Dear teachers, dear students,
I am deeply honored to be here with you today to celebrate this wonderful day. Students of SCIE Class of 2022, let me congratulate all of you on your extraordinary achievement in this challenging and unprecedented situation, and on your graduation!
The SCIE Class of 2022 are fortunate to have spent two years of their high school life in the old and new campus each. The kids have had a rough time during their four years of high school. Unpredictable international situation, pandemic, classes online, the most competitive application season. At the same time, they are fortunate to eventually get the offers from world-class universities with their strength and abilities and will start a new journey soon!
Ernest Hemingway said: “Courage is grace under pressure.” Dear children, thank you for doing your best throughout the application season to achieve your dreams. Thank you for, experiencing the difficult SAT and ACT registration under pandemic, actively stepping up and working with the PA to facilitate the establishment of the school’s ACT test centre for the benefit of future students.
Thank you for allowing us to see our younger selves in you with the same never-dying enthusiasm and twinkles in eyes. We watch you with tearful smiles, and with sweet melancholy.
Time flies, and the day of your enrollment seems like yesterday. Be it the small and delicate Shuiwei campus or the modern and beautiful Antuoshan campus, you have decorated them with youth, enriched them and honored them! Your Alma mater will always be proud of you!
In the past four years, your parents have accompanied each other, helped each other, comforted each other, hugged each other for warmth during the application season, and have become the best of friends, or even comrades-in-arms. Three years ago, the speech from the Class of 2019 parents at the graduation ceremony touched my heart. Today, as I stand here speaking on behalf of all the 2022 parents, I still want to express the same theme: love, will always be here.
Because of love, here is inclusiveness. Through the campus relocation, the new pandemic and online teaching, no matter what kind of turmoil we are in, SCIE still does her best to give everyone the best care and a dynamic high school life with her freedom, equality and democracy, practicing our school mission and statement.
Because of love, here is support. Your parents may not always understand what you say and what you do; they may be nagging you; and they may put a lot of pressure on you by putting their own expectations on you. However, they also give you the most powerful support, both financially and mentally. Wherever your parents are, they will always be who you can rely on and your harbor.
Because of love, here is inheritance. You have led younger students to quickly integrate into campus life, given them study tips, and shared your college application strategies during the graduation season. You are the living examples of SCIE’s “To give, to help and to guide” tradition. This is the warmest, purest and the most touching love of our students!
On the night of the graduation celebration, you were singing Eason Chan’s “Lonely Warrior”. A few sentences from the lyrics says: “You are just as proud of the courage in loneliness. Who said the one playing a game of ordinary is not considered a hero? Listen to the whimpering and roar at night. Who said only the one standing in the light can be considered a hero? “.
In the long application season, time sometimes flew by, and sometimes dragged on. We can see that you have been working hard to move forward. There are tears in your eyes but light in your hearts. In our mind, each and every of you is a hero! We will always be proud of you!
Love is always here, quietly, around us, and in our hearts. From your Alma mater, from your family, from your friends, even from strangers. We are experiencing overlapping effects from an era of changes and pandemic of the century. No one can predict the future, and there might be even more hardships and challenges in your future.
But I firmly believe that because of love, every setback you encounter, every pain you endure, and every gap you cross will become your shiny armor and the source of never-ending strength. When you are powerless, think of someone waiting for you not far away, someone quietly loving and supporting you. Don’t be frustrated, as there is always warmth and hope in life that comes unexpectedly.
Finally, on behalf of all the parents of the Class of 2022, I wish SCIE to carry forward her cause, forge ahead into the future, and lead the international education to a higher level!
We wish the visionary leaders of the college and the diligent teachers good health and great success!
We wish the parents all the peace and joy!
We wish our beloved children to march forward bravely in their golden age, live up to their youth and achieve their dreams!
Thank you all!
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