申请耶鲁大学的作文（一）：个人陈述

宋国明

      承蒙几位网友看得起，向我询问关于小犬宋筠申请耶鲁大学的细节，其中彭兄与郑姐鼓励我贴一下筠儿的作文，这让我很犹豫。其实我早先在“十年植一树”文中已经说过，筠儿的作文平实质朴，并无骄人文采，说得严苛一些，就是流水记账、然后加上感想，稳则稳矣，不敢拿出来示人。彭兄坚持说，既然录取了，那至少也是个耶鲁录取的最低标准，贡献出来做参考，也能让诸位家长知道知道，作文没那么神秘，孩子用不着是块作家的料，也能申请。

      这一点理由打动了我，故有此贴。

      我常看到网上流行着一种“一篇奇文定江山”的说法，仿佛是说打造出一篇千锤百炼字字珠玑的申请文章便能扭转乾坤，我认为这是误导学子（与家长）的论调。我还是坚信学校考核学生素质是全面整体的，德智体群综合发展才是正途，作为申请材料的一环，作文的内容一定要跟它的主人翁的其他材料充分吻合才行。作文不是不重要，的确要好好写，但它绝不会像是全国高中百米冠军或数学天才那样能让申请者得到殊遇。材料好，无须作文来扭转乾坤，材料不好，一篇五百字的作文能改变什么？

      筠儿的两篇作文一篇说他如何接触并热爱科学研究，一篇说他对语言和文化多元性价值的体会，都能从他申请的客观材料中得到印证，我认为这可能是他获得录取的主要因素吧。换句话说，作文是个搭配（顶多稍微强化）申请材料的成分，真实反映学生的个性想法就行。至于文笔嘛，他没有找人改动润色过，但还算通顺吧。

      为了方便诸位家长，我在这儿翻译了一下筠儿的作文，把我累的！为了比较忠实地反映他原来的措词和思路，我不得不尽量维持英文原貌，有些话译得别扭，那得赖我，不赖筠儿。我的感觉是（也希望您能同意），读者真的能从这一篇平凡描述他暑期实习经验的短文里，看得出来做实验时他的确乐在其中，真心喜欢他的选择。

        以下是筠儿申请耶鲁的作文（个人陈述）：by Andrew Y. Sung 

“There is something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling of fact.” – Mark Twain

“科学这东西挺妙的，能让人从微不足道的小事中得出一箩筐一箩筐的猜测”

——马克吐温

Science has always been of particular interest to me.  After spending a week learning about insects and arachnids in 7^th grade, it became my goal to become an “arthropod expert.”  While that dream quickly faded, my interest in science remained as strong as ever.  Coming into high school, I knew I wanted to pursue a science-related career.  For some time, I played with the thought of becoming a doctor, but it wasn’t until the summer of my junior year that I found my true calling: research.

      我从小就对科学特别感兴趣。初一那年我们学生物的昆虫纲和蜘蛛纲，一周之后我就立志要做个节肢动物学家。这个梦想很快就褪去了光泽，但我对科学的兴趣却未曾动摇过。上高中以后，虽然我知道我将来会从事跟科学有关的工作，但有好一阵子我还在想是不是要做个医生。直到高三那年的暑假，我才领悟到我天缘注定该做科研。

I had originally planned on taking a physics class over the summer, but it was cancelled when they, astonishingly, could not find enough students interested enough to sign up.  Left with three weeks of free time, I had to find something else to do.  I decided to contact my soon-to-be organic chemistry teacher, Professor David Hall at Lawrence University, to see if I could work with him in the biochemistry lab and get a feel for what real research was like.  The next week, I was in his laboratory.

