Conan zone: December, 2006

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December 30

MIT essay

呵...终于完成了...发SPACE上来做个备份吧 :-) 以防万一电脑烧掉了MIT又过来跟我说它们没收到^^哈哈

Describe the world you come from, for example your family, clubs, school, community, city, or town. How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations?

Finding Neverland

        Environment is a limitation, but not for those who are willing to change it. There is always a place for me in the world.

        I love mathematics. As a six-year-old, I started to dream of becoming a mathematician. However, my environment didn’t seem to accept this. In China, most people don’t even consider their own interests when they choose their career path. They tend to choose ‘popular’ majors that give them a well-paid job, but ‘pure math’ is never on the list of ‘popular majors’. Thus, almost everyone around me proposed that I should become a doctor, an engineer or an architect. For a long period of time, the only support I have had for pursuing this passion is my own faith in mathematics and my parent’s faith in me.

        After grade nine, I entered a forbidding educational environment that drained away my pleasure in learning. While I was a top academic achiever in middle school, I took pleasure in ceaseless individual research in mathematics and many other extracurricular activities. Thereafter, though, I was sent as one of the top three students in my school to Yucai Senior High School, a prominent boarding school in which we were forced to sleep for eight hours and study for fourteen hours everyday. Nobody seemed to care about actual knowledge. All they did was to prepare for exams. But life is not just about getting good marks and going to universities! Mine is not, and I believe nobody’s should be. Where is the time for doing math research? Where are the opportunities for drawing, swimming, contemplating and playing with computers?

        A week after school started, I went to the principal and had a discussion with him about what education should be, asserting my belief that the purpose of exams is to test knowledge, not to make people cram for it. Finally we agreed that the current Chinese education system does not allow ancillary interests and suppresses individual character, rather it only expresses society’s wishes, however damagingly. Neither I, nor the principal, had the power to change it.

        Since I couldn’t change everyone’s environment, I resolved to change mine. I decided to find a place where I could do math at midnight without dorm-parents forcing me to turn off the light; a place where we sleep, eat and study in the way we want, a place where knowledge is respected for itself. I went looking for my Neverland. Nobody around me approved; they could not believe my parents had allowed me to quit high school. No one who was known as a student who ‘for sure can enter a good university’ had done such a thing. But I did. I crossed half of the earth to find my Neverland, settling in Canada.

        My decision to seek out a better academic environment has meant that I safely came through high school without losing my dream and passion. For two years, I have lived 11445 km from home and yet 692 km away from my Neverland.

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December 25