William Class of 2022, University of Oxford The application season is a precious period in high school life. Its function is to transform a high school student into a college student in all aspects. We will gain a lot of things during that period. From the summer vacation in July to the end of the […]
William: What Have I Learned During the Five-month Application Season? Read More »
Keynes Class of 2022, Rice University With only a few days left before leaving, there is no cheering and Fukuyamaist optimism for us. We are accompanied by smoke, epidemics, high temperatures and Duginian mania. Our principal’s speech at the graduation ceremony is of certain enlightening significance. The isolation between social change and personal life cannot
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Leo Class of 2020, University of Cambridge I used to only dream about getting into University of Cambridge, but at the moment where I received their offer, I suddenly realised that I did something that I thought was never possible. This story involves a lot of hard work and luck, and please allow me to
Leo: Sometimes, The Most Important Factor For Success Is Taking The First Step Read More »
Cathy Class of 2022, Hong Kong University For juniors When I was in A1, I experienced a period of severe depression. I always boast of being positive; nevertheless, the fear of failing the CIE examination pressured and suffocated me. The scenario of me sitting on the lockers, staring at the sky, and with a chaotic
Cathy: The UPS AND DOWNS OF MY SCIE LIFE Read More »
Scarlett Class of 2016, Graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics with Economics from LSE, and completed a Master’s degree in Business Analytics at Imperial College London. Currently employed at the Royal Bank of Canada in London, UK. As time flies, I have been working in the UK for nearly two years, from a fresh
Scarlett: Sharing About Working In The UK Read More »
Harry Class of 2022, University of Cambridge ♦ The Wondrous Destiny I always find it wondrous to look back on April of 2018, when I took the entrance exam of SCIE on intention of not wasting the enrolment fee. Unexpectedly, I was in. At that time, I didn’t even know what kind of school SCIE
Harry: Being Determined On My Way Read More »
Gawaine Class of 2022, University College London When I was in junior high school, I was a problematic child. I was tired of the rules and regulations of the public middle school. I hated my life there but couldn’t do anything about it. One day, my mother said to me, why don’t we try SCIE,
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Savanna Class of 2022, University of Cambridge The day Cambridge releases its offers… I fell asleep. Yes, my eyes were literally glued to my computer screen, torn between WeChat and Email. People from my year group were getting their offers from 4pm, and I myself was naturally worried sick. Of course I knew that Cambridge
Savanna: Getting into SCIE, Finding My Target Read More »
Ye Zi Class of 2018, Graduated from University of Oxford I graduated this summer The sense of graduation was like an English rain falling on me, intermittently In the winter of 2017, I came to the UK for my first university interview It was an early morning of winter, Britain remained unweakened, and the ground,
Ye Zi: What This 4-year Education Brought Me Read More »
Jason Class of 2022, Imperial College London 1. Twists and turns during the process of choosing major My choice of major varied from medicine, to dentistry, then finally to biomedical sciences, which took me a long time to decide. I have always been intrigued and inspired by Biology- the subject which I first got in
Jason: Challenge Yourself – the Greatest Success is to Have no Regrets Read More »
My essay is on the recent development of China’s mental health care system and how it can help address this question. Though, I actually parried the question raised by the prompt, and I did not in the end emphasise too much that more care should be devoted to the socially vulnerable. Rather, I intended to underscore the complexity and ambiguity in any employment of these two notions — “socially vulnerable” and “responsibility” — in the concrete working of society. Through my study I discovered that the train of legislative efforts made in the 1980s to 2000s to legally recognise, to enhance public knowledge of, and to erect new asylums for, “the mentally ill,” in fact coincided spatiotemporally with government efforts in putting new agendas of foreign policies and city development to work. Thus, the recent development of China’s mental health care, from scratch to full maturity, is not solely the consequence of “humanitarian effort,” but also of some other ulterior motives. In my conclusion, I hinted that any answer to this question would entail empirical investigation into the concrete working of social institutions, and depending on the nature of this “socially vulnerable” group, claims of “responsibility” may be leveraged as veils for other purposes.
Before starting my research I did not by then have a well-formed hypothesis, but I did have Michel Foucault’s intriguing study on madness in mind. Due to the rather peculiar nature of the object of my study, I was not able to apply the sociological theories (Marxism, Functionalism, e.g.) I learnt in class to my own research. I must thank my sociology teacher for his encouragement and provision of many textbook resources and classical studies done in the field of mental health care. In addition to that, he prepared a statement of the school for my application to conduct short interviews at a local mental health hospital — this application, however, though quite expectedly, sank into oblivion — without his help this project would be very difficult.
I made a documentary “The Definition” about the situation of elderly in Shenzhen to enter this competition. As I have some previous knowledge in filmmaking, learning from TBU studio, I though it would be meaningful if I combined my filmmaking skills with sociology knowledge. In the meanwhile, after learning the very first chapter of sociology, The Family, I found out that the situation of elderly in the UK is different from that of elderly in Shenzhen. For instance, elderly have the responsibility taking care of their grandchildren and dance in the park for entertainment is distinctive in China. Therefore, I decided to make a documentary to record the interesting culture.
I learnt a lot during the preparation for the competition. I learned a lot about how to carry out an individual primary research when I was filming “The Definition”, which helps a lot in my current sociology study. Also, I understood sociology theories better. For instance, postmodernism used to be only a vague theoretical perspective for me, yet it amazed me knowing that elderly people participate actively in public activities can be considered as view of postmodernism.
Most importantly, I realized filmmaking can make some impacts on people, portraying problems of society. Experience of BSA opened my eyes and led me rethink about my future major in college. I want use my skills and knowledge to help more people, so I will probably try a major with humanity and filmmaking combined instead of pursuing the dream of being an artist alone.
Learning sociology gives me a new perspective in seeing how the world works, and it also lets me care more about the vulnerability in the society. Thank you to my sociology teacher, Richard Driscoll, who gave me lots of inspiration such as filming the dancing in the park, which is interesting to British people, and recommenced lots of sociological books about the elderly.
By listening to his advice, “The Definition” eventually divides into two parts: one is about the elderly in nursing home and the other is about people dancing in the park. Also, there is many interviews in the documentary to give a more well-rounded perspective.
I would like to thank my Math teacher Michael Jin and my friend Franchaska, who helped me with the voice over. Also, thanks to my family members, especially my dear grandmother, who gave me lots of insights related to the issue of elderly.
I made this documentary just before the deadline, thus it’s not so perfect. I’ll probably elaborate some shots and reedit it in the future.
If you are interested, you can click the link below and watch it.
Teng Xun Video：https://v.qq.com/x/page/u0862usad2v.html
Bilibili：https://www.bilibili.com/video/av38188271?from=search&seid=10452775157822232568
