（转）圣约翰学院硕士录取申请文书（一）

KnightBM

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A typed essay addressing topics A, B, and C. Include any information that you consider relevant. Answer fullyenough to permit us to judge your ability to express reasoned thought. Successful applicants usually write 6-9pages. Please put your name on each page.

A. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your formal education. In addition, if you wish, discuss the contributionto your education of any relevant experience outside of an academic setting.


Topic A:

When I was contemplating on topic A, a one-liner by Dutch soccer player Johan Cruyff struck me as appropriate to capture my formal education, "Every disadvantage has its advantage." My undergraduate education had some weaknesses, but behind every weakness lay a strength. That blend of weaknesses and strengths has shaped me; it has inspired me to apply to St. John's.

Largely unsatisfied with my undergraduate education, I became critical about what education, particularly higher education, means and what individuals should and can do to be educated and enlightened in an underdeveloped educational system and in a society where education is becoming less about cultivating critically-minded citizens and more about handing out degrees or diplomas. Frustrated by the college education available to me, I constantly explored ways to better my education. The process was a self-reflective, self-exploratory, and tremendously rewarding experience.

I entered college hopefully. I expected I would have knowledgeable and dedicated teachers; I expected course options would be diverse and coursework would be rigorous enough to satisfy my curiosity; I expected my peers would be intellectually curious and hardworking. Most of all, I had faith in myself--I believed as long as I worked hard and made most out of my education, I would do fine.

Many of these expectations were met; some were not. In some ways, the Chinese educational system is a strong one. There is an emphasis on learning fundamental principles and established facts; students undergo regular exams and are expected to continuously demonstrate their competence; from an early age they are expected to put in long hours of study, even to the point of foregoing pursuits normal to youth. The cultivation of a studious discipline served me well during my college years. Another advantage of my education was the fact that I learned English, as all Chinese do, from middle school onward. In college there were professors who not only taught me English, but showed me how beautiful the language is. Once, inspired by Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, a teacher assigned us a writing topic about identification with color. I devoted hours musing on identifying myself with crimson. Another time, the class was introduced to Philadelphia slang.

There were, however, a number of weaknesses in my education. Throughout elementary, secondary, and higher education students spend their class time passively taking notes. Although I always longed to share my thoughts (and play devil's advocate in one debate about death penalty) in class discussion, most of my peers considered discussion dull, unnecessary and unimportant, believing rote learning can get you anywhere. There is also the phenomenon of social promotion and grade inflation.

Another weakness was that exams tended to consist of multiple-choice and short-answer questions, instead of essays which would truly test students' reading, reasoning, and writing abilities. Assigned readings for class usually came from textbooks, with no additional or supplementary reading. Further, classroom discussion was rare and unproductive, as many students were not used to taking an active part.

As a result, I had to try to do more than was expected of me. I tried to excel in areas that could not be graded or evaluated by the usual standard. For example, when writing courses were unavailable to freshmen, I audited a teacher's writing course for sophomores for one semester. I joined the collegiate English public speaking team and practiced oratory for three years. I was the first and only student in my college to compete nationally in the 21st Century English Speaking Competition, the most prestigious English speaking contest held by China Daily. I introduced myself to teachers who never taught me and we had weekly lunches and discussed Chinese and American current affairs. Also, for two months, I traveled two hours by bus to a downtown university to attend lectures by American professors on American literature and writing. By taking these steps and reshaping my education, I became more intellectually confident and found genuine satisfaction in my education.
 
On this journey, I developed a strong interest in English writing and style. I perused William Strunk and E.B. White's The Elements of Style and Joseph M. Williams' Style: Toward Clarity and Grace again and again. The Economist was a constant companion for three years, and became a stylistic model that I emulated. So was Iowa University English professor Brook Landon's online video course on writing good sentences. Attracted by Orwell's mastery of surprising readers with metaphors, and masterful control of verbs, I read Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Down and Out in Paris and London, and some of his essays. Equally captivating were William Zinsser's On Writing Well, Writing to Learn, American Places, Writing About Your Life, Writing Places, and his weekly blog at the American Scholar.

As I began to develop my own style in writing, I faced a hard question: What is style anyway? How does Toni Morrison differ from Frederick Douglas? How do I know a certain story is written by Salinger and not by Wolfe or Carver by just reading the story? I cannot fully answer this question, but find this question deeply fascinating. My best answer for now is that style is formed over time, by consciousness of heeding the subtleties of language, accumulative understanding of human conditions, love for humanity, and persistent exploration of the self and enduring questions. Staying intellectually hungry and sucking out all the marrow of the classics by the best minds of all time will lead me to answers to those questions.

My formal undergraduate studies ended last June, but my education has not. While working in Beijing as an English composition teacher and a freelance editor, I managed to take Comparative Philosophy, German History, and Modern American Literature at two international summer schools, and earned six undergraduate credits. Thanks to my flexible work schedule in the past two summers, I went to school in the morning, and worked in the afternoon and evening.

After college and one year of work and self-education, I am ready for graduate school. Because of my dissatisfying undergraduate education, I have become more self-disciplined, more longing for knowledge, more critical of what is good education, more appreciative of hard-earned learning opportunities, and most of all, more hopeful of a redeeming graduate school education at St. John's. I believe at St. John's, Cruyff's quote no longer applies, for weaknesses are replaced by strengths that have stood the test of time.

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binzaghi

写的也太好了吧。大牛，膜拜！我现在在思考Ps的思路。毙了两稿了，继续想。