Luo 1

Ziqing Luo (Cathy)

Professor: Marie Webb

Ling12 TR 9 AM

12 February 2019

You Are the One Who Leads Your Own Life

“I hate the piano! I want to destroy it!” I yelled out loud to my mom, who always kept her

calmness and dignity while dealing with me, a kid with such great grievances. “My dear, I know

your feeling now, but destroying it may not be the best choice,” her gentle tone gradually calmed

me down. She continued, “I have an idea. If you really think that you are done with piano, find a

buyer who will take care of the piano for you. How does that sound?” It was the first time my

mom offered a decision-making chance to me, and afterward it became her custom to let me

make decisions on my own. Indeed, life is about making decisions at crossroads one after

another. You may rejoice at some of your decisions, but regret for the others. However, no

matter how you feel about the decisions that you have made, you have to accept them and

continue to move on.

I agreed with my mother’s proposal without hesitation, imagining that I could finally get

rid of that giant monster. However, I was too naive: a kid is too young to negotiate with potential

buyers and make a good deal. Also, it was difficult to spread the information that I was selling

my piano at the time when Internet hadn’t become the main tool to share and search for

information. Hence, I failed. After realizing that playing the piano was way easier than selling it,

I told my mom: “I have decided to stay with it.”

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It can’t be denied that thinking individually without the external influences at a young

age is not an easy thing to do, but my mom guided me to do that in her own way. This very first

decision I made not only grew the seeds for my future pleasure gained from musical

achievement, but also enlightened me during the whole academic journey — it taught me how to

make a wise decision. Now, instead of acting on impulses when facing multiple options, I intend

to identify the pros and cons of each option and think about which could maximize my

efficiency. Take arranging reading, doing math homework, and hanging out with my old friends

on my schedule as an example. There are many permutations and combinations from which I

could have chosen from. However, I am very aware that I’m a morning person and my brain is

more efficient after I shift my mind into studying mode after 30 minutes. Therefore, I will choose

to do the assigned reading first, which allows me to adjust my mode, and then begin my fight

with the tougher subjects, such as math. If the eagerness to see friends, who I hadn’t met for the

whole year, surged up from the bottom of my heart, I would manage to suppress my excitement

and wait to let it all out at just the right time.

My father is another person who inspires me not only on my path to college, but also in

my life journey. I heard that he expected me to be a boy before I was born. “He loves you more

after your birth,” my mom explained to me. My childhood photos are the best evidence for his

traditional gender preference: my hair was as short as a boy’s and I seldom wore a dress until I

was 9 years old. It didn’t mean that he wanted me to become a boy, not a girl— he wanted me to

become both. On one hand, my father doted on his only daughter by buying her dolls and

encouraging her to learn the piano; on the other hand, he believed that, if there was something

that boys could achieve, then his little daughter could also accomplish it. We used to play
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badminton together for a hobby, but somehow he wanted me to receive more professional

training, so he sent me to one of his friends, a badminton coach for teenagers. With basic

badminton skills, I developed my ability rapidly and soon I outperformed the girls of my age. My

father noticed my talent and understood that I could achieve more than that. Thus, he encouraged

me to challenge the boys, who, in my eyes, were taller, stronger and more energetic than me. As

a person who got used to compete against girls, I was terrified by the unlimited power of another

kind of human species. As a result, I lost my confidence and came back as a defeated opponent.

I turned to my father with resentment and shouted, “You knew I would embarrass myself!” As a

kid with high self-esteem, I burst into tears and attributed all to my father. “Dear, you know you

are the best in my heart,” my father said as he embraced and comforted me, “Daddy just wants

you to know that you need to believe in yourself more. Daddy always believes in you.”

Indeed, my father has always believed in me and that an individual’s potential is not

restricted by external factors, such as gender. For such a long time, I had regarded my father as

the only person who had gender prejudice in my family. I was wrong. I soon discovered that,

after being influenced by the community I lived in, the view of men naturally superior to women

had been deeply rooted in my mind. Ironically, it was my father who had been trying to uproot it

and push me to break through the gender line.

Then my big day came. Before I submitted my college application, I needed to decide my

major and, potentially, my future. During the meeting with my parents, my college advisor, an

old lady who had the gender stereotype that women had fewer development opportunities in the

field of math, had been trying to persuade my parents that I was destined to study history in

university just because I had been the history class representative for 4 years. “History teacher
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has told me that you are an excellent student and has been fulfilling your responsibility very well

as a class representative. You will be a great history-major student in the college,” my advisor

said it as if she had already decided my major for me. “Thank you for saying that, Mrs. Yang,

but I think I am more interested in math… I want to be a mathematician.” I carefully expressed

my idea to her. “You are interested in math? But you are good at history and love it, aren’t you?

