Look! There is a rainbow! On the first day of my college life, when I walked into the campus, there was a rainbow on the fountain. I haven't seen it for a long time. I was so excited that I jumped for joy. My ponytail dances with my happiness. This is a good omen, indicating that my college life will be rich and colorful, and it is indeed the case!
After entering the university, I found my life so busy. What I want to do is not only get a scholarship, but also be the monitor and leader of Shanghai University percussion band. I won the first and second place in the 1 scholarship in two years' study. I organize charitable donations for students who have financial difficulties or diseases. Every week, I give drum lessons to the new members of our percussion band. And there are always many non-commercial performances, such as entertaining guests, celebrating parties, and cultural exchanges with foreign student delegations and their bands. Of course, part-time job is indispensable in my holiday. I don't ask for compensation, I just want to adapt to this society.
Sometimes, my friends advise me not to let such a tight schedule tire me out. I woke up before the cock crowed and continued to work late, while others were enjoying their dreams. Every time I come back from the rehearsal of percussion band, I have to finish my homework with the help of my own charging lamp, because there is no electricity in our dormitory. Maybe this life is a bit like an ascetic, but we should work hard and try hard when we are young, shouldn't we?
When I represented Shanghai University in the New Century Ladies Competition held in May, when I showed myself on the stage, when I appeared as an "energetic girl", I used every moment to make up for the courses I missed. I took every opportunity to learn from other energetic, versatile and intelligent girls, and I took this opportunity to show the mental state of our college students.
Busy life is a little bitter, but it is also sweet. It is colorful. I make fun of it. I like it. As soon as I have free time, I lie on the green grass and read books, and exercise in the window seat of the second largest library in Shanghai. I absorb knowledge like a hungry sponge. I walk by the river, listen to the warblers on the willows and enjoy the magnificent sunset on campus. The sky is intoxicated with the sunset; I am intoxicated with the sweetness I like.
Besides studying, music is the most important part of my life. I started to learn piano at the age of 6, 1 1 started to learn drums. At school, I teach students to play jazz drums, timpani, xylophone and so on. We perform in many universities to popularize percussion and bring music to them. I have studied drums for so many years, and now it is inseparable from my life. This is my beating heart, my pulse, veins and arteries. When I play, I want to move my body, I can sit in my chair, I can't help swinging, I communicate with the audience, and I appeal to them to join my drums, the rhythm of music and the fragments of youth. Hey, come on!
In a summer vacation, I volunteered to teach my neighbor community and taxi drivers to learn 100 APEC English sentences. It took me a lot of effort to get out of the m y air-conditioned room and into the sultry and suffocating weather. Some of these people don't have a chance to receive a good education, and even ABC doesn't know! I try to find simple ways to teach them. For example, how to remember the Oriental TV Tower? I regard the tower as a "overshoe" in Shanghai Dialogue. This is not the right way to teach and learn English, but in fact it is the only way. At the end of my holiday, they can use some everyday languages. I am very happy and think my efforts are worthwhile. As a volunteer, I shape myself, serve the people and welcome the upcoming APEC. As a college student living in an ivory tower, I feel the hardship of taxi drivers. At that time, I cherished the opportunity to study in Shanghai University, which has first-class facilities in China. I will work hard and contribute myself to our country in the future.
Another summer vacation, I worked as a junior clerk in an import and export company. I don't know how to invoice; How to make a customs declaration; How to fill in the packing list, otherwise I don't even know what cif price is! I strongly feel that I lack work and social experience; These are all knowledge that can't be learned in textbooks. How to teach myself, how to make friends and how to get along with all kinds of people-I think these are preparations for entering the society, which are more important than my exam results. Working in the company, I threw away my T-shirt, jeans and sneakers and put on a suit and high heels. It's not comfortable at all. Occasionally I stumble on the steps. Oh! How difficult it is to be a white-collar office girl! One should pretend to be a noble lady, work at a desk all day and wear dangerous high heels! Isn't this a challenge?
My college life is like Allegro. Hard but worthwhile; Bitter but sweet; Tiring but exciting. Rainbow appeared on the first day of my college life, promising me a colorful life. Above the rainbow is the sky high above. The road ahead is still very long, I can't see the end, but no matter how high or low, I will persevere!
