Journalism From China with Love Graduate Admissions Essays
Journalism From China with Love
The purpose behind this personal statement is to not only gain admission to your well-established and highly respected Masters program, but to impress upon you my passion for learning and my tremendous desire to succeed in the field of journalism. I have based my decision to pursue an academic career not on purely practical reasons, but rather on my own natural interests and aptitude. My personal philosophy is that the biggest loss that a person can suffer is the loss of one’s enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm, life becomes monotonous and boring. My enthusiasm for continuous, life-long learning – particularly in the field of print journalism – makes me a model candidate for your Masters program.
Many applicants may claim to be from an underprivileged family, but I freely admit that I was born into a middle class family. My parents are both ordinary citizens that worked for railway companies in China. Through the influences of both my father and my mother, I fell in love with reading at an early age. My mother taught me to read (in Chinese of course) when I was only four years old. This knowledge was the key to the entrance of entire new worlds that I never could have even imagined before I learned to read. By the time that I had entered primary school, I had already finished one of the four classic works of ancient Chinese literature – The Three Kingdoms.
Although this was a difficult work of literature for such a young age, I was determined and persistent enough to not only finish the book but to understand and appreciate its deeper meanings. My parents had given me the best gift that a parent can give – the love of reading. My thirst for reading was nearly unquenchable. Fortunately, my family realized the importance of my desire to read and was able to afford all of my book purchasing requests.
My love for reading continued throughout my primary school years. Following primary school, I earned the opportunity to study at Changsha Yali High School, which was founded by fellows from Yale University of the United States in 1906.
This particular high school emphasized an English education by providing oral English classes for seventh through twelfth graders and was taught by Yale undergraduate university students. This relatively early exposure to the English language ignited another fire in me, that being the desire to master the English language. I learned as much as I possibly could about the English language during these six years. I became determined to learn even more and vowed to never stop learning as I came to realize that one never really masters any language, including our native tongue.
After high school I was accepted into Central South University in China. Unfortunately, this university lacked a program in journalism, so I chose the most closely related subject to journalism, and therefore majored in English.
My favorite classes were those that were affiliated with writing and the media. I did well in class study of video, which featured critiques and discussion of English movies. Oral English classes continued to be among my favorites, where I could not only improve my own English language ability by speaking but also by listening to others in the class. Another class that I particularly enjoyed was called “Images of British and American Culture and Society”, which gave me a tremendous insight into the contrasts of British and American cultures and that of my native China. My English writing class gave me the chance to transfer my thoughts to paper in a meaningful and useful manner. The ability to express one’s thoughts in two different languages and to have people actually understand these thoughts became fascinating to me.
Through these university courses, I became more exposed to Western culture. The desire to analyze and compare Western and Chinese culture through writing became a driving force inside me. I became absorbed in reading English newspapers and inquisitive about other English language media. I read the China Daily and 21st Century English language newspapers as well as Reader’s Digest and Time .