Mathematics is too competitive for girls… It is too competitive for girls,” she emphasized it

again in case I didn’t hear it. However, at the moment I touched upon math, I knew that this was

what I was going to pursue. I didn’t know whether I was really good at math, but I knew that I

had a strong passion for solving mathematical questions, especially those challenging ones. If I

met a tough one, I would close the door of my bedroom, turn off the music, and even postpone

my dinner in order to figure it out. Every time I conquered a difficult math problem, I felt a sense

of pride and self-satisfaction. Math became a part of my life that could not be deprived of.

“The technology companies prefer males than females… Humanities is easier than

science for girls… The maternal duty can potentially impede a girl to make progress in the field

of science,” my advisor continued to project the “facts” to us. After​ listening to​ the advisor

talking about thousands of reasons for a girl to choose humanities, my father ​seemed to be

brainwashed an​d turned to ask me to consider the teacher’s advice. I could understand that: he

wanted me to have a stable job, and thus, a normal life. However, there was a force from inside

that dragged me back whenever something from outside tried to throw me off the track. My

mother saw it in her eyes — she understood me, as she always did. She held my hand and said:

“But darling, you are the one who leads your own life. No matter what your choice is, I will

always respect your decision.”

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On our way back home, I looked through the window and saw the sun falling to the west.

The sun always knows where its place is. Then throug​h the clouds, I saw my destination: it was

so clear up there. As soon as I arrived home, I quickly turned on my laptop and logged into my

application account. I scrolled down to find the “select your intended major” column and chose

the one that I knew I was destined to. Without hesitation, I clicked the “submit” button.

A new chapter of my life has been opened.

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January 30, 2019

Girvetz Hall 2116

University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California 93106

Dear Ms. Luo:

I am so glad to see that you have learnt from the enlightenment that your parents gave you.
Your parents are excellent, for they teach you two of the most important things in an individual’s
life: independence and identity. At the moment you pressed the “submit” button of your college
application, you ended one chapter of your life book and opened a new one, which will be more
challenging and colorful. Hence, it is time for you to adjust for your new life. Changes are
necessary for you to accommodate to the new section of your life journey. Therefore, before you
turn into your twenties in this month, I would like to offer you some advice or recommendations
in order to prepare you for your further education and even academic achievements in the field
of mathematical science.

First of all, it is necessary to immerse into reading every day. Reading is beneficial in that it not
only improves your reading efficiency, but also enhances your writing skills. The process of
reading is like engaging in a treasure hunt- thousands of valuable and useful words and phrases
are buried in the text, waiting for you to discover them. In order to find those priceless treasures
and improve both your reading quantity and quality, you should read at least 30 minutes per
day, beyond studying, and collect all you find in a notebook. I know that the following situation
often happens to you: when you try to address the most appropriate word in one place of your
writing, you couldn’t think about one. Maybe you have an obscure memory about the word
because you believe you saw it somewhere before, but when you try to recall it, it just couldn’t
make it to the surface of your mind. But don’t blame yourself about your poor memory — you
are not the only person who has the problem. The majority of people are not gifted with an
extraordinary retentive memory. As a result, you have to utilize other strategies to help you
generate a long-term memory of vocabulary or phrases in your brain. Keith Hjortshoj, the writer
of the book ​The Transition to College Writing​ observes, “Writing and speaking are in themselves
mnemonics: They help to create long-term memory.” In other words, when you are reading,
instead of assuming that your brain is capable of remembering what you have seen in the book,
you should actually pick up the language expressions that you think could be helpful to your
own writing and collect them on your notebook so that you can find them out when needed later
on. The second way to retain them in your memory for a longer time is to incorporate them into
your daily life. Talk about your discovery on phrases or proverbs with your friends and see if
they fit into your conversation. Imagine that you were going to have a dance performance on the
stage. You wanted to express your nervousness to your partner. Instead of saying that​ “I am so
nervous right now,” you could actually address the word “high-strung,” which you stole from the
book​ Lab Girl, ​to more vividly desc​ribe how you felt at that moment.

