GRE – Junjun's Home

Plain but Colorful: A Summary of 2009

No one can deny the process of time processing, for which, the individuals like us, can only obey this regulation. Time pass smoothly no matter whether you are successful or not, no matter whether you are taking adequate care on it, and no matter whether you are young or old, boy or girl. Following my traditions, I would like to take a summary of my past year at last day. Taking a scan on the summary of mine in 2008 and 2007, I find, my 2009 is quite plain,there is nothing impressive to note, and honor to share with, except for something unpleasant.

The GRE, both the preparation and the two attempts,forms up the the mainstream of my life this year. Admittedly, GRE is the most difficult exams for the students in China because of two reasons. The first reason is that you are required to memorize and understand over 20k words. My first failure in this step is that I failed to make an in-depth understanding of the words, but only try to memorize them. But the problem is that without good understanding on the real meaning, you can hardly find the potential relationship between the words and hence you fail. Anyway, my writing skills is greatly improved during this preparing process. I can start to write my own formal English. Admittedly, without sufficient training on GRE training, I won’t finish my first English manuscript and the research proposal.

For academia, there is nothing important as well except for the training program in Shanghai, conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Due to the funding from my professor and the arrangements on my research, I didn’t go to any highly ranked academic conference, totally different from what I did in 2008. However, I have to say, not to flatter the faculties of CUHK, their lectures broaden my horizon on my research greatly. From their delivery, I learned the importance of fundamental papers, always those enlightening works that also own great amount of reference. Without sufficient understand on the previous literature, not only for my topic, but also the common backgrounds, I won’t be a qualified scholar and a qualified reader of the papers in top journals.

Though I get the scholarship, and the prize of honored paper from an internal conference, I am not satisfied. For the scholarship, I have experienced too much, much more than it deserved. Though the prize of the honored paper partially convinced myself of the potentials of research, that’s far from enough. I would not repeat all these trivialities. For those readers who are interested in further information, please refer to relevant posts.

The perspective of my 2010 is quite simple, just two English words-Go Smoothly!

At the end of my summary, I shall acknowledge the thanks to numerous people that have helped me in various realms. Some of these friends are Kuan Song, Prof. Wang Xiongyuan, Prof. Xu JIalin, Prof. Shirley J. Daniel, Zhang Peng, You Tingting, Guan Kaolei, Tang Jianxia, Zhuang Chunfang, Chen Wenna. Fundamentally,I shall express my thanks heartedly to my mama, papa, and the gone grandma. I wish and would keep appreciating your kindness in the coming 2010.

GRE: A Temporary Farewell

GRE, a famous exam that is required by most graduate schools overseas, ranging from top universities like Harvard and MIT, to some ordinary schools, carries the dream of the youngsters who are willing of going abroad. Since its first in mainland of China in 1980s, millions of excellent young students and scholars has started their career. And for me, within the new generation of the dreamers, comes into the team as well with the first step of preparing for TOEFL and GRE.

Thanks to my solid foundation that I formed in high school and college, I get a reasonable result on TOEFL, though it is not very high, but acceptable considering my two week preparation without any guidance from the experienced takers. However, the good fortunate on my trial stops here. The experience that I obtained during the process of my GRE seems to be totally different, with one word in general, it is a experience full of depression, from the first attempt in June to this time. The only difference here is that the flu gets involved.

Preparing for the GRE do occupy quite plenty of spare time. For Chinese students like us, especially like me who don’t have that solid foundation on vocabulary, and little experience of living abroad that can help building up the routine of thoughts with the language of English. Unlike TOEFL that is focus on the basic vocabulary and grammar points referring to the ordinary usage of the language, GRE is a academic ability test, with the English as a medium. That is, if you are a GRE taker, you are expected to read and write as the native speaker does.

