I am final-year economics and finance student with a particular interest in the intersection of economics and global politics. On campus, I tutor for the Centre for Applied English Studies and am actively involved with the HKU Campus Toastmasters Club and the Equal Opportunity Unit of the University. Additionally, I thoroughly enjoy playing squash, playing the violin and learning new languages. I am excited by a global vision, but local solutions, on the issues we can take into our hands and look to change—hence my experience so far with the Common Core has been very positive because the Common Core encourages me to appreciate the complexity of the challenges facing the world today by viewing them from multiple perspectives and thinking of innovative ways to solve them.

The Common Core truly inspired me to pursue and seek out meaningful change. By providing students with the intellectual frameworks and spaces to begin engaging with ideas and solutions—be it in a Hong Kong University lecture hall, a Sai Ying Pun art gallery, or the CC Lounge—the CC encourages HKU’s bright undergraduates to embrace and draw upon their diversity, identify common challenges, and work collaboratively and respectfully to devise solutions. In the process, I emerged not only with a group of life-long friends but also with a reaffirmed belief in the future of a world of pluralism and peace.