Before I went to college, my dream was to be a Harvard man. I have such a dream, first, because of the aura hanging over Harvard University, and also because I have always regarded studying law as my goal and mathematics as my "backup", and Harvard's two majors are the best in the United States. 1April, 979, a rejection letter broke my dream. As for the reason, I guess it is because my SAT English score is too poor, only 550 points (if there was New Oriental at that time, it might not be the ending).
When I applied for a university, I knew that I was not qualified enough to guarantee which university I would go to, so I applied to 12 school. In this way, I feel that I can take the initiative in my own hands. At that time, my teachers probably hated me, because the application materials required teachers to write letters of recommendation to students, but for me, I had to write so many letters at a time (there was no computer at that time, and every letter of recommendation needed to be written by teachers themselves).
Finally, I entered Columbia University, which is a very good school, and the departments of law and mathematics are also famous. Columbia University gives students a lot of room for development and allows them to study a wide range of courses. When I was a freshman, I spent most of my time studying art, history, music, philosophy and other professional courses, and I was exposed to many things. I think this is an opportunity for www.zuowenw.com to find his own interests. To this day, I still remember what an old professor of philosophy said: "Do you know what it means to make a difference? Imagine that there are two worlds, one with you and the other without you, so the difference between them is the biggest. This is the meaning of your life. "
Let's talk about my brother's legal dream. At that time, I mainly studied "political science", which was a "pre-law" major. However, after a few "political science" classes, I found that I was not interested in it, and I was so depressed that I couldn't come to class every day. One of the classes is so boring that I have to sleep in almost every class. The only choice is to sleep in the classroom or dormitory. I slept until the middle of the semester, and my average score was barely enough to get a C. I quit this course the day before the deadline to avoid the disaster of canceling my grant because my average score was less than 3.0.
When I mentioned the anguish of studying law to my family, they all encouraged me to change my major. My sister said, "Didn't you finish high school math and win the state math championship?" Why didn't you transfer to the math department? " However, this reminds me of my second distress. After entering the university, the school arranged for me to join a "math genius class", where all the top math students in Columbia University are concentrated, and there are only 7 students in one class. But soon, I found that my math suddenly changed from "the best" to "the worst". At this time, I realized that although I am a "state champion", my state is Tennessee, which is the so-called "country". When I met these real "mathematical geniuses" from California or new york, I was not only inferior to others, but also afraid to ask questions for fear that my classmates would see that my "state champion" was not really outstanding. As a result, I fell behind more and more, and I still have a little knowledge of this course today (this is another proof that "silence is not golden"). When I finished this course, I deeply realized that those "mathematical geniuses" were obsessed with it because of its beauty, but I was not. On the one hand, I envy them for finding their favorite; On the other hand, I regret to find that I am neither a mathematical genius nor obsessed with its beauty, because I don't want the meaning of my life to be to understand the beauty of mathematics.
In this way, I bid farewell to Harvard, my chosen law, and my proud mathematics.
Memories of my college life (2): I became a great person on campus because I know computers.
Without Harvard, law and math, where will my future go? Fortunately, there is a computer.
In fact, I was very interested in computers when I was in high school. I was lucky in high school. I have an old-fashioned IBM machine at school. At that time, it was 1977, and the computer needed to punch in (that is, punch holes in one card at a time, and then input this pile of punched cards into the computer). One weekend, I wrote a program, solved a complex mathematical equation, and then printed out the results. Because the machine was running very slowly, I finished writing the program and went home. When I went back to school on Monday, I was suddenly called by the teacher and scolded, saying, "Do you know that all our papers were printed by you!" " "It turns out that there are countless solutions to this mathematical equation. Since I left on Friday, the program has been running and the results have been printed out. At that time, printing paper was a thick stack of paper connected together, so a box of paper might cost the school dozens of dollars. As a result, all my programs were used up, and of course the teacher was angry.
When I was a freshman, I was surprised that I could use the computer without typing cards. What surprises me even more is that such fun things can also be regarded as "majors". So I took a computer course and got my first "A+" after I entered the university. In addition to winning the praise of teachers and classmates, I also felt a shock: can this technology think in the future? Can we make humans more efficient? Will computers replace the human brain one day? Solving such a problem is the meaning of a lifetime!