Taking the lesson from the failure in June, I focused on the vocabulary. After the hard-working of some months, my vocabulary is somewhat improved. Though I cannot correctly tell all the words but I can approximately figure their meanings. But then the flu comes again after the cold at the beginning of October. In a day my temperature was boosted to 39.8 degrees and was sent to the hospital by my dorm mates. I really appreciate their kindness in this very moment; it is their kindness that accompanies me in that two days that withdraws the homesick that a patient can always suffer from. While, my best female friend, tingting, came to my dorm mate and help me doing some cleanings. They are indeed my best friends permanently!

Now that the failure of my attempts on GRE is partially determined, I don’t want to be depressed again. Instead, I would prefer some alternatives besides going abroad. Though it is my initial power of learning English, which directly drove me the boost on my English since high school, but it is not the only purpose. With solid foundation on English that was built during the preparing of these two most difficult exams in mainland, I get some benefit on preparing for the graduate entrance exams in China. I wish I can successfully obtain a PhD degree in China, though it is not the best choice that I am longing for.

Maybe such is the nature of the life!

Staying at Home: A Review of My Summer Vacation

It is getting more difficult to remind myself of the old times when I was still a boy that was interested in wandering around the garden in my grandma‘s house and playing some tricks with my friends. In fact, I am getting more and more preferred of staying at home or the dorm, spending the whole day on writing, reading and PC games. The summer vacation this time follows this ‘tradition’ thoroughly that I spent quite little time of going outside.

The mere reason for this staying comes from the GRE failure. That is, I would have to spend more time that I firstly anticipated to prepare for that exam in October. Memorizing the words and phrases in a glossary for GRE is not an easy job since you have to revisit the words from time to time to avoid them from being forgotten. In fact I doubt myself sometimes why I made the choice on pursuing my PhD program overseas, which lead me to the dilemma at present. But once it is determined, okay, just go forward. The exam in October is to be my last chance in Wuhan. I do admire the atmosphere overseas since my visit to Hawaii last year.

The rearrangement on time for the GRE exams totally abandoned the plans that I made previously which involves reading classical literatures and visiting some parks. I even prepared an annual card for my travelling. While, what a pity, the card was used for only once when Jiang and his wife came in July. The books I ordered from the Amazon are also put aside. In fact, I was just willing to take some study on economics and accounting theory in this summer originally, aiming at preparing for the PhD entrance exams in China. However, the fact is quite apparent: they are all substituted and occupied by the GRE again.

I am scheduled to be back to Wuhan in September 7^th, too many affairs are waiting for me. Perhaps, it is also the time for my change of the living style.

Revisiting SHUFE: Second Attempt Starts Here

昨日重游了中山北一路的上海财大的GRE考场，一切还是那么熟悉，不过考场规则略有变动，比如压缩了键盘熟悉的时间，签名同时需要使用中文等等，呵呵，不过上财考场的考务人员还是比较热心的，呵呵，服务比我在南师大的托福考场所经历的好了很多。难道这里也有地区差异？

不知道火车站怎么排的时间，两趟火车

不知道火车站怎么排的时间，两趟火车居然相差有两个小时，为了避免过去坐冷板凳，我还是选择了11点的火车，呵呵，或许是由于前阶段的列车运营事故，现在的动车组的列车速度明显下降，时速不超过180公里了，当然速度也慢了很多，从以前的30多分钟延长到了40来分钟。不过好在我所在的的考场就在地铁三号线的旁边，所以过去并不耽误。事实上，我到达考场的时间还提前了两三分钟，呵呵。

所抽到的题目是典型的高频题，本来想写错误使人进步，但是没有思路展开，于是写了另一个经典题目，关于领导是否需要具有高道德标准。不过这个题目太高频了，我估计拿高分太难。毕竟我们是老外，不可能在语言上有什么亮点。就如北美范文的作者所言，如果要把自己当成什么文学家来写文章，那将是非常痛苦的。对美国人都如此，更何况我们这个把英语作为外语的人群呢？

考试的键盘不好，没有我第一次的感觉那么好。呵呵，不过好在小时候练过英文打字，这方面倒是没吃上什么亏。我的写作速度比上次还快了点，Issue部分我还修改了好几次，当然主要是改文章的逻辑顺序和连接词，其他也改不了什么。不过这次的Argument让我大感奇怪。他主要是说一个团队做了两次研究，结果前后不一致，于是就认为前者是错的。按理说这个题目不难，但是由于是一个并列关系，要组织比较好的让步攻击并不容易。这是有悖于我们平时的做法的。呵呵

