Malaysia
The first time, what made me interested in Taiwan is my friend’s recommendation. My friend studied in one of best universities in Taiwan. He told me that Taiwan government provides a lot of scholarship to international students. It did not like what I had thought before that study abroad would cost a lot. And I also heard from my family that Taiwan is a developed country which is safe and clean to live in, and the most important thing is the quality of education. Besides those reasons, I also wanted to improve my Mandarin since I never used it in my daily life when I was in Indonesia. I thought that the language ability is one of competitive advantages to survive in the global competitiveness.
I study Finance in College of Management. I am writing two research papers about Behavior Finance. This field combines two interdisciplinary pieces of knowledge in Finance and Human Behavior or Psychology. That makes this field is more interesting to me and some researchers. I love to do research rather than working in an office regularly because it is more challenging. So, I enjoy my time to do it and being a researcher, my time is more flexible to do many things.
Studying in Taiwan has more advantages compared with studying in home country. Of course, the quality of education here is better than in Indonesia. The environment is safe and clean, it is suitable for students’ life. And one more thing is the database. Many universities in Taiwan purchase very expensive database which can assist us to achieve our goal to write and give us more opportunities to publish research papers in international journals. In my country, we do not have a lot of funds to purchase these things.
I did not find any difficulties when I applied to study here because a lot of information is available on the internet and each university website which you want to apply. It is also available in two languages, Chinese and English. In my city in Indonesia, Taiwan also established TEC (Taiwan Education Center) located in my former university. So, everything is very convenient to get information about studying in Taiwan.
If I can get a job here as a lecturer, I prefer to stay in Taiwan. During my three years here, I see that Taiwan is the best country that I have visited before. The living standard, quality of education, environment, and technology make everything convenient. That is why I am really serious to get my Ph.D. degree and learn Chinese to survive here.
Taiwan has trained me to be more independent and competent. During my three years in Taiwan, I got two greatest benefits. The first one is I got a lot of knowledge from many Professors and the second one is I learn Chinese from zero then I can speak very fluent in my daily life. Learning within global perspective from professional ones and publish papers in international journals, those definitely broaden knowledge and increase our competency. By the knowledge that I got from studying in Taiwan and also my ability to speak in three languages, I am sure it would make easiness to achieve our goals.
Since I have not published my papers, so the biggest achievement is my language ability. By studying in Taiwan, I improve either my English or Chinese, instead of my Indonesian as my mother tongue language. It also increases my ability to communicate with many people, with foreigners and local people.
For anyone who wants to come to Taiwan to study, take this big opportunity to gain knowledge and skill as much as you can. For international students, we should understand that we study in Chinese speaking country. So, do not get mad of this condition since you have decided to study here. Take this opportunity to learn one more language to increase your competency. Good luck!