      那年夏天我本来准备上一门物理课的，可是学校竟通知我说那门课因为凑不满学生而取消了。平空多出了三个礼拜，我得找点什么事来做才行。我决定跟劳伦斯大学化学系的郝大伟老师联系（我下学期要跟他上有机化学），看看能不能到他的生化实验室实习，体验一下真正的“科研”是什么感觉。周末过后，我就进了他的实验室。

I showed up early on the first day in high spirits, lab notebook in one hand and a pen in the other.  I said hello to Professor Hall and, in return, was given a thick stack of honor theses to peruse.  The first couple days consisted of reading through various research papers, zoning out occasionally to the whir of the centrifuges, and marveling at all the high-tech equipment my high school could not afford: P1000 Pipettors, centrifuges, electrophoresis kits, and a mysterious “Belly Dancer.”  However, I was not on the sidelines for long.  By the end of the first week, I was given my first assignment.  I set to it with much enthusiasm, not quite sure what an SDS page gel was, hoping the protocol would take me where I needed to go.  In between finding reagents and waiting for the gel layers to polymerize, I spent most of my time trailing Professor Hall as he poked around the lab, needle in hand, for undergrads willing to donate blood for the good of science.

      那天我一大早兴致勃勃地去了，一手拿着笔记本，一手握着原子笔。我向郝老师道好，他回敬了我厚厚一叠的学士论文，让我好好念。开头几天我忙着念几篇研究论文，偶尔被离心机的嗡嗡转动声弄得脑中一篇空白，偶尔还要赞叹一下那些我们高中买不起的高科技仪器：P1000型吸量管、离心机、电泳器、还有那个神秘的“肚皮舞机”。可是，场边坐冷板凳的日子并不长，第一个礼拜结束前，我得到了第一个任务。我满怀热情地开张动工，虽然我并不十分清楚那个十二烷基硫酸钠聚丙烯酰胺凝胶电泳是干嘛的，只希望照实验步骤去做就能顺利完成。在寻找试剂或等候胶层聚合的空当，我就跟在郝老师身后，在实验室里四处晃荡，看他手里举着针管，专扎那些为了科学愿意奉献鲜血的大学生。

By the second week, Professor Hall and I had come up with several projects to pursue.  One idea, working with the human rhinovirus, soon died following the inexplicable contamination of our A549 cell cultures.  With that out of the picture, Professor Hall decided to have me help him with an anticancer project he had unsuccessfully pursued with three other undergrads for over year and a half.  However, with a stroke of luck we discovered the DNA construct of interest in three out of the eighteen bacteria samples we processed.  Professor Hall was more than ecstatic.  A flurry of experiments and protocols followed this Eureka moment.  Absorbed in the scientific process, the third week flew by without me even realizing it.  At the end of the week, Professor Hall approached me as I was cleaning up my puddle gel lab station and asked me if I wanted to keep going or if I had other plans.  My response?  “I think I’ll stick around for while!”  Whether it was following procedures, analyzing data, or probing frontier science, there were elements of research that just struck a chord with my personality.

      第二周开始之前，我跟郝老师已经商量出好几个课题。有个研究人体犀牛病毒的构想，但是因为我们的A549细胞培养莫名其妙遭到污染而提前放弃。做不成那个，郝老师就决定让我帮他做一个有关抗癌的课题，那是一个他先前跟另外三个本科生做了一年半都没有成果的课题。结果，幸运之神降临，在我们培养的十八个细菌样本中我们发现了三个有用的去氧核糖核酸结构，把郝老师乐得不行。“中奖”之后，接下来是一大堆的后续实验和程序，于是第三周就在我专心于科研步骤下悄然溜走。那一周快结束的时候，我正在清理凝胶搅拌器，郝老师走过来问我是愿意继续跟他做还是有别的打算。我的答复是什么？自然是想继续下去咯。无论是按部就班做实验、分析数据、还是尝试开拓未知的科学领域，科研中就是有一股说不出的力量在拨动我的心弦。

By the end of six weeks, I had run a Western blot, poured several SDS page gels, run multiple minipreps, cloned viral DNA, and finally got to use “The Belly Dancer” laboratory shaker.  Dave and I had gotten to be close lab buddies, he got the data he had been going after for over a year, and I had a new sense of direction as to where I wanted to go in life.

      六个礼拜下来，我已经做过了西方墨点法、几次SDS凝胶电泳、多次的小型实验准备、复制病毒性DNA，甚至我还终于用上了那个会跳肚皮舞的实验室搅拌器。“大伟”跟我成了实验室的好伙伴，对他来说，他收集到追求了一年多的数据，对我来说，则是清楚地知道我人生该走的方向和追寻的目标。

“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.” – Edwin Hubble

“凭着天赋五官，人类在环绕他四周的宇宙中摸索，并称这种探索为科学”