出了考场，直接上地铁，然后回到火车站，去KFC吃了顿，发现时间正好可以上车。呵呵，感谢这两年的旅行经历，让我对时间的计算精度又提高了一个数量级。

天气太热，就没有在上海逗留了，直接回家凉快了。不知道为什么，站在上海，我怎么就没有在外地的感觉呢？

Scandals: Can that always be bad?

This is another GRE Analytical Writing exercise that comes from the following topic:

TOPIC: ISSUE185 – "Scandals-whether in politics, academia, or other areas-can be useful. They focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could."

More and more scandals are presenting in front of us through various mediums, including newspapers, magazines and internet. And they refer to every realm of our lives, ranging from politics to academia that drive people’s attention from one field to another. Some argues that such scandal to be good, with the reason that they can focus our attentions in different ways and lead to some fresh discoveries, but a question comes out in this way. Do they really matter in this way?

The formation, or those preconditions for scandals, carries various stories themselves, including the eager to success but without patience, a failure that is developed from the ideal anticipation from the reformers, etc, and in this way, such happening of scandals can really help people be aware of their mistakes and make attempts to overcome. Dating back to the 19th century in Europe, when people were exhausted to make a kind of non-stop working machine, existed George L. Push, a gentleman who was convinced on the existence of such machine, announced his success of building ups of such machine in a local newspaper. But his followers soon found it to be false since what he had made was only an ideal model, but without any realistic machine at all! The critics from the readers and his fans then drove to him like a storm. But soon after the in-depth discussion based on this scandal, people eventually accepted the fact that such machine can never be existed.

The scandals can also drive people to the new fields of research, the development of new policy that they are not initially focused. When getting focused, the reformers, scientists, etc can get more suggestions and critics from the public that boost their efficiency and reduce their possibility of failure. As a reformer that is proposing a new housing policy aiming at solving the housing problems for the disabled, they found very few citizen get interested on that at the begining. So he then conducted a test in some communities where the scandals then come out due to some faults on the proposal. The scandal draw people’s attention to this policy and people start to write to the newspapers and government for the deliveries of their new ideas. Then the policy is rapidly improved under these suggestions, while we cannot deny the contribution from the scandals.

But we must be aware that such benefit can hardly be brought to permanently. In fact, such severe scandals, especially those refer to the fields that are unknown to the public, can mislead them. Because such scandals can make people feel the related affairs unbelievable, such as a new policy, a new skill and a new medicine, and the anticipation for these from the public would be greatly mitigated. A real example on the investment can help explain this. We are dating back to the 1920s in US, where there were still no equivalent accounting standards among the listed companies and financial fraud were popular. But when some frauds were getting to known to the public, the public trust on the accounting number were totally lost and people start to sell out their stocks in hand. The consequence of such scandals is known to all, that is, the Great Deficiency. It is the scandal that brings all the investors into the disaster.

That’s why we are caring so much on scandals. For the public, it is a good way for them to refer to some new fields that are strange to them, offering them new room of thinking. While it is apparently more significant to the reformers and government, since such scandals from different areas can help them to improve their developing policy, skills etc, but we must also be aware that such scandals can also reduce the trust from the public that can lead to severe consequence sometimes. We are not to deny the usefulness of scandals, but we should also be aware of their potential harms.

Delay on GRE Writing: Depression

It has been quite a long time since the last passage with the language of English. I don’t have a strong desire to make an English writing blog, I don’t have the feeling of this language, but unfortunately, I don’t have the capability of wrtting this passage in Chinese as well. I envy the good writers, either in Chinese or English, that describes the sights naturally with beautiful words and marvelous feeling like a poem.

