Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

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With some short-term relief work in Asia/Africa and long stint in Telecom, Thang also earned a B.A. at Pennsylvania State University. M.A. in Communication at Wheaton Graduate School, M.A. in Cross-Cultural Communication at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Boston. In addition, he earned a CELTA – classes taken in Hanoi for cultural re-immersion.

Tag: Pennsylvania State University

  • Closure

    Fact 1: I went to Penn State. Fact 2: I felt ashamed and defensive (no punt intended) at the same time Fact 3: I am not alone in this. There are more stuff to be worried about these days: immediate and long-term future. Already a book was out (at 50% off) about Penn State and…

  • Taking chances

    Peter’s Principle states that line managers are often promoted “beyond their level of competency”. In other words, a technical guy, best at his job, ends up being the boss who has to crawl his way through business dilemma and personnel issues. In life, however, some problems cannot be solved at the same level where they…

  • Start acting

    After the trilogy: Start seeing, start hearing and start thinking, I am on the roll. Behaviorists have debated whether action precedes attitude, or vice versa. Nike commands: JUST DO IT. Start acting. Some guy somewhere mustered his courage to ask for a girl’s hand. That girl after much deliberation, accepted. Boom! Action. We are conceived out of…

  • My Happy Valley

    A photo of  Penn Stater, eyes glued to the Collegian, brought back strong memories of the HUB (Student Union Building) and my time in Happy Valley. State College was home to me for 4 years. Happy Days. The Wall. The Corner Room. Beaver Stadium. Best ice-cream at the Creamery. In the Spring, at outdoor concert…

  • Faith in humanity

    A graduate of Penn State, I related well to the scenes from the Deer Hunter, set in an industrial town of Pennsylvanian. Smokestacks on the slope, familiar faces and friends and the “Welcome Home” sign for returning soldiers from a distant war. But unlike other wars before and since, this one was controversial.  It showed when the main character,…

  • Weekend Insert

    I spent many college weekends at the library. The journalism library. Work study program (certain publications need to be behind the desk. My desk.) That P/T job followed two years of working at the campus TV studio. I keep wondering how many of those communication students made it in the real world.  Has anyone landed on…

  • Conversant program

    If it weren’t for people like Shawn, I wouldn’t be where I am today. You see, Shawn was a shy Penn State student of  the Horticulture department who wanted to volunteer his time. It turned out that the Foreign Student Conversant Program matched us together in our first year of college. That year as it…

  • Losing one’s self

    In a recent NYT op-ed, David Brooks summed up prevailing graduation themes: find yourself, live to the fullest, be passion-focused etc.. instead of losing yourself in solving others’ problem. Even my kid knows that time passes more quickly when you are absorbed in a task. When you lose yourself, you end up finding it. Before graduating, I…

  • the dot connector

    I am referring to Dr Rustum Roy of Penn State whom I met almost 4 decades ago. I knew then just as I know now that he was ahead of his time. He pushed for integrated studies in Science, Technology and Society. He showed up at a demo of  hologram which is now being worked…

  • Kindness from your lips

    My kid’s elementary school is collecting lip balms to send to our troops overseas. It struck me that we spend our entire life trying to do good, from small gestures to larger ones, only to see others take it away in an instant. I saw the beautiful picture of the 9/11 girl whose life ended…