You might wonder what GP is… Giant Peach? General Parking? Grand Piano? No, wrong, wrong, wrong! For me, GP obviously means “Good Practice” and no other words are adequate. That was because the GP program provided students like myself, a wonderful environment that required English in all academic programs. Thanks to such a unique environment, GP played a key role in teaching me how to survive in the international environment by following two methods: getting an international sense and cultivating my relationship skill.

How do you survive in an international environment? Well, GP offered me opportunities to expose myself in an international sense. By being placed in challenging situations where I need to manage everything in English, I experienced many activities such as asking questions in an international lecture, making proposals in a meeting, interviewing local people in Hawaii, making presentations, acting as an MC, recording radio programs, making a pamphlet, and so on. Even though such first experiences are valuable, as you may guess, they are always nerve-racking and embarrassing. However, being familiar with these first experiences opened my eyes to the possibility of being active on a much wider world that I would have no opportunity to think about otherwise. Also, many great role models around me helped me to improve my skills to cope with such difficult situations. I actually saw how student leaders conduct meetings smoothly and write the meeting minutes, how students from Hawaii make attractive presentations and actively participate in class, how a team leader conducts themselves in a confident manner without being nervous and how a professor asks a question that leads to an interesting answer in an interview. Thanks to the encounter of these examples, I was gradually able to soak up these skills from them.

Are you good at communicating? Another beneficial role of GP was that it allowed me to learn how to communicate with people from other countries. Through activities of the GP program, I found how important communication is when making friends and when working together towards the same goal. I strongly felt it especially from my short exchange program with the University of Hawaii students. By sharing time and goals together with them, I naturally acquired how to get along and achieve the same targets with them, by being proactive in communication with them as much as possible. It is always wonderful to have friends all over the world to keep in touch, not only for having fun, but also to help each other in times of need, and motivate each other in our studies or to explore the world, and grow together. And communication makes it much easier to build such lasting friendships.

GP can help you too. Thus GP made me realize the two essentials of surviving in an international society under its unique conditions and they are an international sense and communication skills. Now I feel very glad that I had this opportunity to expand my horizons through the GP program and I’m quite sure that these experiences will be beneficial for me throughout my life. Even though this program will be over once, I’m quite sure GP is definitely needed to stay active to provide Good Practice to more students in the future.

by Miki S.