culture, something different to Western and African countries that we see a lot of on South African television,” he says. “The GBJ program appealed to me because it is taught in English and is presented in partnership with Bloomberg.”
He says that coming to China, particularly to Tsinghua, for studies was rewarding as it enabled him to connect with people from around the world, giving him a better understanding of many cultures, including Chinese culture.
“Many people I know back in South Africa have misconceptions about China. However, it is such a different country, and the only way you can really learn about it is to experience for yourself,” Nico says.
For him who had spent a good amount of his time in the newsroom, the classroom experience was certainly different, if not new, and no less fun and revealing at the same time.
“I was surprised by how many of my classmates could speak or had a working proficiency of Mandarin. Sometimes I am unsure how I would have managed without their help and that of other students on campus,” he said.
As he prepares to leave Tsinghua, he has a piece of advice for all the Tsinghua students: Try to meet as many new people from different parts of the world in between studies and see things differently without projecting biases and prejudices.
“The world is such a wonderful and diverse place if you are open to it,” he says.
Preparing herself for entrepreneurship
Ruth Christie Kirana, from Indonesia, is graduating from the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University this summer, with a master’s of public administration in international development—a multidisciplinary degree with a focus on management, social sciences, natural sciences, and health sciences.
Ruth came to Tsinghua on a scholarship from the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information.
“Seeing Indonesia's potential as the largest digital economy in Southeast Asia, I am driven to play my part to push Indonesia to become one of the major players in the global tech scene,” says Ruth. “To prepare myself for that, I couldn’t think of a better place than China, the leading technology hub in the world, home to some of the biggest homegrown unicorn startups such as Baidu, JD.com, ByteDance, and Horizon Robotics.”
The 22-year-old has had, in fact, some impressive successes in her home country before she came to Tsinghua. She won a host of high-level technology competitions, including Hackathon Merdeka, the C4TK Hackathon, the Microsoft Tempo Hackathon, and She Loves Tech Global Competition, which in turn brought her opportunities to meet and interact with some prominent tech figures, including the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella. Likewise, she helped develop an online portal that reported the latest sugar prices, offering much-needed information to Indonesian sugar farmers in a user-friendly way.
At Tsinghua, Ruth continued to build upon her very successes.
Apart from focusing on her academic study and research, Ruth served as the President of the Tsinghua University Indonesian Student Association, bringing together prominent Sino-Indonesian speakers and students from different Indonesian student associations in China, holding online seminars on a wide range of topics, and promoting diverse perspectives.
While leading an association taught her leadership skills and expanded her network of friends, participating in various cultural activities on campus let her experience the power of cross-cultural communication in bridging gaps across countries—lessons she thinks will come in handy as she navigates a new chapter in life.
After graduation, Ruth plans to launch her own startup in Indonesia and continue to promote Sino-Indonesia relationship. She says her time at Tsinghua has made her more confident than ever about her future.
“I am looking forward to utilizing the knowledge and skills I gained during my time at Tsinghua,” she adds.