At the end of my freshman year, I got a job in a computer center. They will give me some money as a reward on time, although it is not much, it is also an encouragement. Students will come to me to solve any computer problems, and at that time, "knowing computers" was a very fashionable thing in school, and everyone thought this person was too cool. Even then, my ID was different from others: most people's IDs were "department name+name", such as "cs.kaifulee" for computer majors, "ps.kaifulee" for political majors and "cu.kaifulee" for mine. Cu stands for Columbia University and Columbia+Kai-fu Lee, just like the president. How awesome!
Of course, I also did a lot of boring things, such as programming to guess other people's passwords. At that time, people didn't know that passwords could be cracked. I hacked someone else's account, so I sent some prank letters in his name. Once, I used a male classmate's account to post a "single lady seeking friends" notice on BBS, which led him to receive a bunch of love letters inexplicably. This classmate also works in Beijing now. I don't think he knows today. Next time I see him, I must remember to tell him that I sent the notice.
At that time, the law department of Columbia University ranked third in the United States, and the computer department was only a newly established major. If I choose a computer major with a weak foundation, the future doesn't look very clear. If I choose law department, my future can be predicted: being a judge, being a lawyer, running for parliament and so on. Because there are many templates in front of me, I can follow the plan. When I chose computer major, I couldn't even think of what I would do in the future. At that time, there was no such profession as software engineer. However, I think more about "the meaning of life" and "my interest" (how boring and frustrating it is to do a job that I don't like! ), did not let these real employment problems affect me. So in my sophomore year, I switched from "political science" to "computer science". At that time, a classmate of physics department joked: "If any subject needs to be suffixed with' science', it is definitely not a real science. Look at you, jumping from one' fake science' to another' fake science', jumping around still can't be a scientist. "
Memories of my college life (3): Twenty-five cents a day, playing games until 9999.
I have another "specialty" that most people don't know: playing video games at school is number 1-no one can beat me.
Video games used to be much simpler than now. I often play a game called Space Invaders. There are four fortresses under the screen, which can fire bullets. There are many monsters on it, which need to be fought one by one. At that time, the game machine was "stupid". Monsters didn't fly around quickly, but moved slowly. This game can only be played with coins. It costs twenty-five cents each time, but I don't have much money. Twenty-five cents a day is not a small sum for me, so I only play with twenty-five cents a day and play once or twice after class.
Is such a retarded game challenging? Yes! The score set in the machine is only four digits, the highest score is 9999, and then the score will automatically return to zero. Moreover, each goblin's score is different, some are one point, some are three points, and some are ten points, so when you call near 9999, you should count carefully, because if you make a mistake, if you exceed 9999, you will start at zero. In order to keep the record of the highest score every day, I won't make a phone call like others, but count while playing. Call 9999 and I'll kill myself and stop playing. In this way, the game is very difficult. If you don't play well at first, you need to practice it repeatedly. This is also a big "investment".
In the end, the result of my twenty-five cents a day is almost 9999, and I have practiced to perfection. I always write my initials KFL on it, so that people who come to play in the future can see this record and know who is the highest score, which is still very fulfilling. At that time, there were many students playing games and even had to queue up. If I go, everyone will say, "look, master KFL is coming!" "
I was very disciplined in high school. I have never played this kind of game. When I went to college, I got rid of the shackles of my parents and started playing games. Think back. I was lucky at that time, because these games were not exciting enough to make me really addicted. Just spend 25 cents a day and relax for 20 minutes. At that time, if there were any World of Warcraft or CS, maybe I would indulge in Internet cafes and ruin my life.
