Last year, I learned something that few young people of early 20s would want to learn. This is, anguish is an integral part of life. On March 31, 1996, a day I shall never forget, my father passed away, having suffered a heavy heart attack. Until then, I had not given much thought to the concept of death, and never expected to lose someone so close to me so suddenly. The burden of life thus came to weigh don on me without any warning.
My father's death marked the end of an era for me. Before that, my life was so smooth that I never seemed to have a care in the world. Having been brought up in a loving family, I distinguished myself in all of my grade school years, always the best of the class. In the highly competitive National University Entrance Examinations that are held annually nationwide, I scored as the second best in my hometown Tianjin, one of China's largest cities that sent over 20,000 youngsters to the exams together with me that year. With that, I gained acceptance into the Qinghua (otherwise known as Tsinghua) University, arguably China's best higher learning institution. I performed so well at the university that I won scholarships for three years in a row. I was also awarded with a number of other honors.
Overnight, everything changed. With my mother's low salary,, the family could hardly sustain itself, not to speak of putting two people, my sister and myself, through the university. It therefore fell on me, the elder of the two children, to support the family. When the loss of my father finally sank in my first reaction was to shrink from my new obligations. But I quickly reclaimed my sense of responsibility and proceeded to create a new life for me and my family out of the shattered pieces of the life we had before. As few students in China can cover all his or her expenses with scholarships only, I began to work part-time. I have since served as a helper in the library, a waiter in a cafeteria, and an assistant in a number of research projects. Inevitably, these jobs have put a dent to my academic performance at the university. I have, however, gained more experiences an individual, which have helped me attain more maturity and a stronger sense of purpose, not only than I had before but also than most people of my age generally have. Through these experiences, I have not only solved my financial problems but also received an education that I could not have received in the classroom. By learning and making use of my strengths that I never knew existed, I have brought forth my true self to meet the worldly challenges.
I first chose engineering for a career when I was in high school. My father, a chief engineer in an automobile engine plant for many years, was the main source of inspiration for this choice. He and long working hours that was sometimes associated with his job. Having watched him work other hand, I often shared my father's pleasure an sense of accomplishment, as he led the plant in achieving technological innovations, averting emergencies or otherwise reaching a research goal. As trying as the field might be, I have found the profession intellectually engaging and emotionally satisfying. On the basis of such considerations, I decided, with the full support of my father, to follow my father in his footsteps and make myself an engineer as well.
Last summer, I took part as a research assistant in a project that used ANNs (Artificial Neural Networks) in Naphtha's RVP modeling. In this project, we created a naphtha raid vapor pressure model of process data from an HYSIM process simulation. The ANNs based on a feedforward architecture and a back-propagation technique alternately using negative and conjugate gradients was used in the model building. The accuracy of the model is within 1.185% of the target value. Thanks to my knowledge in this field, I was later on chosen to develop a CAI (computer aided instruction) software of the ANNs as part of my graduation project. The CAI of the three most frequently used ANNs (Forward Networks, Hopfield Networks, and Self-Organizing Networks) was thus created. I used a combination of different languages in designing the software, compiling the user interface part in Visual Basic and the training algorithm part in C++. I believe that the successful completion of the project demonstrates my proficiency and potential in both computer programming and theoretical analysis. The project re-enforced the special interest that I had long entertained in the area of ANNs.
Another area of particular interest to me is robot control, for which I took a number of courses and read numerous journal articles. I am currently also planning to learn more about the applications of the LQG (Linear Quadratic Gaussian) controller.
My ultimate goal is to obtain a teaching position at a university or research institution. For that, I intend to eventually earn a Ph. D. degree.
The drive to succeed is now deeply ingrained in my character. Not content with just getting by, I want to get ahead. To pursue graduate studies, I have given up an opportunity to be admitted to the Ms Program in the Department of Automation of the Tsinghua University, a move that has given rise to quite some uncertainty to my future. But I have heard that, if a fog prevents the sailor of a small boat from seeing the buoy marking his course, he turns the boat quickly in small circles, knowing that the waves he makes will rock the buoy in his vicinity. He then stops to listen ad observe, and repeats the procedure, if necessary, until he hears the buoy clang. The making of these waves may engender some danger, but that is a small risk to take for finding where his course lies. A boat that stays in the harbor never encounters any danger, but it does not get anywhere either.
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