Journal 45: About Myself

The experience that I cherish the most is volunteering to be a Chinese T.A. at Fremont Chinese School in California. I was reluctant and even refused to volunteer at the Chinese school at first because I was not sure of I have the courage or the ability to help the teacher with the teaching. The thought of me standing in front of a classroom teaching just seems to take a lot of courage. Eventually I still joined the crew of the T.A. after my friends said they were all going to volunteer. The first class of my volunteering experience ended with me feeling embarrassed when the teacher called me up to introduce myself and I just stood there without knowing what to say. The teacher then knew I was not someone who was as outgoing so she first let me graded homework. However, she still occasionally called me up to the whiteboard to spell out the Chinese words the students did not know. Every time I answered the students’ questions, I realized they always responded with satisfying gratitude or sometimes admiring glances. As time goes on, I realized I really love how the students appreciated my teachings and how I was being admired by them. The thought then occurred to me that I do have the ability to answer the questions of students; I can also assist a teacher like others. The teacher seemed to have noticed my changes so she gradually let me have more opportunities to interact with students. After that, I started to prepare daily lessons for the teacher or sometimes even teach the class of that day’s lesson when the teacher called me up and when the students demanded me to.

Journal 44: Past Experiences

Since I was a little kid, I have admired my Father’s job as a business man. He goes up on the stage to encourage and arouse his employees’ spirits or gives orders on how the next step should be to gain a mutual success for everyone. I admire the opportunity and freedom his job gave him to make many decisions and tactics. My Father has always told me how his job has profoundly tested and verified the many vital life principles such as only hard work pays off. Thus, I not only admire the freedom of his job to make decisions for himself and to work at his own pace, but also the pleasure of harvest of good achievements that comes with only hard work. In conclusion, I can say that my Father and his education style had influenced my aspiration to study business the most. On the other hand, my interest in Biology has somewhat influenced my other willingness to study Biology, too. I have always had some fascination when doing experiments and discovering something novel. My Father then suggested me to combine my admiration of Business with my love of Biology. In the future, I wish to study Biology first then to use the principles of Business I learned to sell the products I invented in my works of research.

Journal 43: Intellectual Vitality

 I think the experience that influences my intellectual development the most is the time I went to the U.S. to study. Having lived in a mono-ethnic society for 15 years, Taiwan, I felt my life has been too calm or tranquil. I wanted to try living in a wholly different society to train myself to adapt to environments and on another level, to become more independent. My study trip to the United States changed my way of thinking in which I learned to think in a broader and more extensive way. The experience of seeing the diverse cultures and backgrounds of different ethnicities is the key to a vaster point of view. Cultures in the United States do not seem to assimilate into a mass culture but rather form an exotic portrait of a mosaic picture in which every person is a unique piece in the picture.

 I would like my roommates to know that I may sleep talk or even sleep walk sometimes due to stress before an important examination or the over-preparation of a test. I may sometimes stay up to study so they might have to bear with the sound of me munching snacks all night to keep myself awake. Other than that, I think I am a very easygoing and rounded person who is very easy to get along with.

I think my family matters to me the most because having seen and heard so much news of the losses of family and the pain those people who experienced it had to go through, I deeply understood the importance of family. I learned to be more appreciative of my family and more graceful that they are around.

Journal 42: School and Major

I have chosen this school because of its geographical location and its excellent reputation for its highly ranked School of Applied Science. I want to live in a city where there are distinct style and cultures thus creating a lively and vibrant neighborhood. During my visit to your school, I sincerely thought your school has met all my standards of a well-developed school and environment. The campus offered a unique city environment yet it was so much like a small town where everyone knows each other and treated each other nicely. More importantly, I heard there are high flexibility of options, wide range of opportunities, and the level of students’ engagement within school activities.  All these are qualities are what I believe to be essential requirements of a college. I have chosen Environmental Science and Biology for majors. My recent realization of how the Earth and the environments around the world has deteriorated and changed so massively motivated me to put into effort the reservation of environment. I enjoy doing experiments to test the previous hypotheses put forward by someone else and also creating my own experiment to explore more interesting and important subjects. I love the moment when I discovered something that no one has brought out before or reassuring myself that what I supposed is correct. 

Journal 41: Leaders in the Making

Everyone has someone who he or she considers as a leader. For me, I have many people I admire and see as a leader. The most recently leader I admire is Jeremy Lin. He is not really a leader in the New York’s Knicks for he is neither the team captain nor the coach. However, he is someone who brought amazing changes to the team. I think he taught the whole team the importance of team work. He is not someone who tries to show off his skills and he always tries to pass the ball to others at the right timing thus making opportunities for others. His team mates really appreciated about that. I admire his persistence when facing struggles of life. He never thought of giving up. Instead, he worked even harder to proof that he has the ability to achieve what others thought he could not do. The personality I admire the most is his modesty. After gaining fame, he did not show any sign of arrogance. He kept his modesty.  He never bragged about his own accomplishments in a game but always accredited other team mates with the victory. I will try to follow his model of perseverance and modesty.

Journal 40: Spring Break

The night before spring break I was so happy that I did not feel sleepy at all. I stayed up until 3 A.M that night. I woke up at 10 the first day of spring break. For the first time in a while, I was able to have a nice brunch in a restaurant called N.Y. Bagels. Then I went home and went on the computer for a while and read a novel after that. Later that evening, I realized I needed to get started on some of my homework and SAT preparation. So I went to sign up for a class at Princeton Review. So I basically had classes during spring break. When I stayed home, I do not feel obligated to do homework, because I felt like there are still many days to do it. I also get distracted by computer and television. I think spring break has made me lazy. I also had time to go out with my friends. We went shopping for clothes and shoes. I slept well and ate well during spring break, a reason why I love spring break. I kind of felt depressed when I realized school is going to start again because I have to face with school pressures again. But I will definitely do my best to prepare for the upcoming challenges.