In this way, I played games for a semester. What made me out of the "clutches" of video games? It's bridge. I learned to play bridge when I had lunch with my friends in high school. After I entered the university, I joined the bridge club and found that the game was different: everyone held the same deck of cards, so that we could play and see who played the best. At that time, perhaps because of China people's "queuing mentality", I especially liked to take part in bridge competitions in order to win the first place. When I first entered the university, in order to win the first prize, I naively found a "bridge club" where old ladies and gentlemen gathered together to play. After playing for a while, I think it's time to change places. Otherwise, besides being often looked down upon by the old lady, my card skills are getting worse and worse. At that time, there were bridge competitions in many areas, so we hitchhiked to distant places to play, went to famous Ivy League schools such as Yale and Harvard, or participated in national competitions. Since then, we have won many medals and trophies. One of my bridge partners later participated in the Bermuda Cup (a bridge competition similar to the football World Cup) and won the third place in the world. He later became a professional bridge player and lived a comfortable life. I sometimes joke with people: "If I keep playing, I may achieve something in the field of bridge!" " "
Perhaps, some people will think that playing bridge is no different from playing video games, but the difference is great: bridge can cultivate logical thinking ability and exercise interpersonal skills. But when I was a freshman, I was so addicted to bridge that I played 30 hours a week, which seriously affected my studies.
Because of playing video games and bridge, my freshman grade was only 3.26. But since I found my favorite computer, I suddenly became interested in learning. Every time the teacher sends out programming exercises, I have to stay up at night to finish them (although the teacher gave me a week). At that time, I no longer wanted to be the first in bridge, but wanted to be the first in computer. Driven by this interest, my sophomore, junior and senior grades are all in their early 4.0, which makes up for my freshman's playfulness and makes me graduate from the computer department with the first place.
Memories of my college life (4) Discovering other worlds in the process of working.
When I was in college, my family subsidized me for almost two years. Later, I didn't ask for money from my family, and I finished my studies by working on my own. Although my family is well-off in Taiwan Province Province, I still can't afford to pay college tuition by American standards. At that time, the school will provide job opportunities for students from such families. The usual practice is this: one-third of the tuition fee is a grant from the school, the other one-third is a loan from the school, and one-third needs to work by himself (this mode of raising tuition fees, but it is good that everyone can afford to go to college, and it is worth studying in Huada at this stage).
Part-time job is a good opportunity for college students to study. I am lucky and have more part-time experience.
When I first started working, I could do nothing but tutor. The school assigned me to the black area to teach some Mexican or black teenagers. The teaching place is in Harlem, one of the most dangerous areas in the United States, near Columbia University.
At that time, I studied art history and often went to museums to see some paintings. After reading the painting, I went to tutor by bus. Once, I accidentally took two more stops. When I arrived at Harlem Center, I hesitated whether to spend an extra ticket to go back to school. Later, in order to save some money, I chose to walk back. As a result, I made a big mistake: I suddenly saw a completely different world-rows of homeless people, drug addicts and armed men ... Although I was not physically hurt, my mind was shocked, a little bit. When I passed them, although they didn't treat me well, I was always very upset and didn't know what would happen at any time. People there may have never seen the face of an oriental in their life, and when they saw me, they shouted at me in Chinese invented by them. Finally, I walked to the teaching center step by step, finished teaching the last class, and never wanted to leave again.
I just started to apply for an internship in the computer center. The part-time job here has changed a lot. I can get a lot of permissions and do a lot of things. During the summer vacation, I also made some plans and wrote some programs with some companies. The most interesting thing is to write a program to weigh diamonds. It was 1980, my freshman summer vacation.
There are always three summers in college. I worked in the computer center during the summer vacation between my freshman and sophomore years. During the summer vacation between my sophomore and junior year, I did two jobs. One is the story of working in law school in Be the Best I Can, and the other is working in Goldman Sachs. The person who introduced me to work is the person I met when I played bridge. After the bridge, we had a rather speculative chat. They said, since you study computer, why don't you try it here? The interview is very interesting, because there are some very sensitive information in the enterprise, and they will test the interviewer with a lie detector. I haven't seen a polygraph before. Although I haven't done anything bad, I'm still a little nervous.
At first, the interviewer asked, "Are you drunk?"
"No."
"Are you taking drugs?"
"No."
"Have you ever embezzled public funds?"
"No."
"Is there gambling?"
"No."
"Are you sure? Why did your heart suddenly accelerate? "
At that time, I was thinking: Is bridge a gamble? I did make a small bet when I played bridge with my classmates several times. Then he went on to ask, "Why is your heart beating so fast? How much weight have you lost in a week? A thousand? Five hundred? " I quickly explained, "I'm just playing bridge with my classmates." He asked again, "Really? Please tell the truth! " -Very harsh tone. I sighed in my heart: what a pity! Did I ruin such a good job just because I played bridge? Unexpectedly, the interviewer finally said to me, "You have an excellent personality. Get ready to come to work!" It turns out that because this job can come into contact with a lot of sensitive data (such as those stocks that Goldman Sachs is about to recommend), they are afraid that summer workers will use these data to make a fortune, so they must scare every candidate in order to find candidates with bad conduct.