The postponing of the writing section do harm greatly on my mood. Not only the moeny that I spent for, but also the failure that I get from my heart as a deny to my decision perviously. I don’t know if it is called self-induced pressure, but an approaching of an exam without any good feeling is absolutely not a good signal, which exists not only in exams, but in any realms of lives. As a modern student who is surviving in an emerging economy, it is getting too many choices to make, too many alternatives to consider, and too many failures that may occur. Frankly speaking, I don’t have the intention to take such an exam, a high-level challenge among the English exams, but my consideration of my future is making his full efforts to persuade me to do so. Hereby, three kinds of pressure, parental, peer, self-induced are all intertwined.

But we do have to re-consider the nature and purpose that we study English. As a most developed unit globally, the American pie is pouringly influencing the rest of the word, from economics, military to socialism, even to our daily lives. A primary purpose of English thus comes out that English is to be a key to the door that one can step forward outside the motherland that feed him, and TOEFL and GRE as well as IELTS and GMAT are becoming a popular topic on campus permanently. For my own history of learning which can be dated back to 15 years ago when I was still a lad of 11 and started to know what ABC was like, I never reached the beauty of this language, refered to as English literature such as poems and arts, and the related civilizaton and culture, such as a basic introduciton on the christian conventions. While instead, I have participated in tens, may be over hundreds of English exams and contests, size and levels varying.

An exams-oriented education obviously fails to bring us good usage of the knowledge that we were infused, not only of English, but for many other subjects. A trip to Hawaii in December contributes me great feeling on this. Even though the paper can be fully presented at a symposium, and a discussion can be conducted, big troubles occurs on dining. If the surviving is treated as a criteria here, I dare say, the English education don’t provide me great support on my survival in US. While, I am surely these words may be argued as unsubstantial and unpersuasive by referring to the fundamentals.

Even there are some sort of complaints, I am not Mark Twain who had the courage to quite the election that I fully respect for, stepping forward under the intertwining of all the pressures can be the only solution for me. I don’t know how the future will be, will it be a sunny day? Or will it be of great fog? No one can tell me, and no one can answer it convictively, I suppose.

I appreciate very much a piece of words from Ode to the West Wind, written by Shirley,

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

My New Starts: Some Thoughts

今天是特殊的一天，我同时收到了3封重要的邮件，第一，我的托福成绩最终确定，尽管不是很好，但是我也满足了，毕竟这是在忙碌的科研间隙的产物，第二，我确定了明年的GRE考试，想再放纵自己是不可能了，第三，我刚收到了SAAF的邮件，我终于得到了梦寐以求的锻炼口语的机会。在这样的大喜日子，我觉得是时候来总结过去，展望未来了。

如果说，科研是一片大海，我们是其中的叶叶泛舟，那么，一年前的我，只是一个在沙滩上嬉戏的孩童，大海给我的，只有一种向往，一种憧憬，一种崇敬。我却并没有想过卷起裤管，涉足水中，去感受那份丝丝的水的柔美，我也没有想过去驾驶一艘小船，去乘风破浪，去感受大海的力量。

如果说，人生是一片沙漠，而我们的目标是沙漠中的绿洲，那么，一年前的我，只是一个站在戈壁滩上的旅行者，面对着扑面而来的沙尘和阵阵热浪，徘徊着，迷茫着，不知道是前进，还是后退。我握着GPS，却不知道路在哪里，我该去哪里，我一遍遍的问自己，但是，我没有答案。

如果说，做决定总是那么困难。那么，在关键时候，在迷茫的时候，在困惑的时候，我们需要外力的协助。于是，我被毫不留情的一脚揣入了大海里，我被狠狠的一把推进了沙漠。我感受到了丝丝的水的柔滑，同时也远远地听到了波涛的声音。我感受到了漫天飞舞的沙尘，也感受到了阵阵袭来的热浪。

路漫漫其修远兮，在新的一年里，我将驾驶我的小船，去面对大海，去乘风破浪；我也将沿着这条大道一路前行，我相信，我心目中的绿洲就在那不远的地方！

飘飘何所似，天地一沙鸥，鹤啸九天,我心飞翔!