Hi everyone:) My name is Qiannan Li, you can call me Anna. I’m originally from China(Yunnan province, Famous for the weather and flower) I’ve been living in Tauranga for the past 3.5 years. What I truly believe is how context can shape your perspective, value and identity. So I value respect, kindness and growth. By respect you surrounding, could be as minimum as one little grass to the whole universe, you able to actually learn from it and aware of who you are. Previously working as a landscape architect(Yes, I can design you garden:)). Practicing such a down to earth(literally earth) profession for 3.5 years while the world massively switch to “cloud” due to the pandemic. I’m attending Deb Acadmy to seek for career change opportunity where ideally I can carry my design background to a new journey.
The biggest ethical decision for me is to decide to move to a total different country. While being in a family where girl is naturally looked down to and masculism seems being the main stream. Things like my male cousin is way better than me only because the gender. Or the best live girl can have is to get married. That’s where I deiced it is not the plan for my life. So searching for alternative. Sometimes when I look back to where I from and weight if that’s worth it, with all the things(family and friend and everything familiar). But it is good to move on and not go to that path. And I believe in live at present will be a healthy way to reflecting the pass and decision.
Chinese traditional culture definitely shaping my values and identity. Confucianism play a big part of that formation. The core concept is about ren(humaneness, benevolence), zhong(loyalty to one’s true nature), shy(reciprocity)…where eventually convert to a more contemporary concept of kindness, goodness, honesty, modesty, wisdom and trustworthiness. So I see the world as a overall village where human share the same humanity and those values make sense to wherever.
Strengths: I am curious about things. And I do feel like it is going to beneficial for me to stay a curious mindset when learning something new and when facing something unknown or challenge. In stead of self doubting or being pulled off to new things. I will keep push myself to explore and treat it as an opportunity. Respectfulness: I respect on the un-known and respect the ideal of not knowing all the things.
My limitation in terms of learning and career development is sometimes I ground myself into a “dark room” where I dont seems willing to communicate with other people or reaching for help. This will get me, especially when trying to digest so many information in such a short time. It will make life hard for me trying to do it all by myself and I need to be aware of that situation and avoid lock myself.
I used to do contract admin for one of the landscape architecture project, where I need to run the sit meeting regularly and going through all the issues and variation on site. And at that time, I play a junior role and often being the only young and female professional on site. Sometimes people just won’t listen to what you say and don’t really take your word seriously as you not really as experience as all the other people on site especially. end up in a position where you issued out the requirement sheets but being ignored until things goes wrong. What I tried and proved to be useful is to communicate more with all parties and keep asking until it is crystal clear to all parties. I would keep trying to do this and seeking for way to have better communication with others.