Goldman Sachs is a very good company with excellent employees, and stock analysts wear suits to meet customers every day. But they don't know much about computers, and a lot of data need to be calculated by hand. In order to get rid of the heavy calculation work, they want me to help them with some work. According to their experience, those tasks that I think I need to do all day actually took me about an hour to complete with computer programs. I spent the rest of my time there and learned a lot about investment and management.
In addition to working, college students' club activities are also very helpful for growth. Today, I regret that I didn't participate in any club activities (except the bridge club) in college. Although I joined many clubs in high school, I was very active. I have a good record of participating in social work: I am the vice chairman of the student union and have started my own business three times ... I have very rich experience. But at that time, I forced myself to do all this just to add one more line to my resume when I applied for college. Looking back now, the most precious thing I got from it was the ability to get along with people, not the words on the college application form.
Memories of college life (end) Good friends who make cakes and eat cakes together.
After going to college, I suddenly found myself "under great pressure to deal with people". At that time, there were not many domestic students, and there was no special Chinese circle (of course, it is not necessarily good to think of such a circle now). Sometimes when I walk into a party and see everyone chatting, drinking and joking there, I always find it difficult to talk before someone I don't know. So I went to several freshman parties and asked myself how it happened, and I couldn't even open my mouth. I try to talk to people, but I'm afraid no one will listen to me. And every time everyone is scattered and communicating in twos and threes, I always feel bored and lonely when I stand there, and I don't know how to integrate into such loose communication. So, I quit slowly, closed myself up, stopped attending parties and had no friends. At that time, the friends I could make were friends I met while playing bridge and video games, and my roommate (in retrospect, I really shouldn't have let myself back down. Later, when I was studying for a PhD, I gradually found that social skills were still very important. Unfortunately, I didn't exercise well in college, so I had to make up this course later.
In college, there were four people in a dormitory, and every two people used a dormitory. I have a good relationship with my roommate. He comes from a worker's family and often tells me about his growth process. I will also say something about me. We have always been good friends, and he often calls me up to now. A while ago, when I went to court, he called me specifically and said, "Do you need someone to help you with your personality guarantee?" Although I was very grateful to him, I told him that my personality was fine and I didn't need his guarantee. He added, "In fact, I also know this. I just want you to know that there is a friend standing by your side forever. "
I was working in the computer center at that time, and I would help him with his homework. Besides, he works in the kitchen and can bring me some delicious food to share. On one school spring break, he said, "Anyway, we have to throw away the 25 kilograms of cream cheese left in the kitchen. How about we use it to make cakes? " I said, "Good idea!" . Neither of our families is very rich, and we didn't go home for the holidays to save money. After all, air tickets are very expensive. So, we plan to make 20 cakes with these cheeses, so that we can eat cakes every day and save money for the holidays.
Determined, the two of us began to get busy, but before long, I began to regret this decision. Because 25 kilograms of cheese can't be stirred by an ordinary blender at all, we have to pour the raw materials into a big barrel, and each person takes a stick and stirs it hard. After stirring for more than four hours, my arms are tired. What makes me regret even more is that when we started eating the same cheesecake every day, we felt that there were always endless cakes waiting for you. At the end of the meal, we had reached the point where we didn't even want to see the cake, and we didn't even want to mention the word "cake". Until one day after seven or eight days, he suddenly said to me, "Good news!" "I asked him what it was, and he said," The rest of the cake is moldy! "On that day, the two of us took the subway to the Cantonese restaurant in Chinatown, which was the cheapest and had the largest amount of food, and ordered six dishes to celebrate the moldy cake.
We haven't eaten cheesecake for years. But many years later, whenever we meet, we always joke and say, let's go to dinner together. What to eat? Eat cheesecake! Ha ha!
In this way, the cake will be moldy, but the friendship from the cake is extremely long.
(End)