WANG Xudong
1）You are a graduate now, and also a first year student of Ph.D. Programme in Computer Science, teaching assistant and tutor. With so many roles, you must be very busy. Could you share with us about your daily life?
My daily life is quite busy, there are many things to deal with, and my time is limited. So, I will try to organize my schedule to ensure that things could reach my satisfaction. Inevitably, there were times with too many workloads and tasks, I might receive negative feedback and unexpected results. If I can't adjust my mindset and cope with the situation, then I can easily be absorbed by mental internal friction. Personally, I received many helps from the teachers in the programme. When my workloads were heavy or when I encountered difficulties in studies, the teachers were very patient and careful in guiding me, giving me a lot of help. My family members and classmates also gave me some mental support. I think these are important reasons why I have handled a lot of things and achieved some results in the past two years.
2) What kind of mindset do you have when facing challenges and do you have any advice or message for our students?
Take myself as an example, my current (including my master years) research direction is artificial intelligence and machine learning, which is developing rapidly. When doing research, we will think of some methods to solve the problem, but through the experimental evidence they are often a high probability of failure, this time you will get negative feedbacks, and your mental state may be affected to some extent. At this time, there are many ways to adjust your mindset, you can resort to your friends, teachers around you, and you can do sports.
Teachers in the programme helped me a lot, especially my mentor both in my graduate and doctoral stages, Prof. Ding Hongqiang. He often taught me that doing research is not something that can be achieved overnight, and that some seemingly simple knowledge may take a lifetime to truly understand, so we have to be patient and accept both the positive and negative feedbacks. Negative feedback is sometimes more valuable because you can correct your mistakes and direction by calmly analyzing the source of it and thus making timely adjustments.
3) You are now very familiar with CUHKSZ after two years of study here and you are going to stay in this campus for doctoral study. I am curious about how did you decide to come here?
My undergraduate application season was at the end of 2019, when the international situation was not very stable and the pandemic started to spread around the world in the first half of 2020. At that time, I went to the campus talk of the programme. The words of our president, Prof. Xu, at the end of 2019 particularly touched me. He said, "At CUHKSZ, no matter how big the storm is outside, we all reserve a quiet desk." I think this school is full of humanistic care and the CUHK spirit of " Through learning and temperance to virtue". This is why I made up my mind to come here for my master's degree and Ph.D. degree.
4) Where would you go for relaxation in the campus?
I go to the gym most frequently. The gym of CUHKSZ is particularly rich in fitness resources, with a standard swimming pool. When I have some negative feelings or am emotionally unstable, exercise can make me secrete dopamine and calm myself down faster. Once I calm down myself, I can find the cause of these negative feeling and correct them. So, I go to the gym as long as I have the time.
