Introduction

China Thinks Big (CTB) is a competition whom we several learners entered for. During this competition, we wrote an academic paper and did an interactive video as an implementation part. Since high school is an important period for social identity and mental development. And in China, peer pressure causes social problems among students. Hence our research aims to help high school students who are weak in social skills but eager to establish connections get rid of loneliness and integrate into schools and student groups. It focuses on how homophily and heterogeneity of people affect their making connections.

Through data collection and analysis, we came to three conclusions about our topic: 1) The longer leisure time students are willing to spend with their friends, the more friends they will have. 2) The similarity in academic achievement and physical appearance have limited influence on friendship. 3) Common hobbies, especially sports and music preferences, are instrumental in establishing friendships. The conclusions mean that we cannot directly give advice on how to choose social targets, thus improving their social skills has become the main direction of our implementation.
By combining the advantages of video games and social skill training programs, we made an interactive video and uploaded it on bilibili.com. Users are expected to help a transfer student make decisions under various social scenes to adapt to the new life in school. Besides, we also published articles on our official account for popularizing.

During this project, we have received many guardians’ help since we had to deal with this large scale topic. I myself developed my system thinking in this process. Also, many researching, sociology and writing skills were applied to compete this competition.

Reflection

My growth:

• In Sophon, this lovely team, I had a good working experience with my teammates. I did some instant communications and information balance to make sure that we were have the same perspective.
• I practiced my system thinking skills a lot. We use an biology concept called social niche to apply and describe students’ social circumstance. And we also used our conclusions from the data analysis to interpret the relationship of the factors which will affect one’s social circumstance in our academic paper.
• I led the literature review part in writing the paper. From the previous study, I concluded the common concepts and factors that those scholars used in their paper. This would provide us with a lot of evidence supports and even some counterarguments, which was helpful for us to push our research.

Things I still need to improve:

• In system thinking, there is a skill called leverage actions which I think I did not develop enough. If I can practice this skill in the future, our research will be more attractive because of the large impact caused by small scale factors.
• In this process, I was also troubled with time management. Because of this, the leader criticized me angrily. I should still work on my ability of time controlling.
• After defensing our project in CTB, I did not feel energetic to further pushing our project. It is better for me to do one thing to the end.
• I do not think that I performed well in defense part. Although I also contributed a lot in case study to split and then narrow down a problem, working with a solution, I had a lack of vocal defense participation. I should pay more attention and try my best to devote myself even though it is not my strength part. Because only by doing this, I will become more and more confident with my skills and strengths in this team.