VOICES

ACE Online Course(RIK) 2023 Fall

College of Arts
Mr. Haruki Shizuka

A Class Where I Met Wonderful Personalities and Redefined My Interests

ACE Partner University Online Course(RIK) is a course with the theme of Global Career Leadership & Collaboration, where we learn about career and leadership with students from around the world. The course caught my attention when I heard about it from Hiro-san (Assistant Professor Hiroyuki Naito), the founder of GL302 Career Leadership. Intrigued by the idea that it was a program that I could take on as a culmination of both the GLP subjects (Leadership Development Subjects) and English studies that I had taken, I decided to enroll. I would like to share two memorable experiences I had with ACE Partner University Online Course (RIK).

An Environment Where Everyone can Become Role Models for Each Other

The appeal of ACE Partner University Online Course (RIK) is that you can find many diverse role models that will help you become a person who can take action and gain trust when collaborating with others.

The ACE Partner University Online Course (RIK), where we think about building careers suitable to each individual, has a self-understanding stage in which each student explores the experiences that formed their values and learns about the driving forces that impel them to take action. This process of awareness can be achieved through communication between classmates. Through this process, I witnessed many different types of leadership, including being a good listener, the ability to take action proactively to build relationships, and gaining trust by affirming others. Their actions were the very opportunities that made me feel, “If I could perform like them, I could do even more”. In fact, by imitating others in class and speaking more, and by taking the initiative to create projects as a team, I gained the confidence I have today.

Driven by my aspirations, I am always looking for the ideal image of myself in those around me. In ACE, many students unleashed their passion to involve others across nationalities and grade levels, and the words and actions I saw and heard in class directly inspired my leadership skills.

A Place Where We can Get the Courage to Face Change in Ourselves

My biggest takeaway from ACE Partner University Online Course (RIK) is becoming able to accept changes in myself. Class time, team PBL (Project Based Learning), and individual work have all led to the acceptance of change. I believe that my biggest weakness is the narrow-mindedness of not being aware of changes in myself and refusing to try and notice them. There have been many times when I believed that the choice I had made once was the best solution for me, and I was unnecessarily fixated on the choices I had made in the past, wasting time and effort on things that were different from what I really want to do now.

Specifically, in considering a career centered on going to graduate school to study a specific field, I was about to ignore a slight discomfort with the direction I was going. However, as I talked with Hiro-san and BA's (Bridging Assistant, student management member) in class, and discussed each other's visions for the future with my teammates, I realized that my interests had shifted to a slightly different field than before. I feel that by working over a long period at ACE Partner University Online Course (RIK) to verbalize my inner desires, I became able to notice changes in my inner self that my past self would not have been able to recognize. Furthermore, Hiro-san and BA's provided feedback to each student both inside and outside of class. This reassuring feedback gave me the courage to accept the changes in myself and to change direction when I realized I had a change of mind. Being able to reflect on my current motivations and having team members who make that possible has become a great asset for me as I think about my future.