Besides reading and writing effectively, time management is also the key to your academic
success in college, especially when you are required to complete multiple tasks within the
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limited time. I understand that you will not devote all of your time into academic exploration. You
shouldn’t because your passion to dancing is endless, your longing for growing into a
competitive girls single badminton player is inevitable and your yearning for mastering your third
language is unstoppable. Hence, wise time management plays a more significant role in helping
coordinate your extracurricular activities with your school work. When Jahren was working in the
university hospital, since each hospital worker had only a twenty-minute break between each
eight-hour shift, she was forced to plan her routine during the break in advance so that she
could get back on time. (Page 35) In fact, the reason why the hospital which Jahren worked at
was able to treat more patients than it could is that the hospital runners manage the workers’
schedules in an effective way that maximizes their productivity. Just like the hospital, an
individual also needs a functional study plan. A clear study schedule prevents you from
forgetting things that need to be done and marking them with different colors allows you to rank
and prioritize them according to their levels of importance. For example, you could write the
exam dates of your classes with red color to urge yourself to start revising one week before the
test; you could mark the deadline for each assignment with yellow color to remind yourself to
finish and submit them on time; you could also write the miscellaneous things with black color
so that you can see what are left to be solved after you complete the most important ones.

In addition to create a colorful calendar, another technique to arrange a desirable study time
schedule is to make sure you leave enough time after each lecture to review your notes if you
find it difficult to understand in class. No one can earn a good grade without spending extra time
to absorb the knowledge by themselves after class. Remember that it should be accomplished
in at most two days because of your untrustworthy memory — consolidate it before it fades
away in your head, then it will save you plenty of time during the final week of the quarter, when
multiple final exams can drive you crazy. Another method of avoiding running out of study time
is to allocate your time for digesting knowledge and hanging out on social media reasonably.
This demands you to increase your willpower. Having more self-control allows you to achieve
your goal more easily in the contemporary study environment where there are omnifarious
temptations intending to divert your attention. One of the distractions is electronic devices. You
can’t focus on solving mathematical problems while your phone keeps vibrating; you can’t write
a paper with fluency and logic if you keep switching to watch a movie. Therefore, prioritize your
study before watching Youtube videos and dramas and turn your phone into do-not-disturb
mode while you are making connections with the content of the textbook in your brain. I know
that it is easy to become addicted to the drugs of mainstream media, so when you feel like you
are about to lose self-control, think about the pleasant moment at which you write your
sentences with great fluency, without keeping checking on the dictionary. The happiness
derived from it is much greater than that from entertainment shows or social network.

Last but not least, be open-minded to math-related fields and be ready to embrace the
challenges of exploring them. Mathematics, after all, is about application. The true value of
mathematics lies in the combination and interaction with other aspects of science, such as
computer science, statistical science and physical science. Hence, utilizing your mathematical
logic and knowledge to solve more realistic problems, such as writing codes, analyzing data and
conducting laboratory experiments, is more likely to be a requirement for your future career.
However, the reality is that you have been focusing on math only for such a long time so that
you haven’t had a chance to explore other areas which you will potentially engage in in the
future​. Accordingly, finding a math-related internship during the summer break might be a good
way to start your exploration. Opening the door for every possibility is also how Jahren found
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her academic destination. In Jahren’s autobiography ​Lab Girl,​ she mentioned that when she
was a kid, she first studied literature with her mom, who was pursuing her degree at the
University of Minnesota (Page 15); however, she soon discovered that science was where she
belonged to. She admitted her love for science, which deriv​ed from the time she spent in her
father’s lab. (Page 17) If she continued with literature without confessing her true feelings to
science, she wouldn’t have achieved what she has achieved today. For the same reason, if you
do not dare to explore an unknown area, you will never know what you are capable of.
Therefore, take a computer science class, join a physics club or read economic news. You will
know the answer after you give a try.

Jahren has fulfilled her dream to become a scientist. What about you? You are already here in
college, which you have been striving for in the past four years. But what’s next? Life is an
endless journey in which you are unable to stop until the last day. The next section of the travel
may be the best time period in your life; it may also be the loneliest time period in your life.
Surviving in the college needs more motivation, persistence and optimism, especially when you
are pursuing your educational dream on another continent across the Pacific Ocean. However, I
believe in you. Be persistent in daily reading, devise an efficient study schedule and expand
your academic comfort zone. Follow the goals that you have set for yourself carefully, then they
will guide you to your destination. If somehow, you lose your direction or feel that you are too
exhausted to move on, turn around and look at every single footprint you have made — you will
know how great yourself are and that the next destination is not far away.

Sincerely,

Ziqing Luo

Girvetz Hall 2116, University of California, Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara, California 93106
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Works Cited

Hjortshoj, Keith. ​The Transition to College Writing​. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009.

Jahren, Hope. ​Lab Girl​. Vintage, 2017.