Gary class of 2022, University of Cambridge Hello everyone, I am Yifan Gao from Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province. I studied in Shenzhen College of International Education between 2020 and 2022. In my university application, I received offers from UCL mathematics and mathematical physics, Waterloo honored Mathematics Program(with scholarship), Warwick mathematics and Edinburg mathematics. I couldn’t achieve […]
Gary: My amazing experience at SCIE Read More »
Adonie class of 2022, University of Cambridge 01 First impressions I became an SCIE student in the summer of 2018. At first I didn’t really intend to apply for SCIE, and only when I learned that some of my friends had applied for the entrance exam did I try it out with the mentality of
Adonie: Developing a Sound Personality Instead of Being Perfect Read More »
Pandora Class of 2022, University of Cambridge A lot of friends say that I play hard while getting into Cambridge. I would say that I only agree with half of the opinion. Or three quarters. After all, I had always been free on my way of applying for a university. Back to when I was
Pandora: I play hard while getting into Cambridge Read More »
I never considered myself as one “good at literature” during my high school years. The art of reading between the lines I never quite mastered, resulting in missing the metaphors and ironies that pepper the texts and failing to come up with any critique worthy of credit. The doors of literature were locked in my
Willows, Pines, and Time Zones Read More »
Kitty Yeung A 2006 Graduate of SCIE Graduated from the University of Cambridge, UK Ph.D. Graduated from Harvard University Currently working at Microsoft Corporation Learn, strategize, produce, learn, strategize, produce…on steroids. I’m enjoying this startup tempo, especially when your whole team is learning the same things together. Remember when we were students, peer studying groups were
By chance, I returned to the familiar campus earlier this year as an alumni intern, experiencing life at SCIE from a different perspective and making up for a lot of regrets. At the end of last summer, just as my classmates were starting their university careers, I chose to take a gap year while reapplying
What It’s Like to be a Trainee at SCIE Read More »
01 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 was and my families had just started
Be Determined on My Way Read More »
Hi, SCIErs~ I’m Cynthia, a 2022 graduate of SCIE, currently studying Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge! In fact, before I joined SCIE, Oxbridge was more of a distant dream for me, and I never thought that one day I would actually succeed in my application—at first, I just thought, ‘why not give oxbridge a
Admitted to Cambridge, I Realized My Dream at SCIE Read More »
Alumni | Joey Dong 2021 is my sixth year in the United States. A lot has happened this year: graduation, internship, moving to a new city, starting a new job. I worked at Equip (a medical technology startup) as an instructional designer right after graduation, and I currently work at Boston Consulting Group as a
Reflections on my Harvard experience Read More »
“AACYF Top 30 under 30” 2021 list was released by the All America Chinese Youth Federation, LAPOST, Chinese American Institute for Public Diplomacy in Los Angeles on March 18, 2021. There are 6 categories this year, 38 recipients were selected from about 420 candidates. AACYF Top 30 under 30 is the only list selecting from
Alumni Beibei Li is Recognized by AACYF Top 30 under 30, Class of 2021 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
