Tenacity pays off for studious future scientist
Print Edition
AT the young age of 22, Zhang Anqi has already accomplished a lot: She’s a xueba (literally “study overlord”) graduate of Shanghai’s Fudan University and was the youngest teacher of TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) at New Oriental, China’s largest provider of private educational services.
She has been admitted to Harvard University on a full scholarship for PhD in chemistry and chemical biology; she will fly to the US to start her new studies at the end of this month.
Tall (1.78m), pretty and smart, Zhang challenges the traditional Chinese stereotype that a person who excels in studies must be boring and introverted. Instead, she is open-minded, active and a strong communicator.
The Qingdao, Shandong Province, native attributes her success to her strong willpower, tenacity, patience and support from her English teacher mother, Wang Fei.
Her new book, “The Growing Path of Mensa Girl Zhang Anqi,” which she published jointly with her mother, was launched during the recent Shanghai Book Fair.
Zhang says scientific research “is my life career and I hope to be a professor in a university where I can continue my study.”
Wang, the mother, adds Zhang’s success was achieved not on intellect alone because “no one can achieve success easily; even the smartest ones should make great efforts.”
In fact, Zhang has seen her share of setbacks. When in middle school, she didn’t pass the interview to get straight into the Qingdao No. 2 High School, despite thorough preparation. Then in high school, she missed the top prize in the chemistry competition by a few points.
In her first two years at Fudan University, the scientific articles she sent out were all returned as they were not deemed qualified for publishing.
“At that time, she was on the brink of collapsing,” Wang recalls.
But these failures only made Zhang more tenacious and persistent. When she was still a freshman at Fudan, she registered for the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) because she knew her limited vocabulary had seriously affected her English learning.
GRE requires students to have a vocabulary of at least 20,000 words while Zhang says she had mastered only 5,000. She gave herself three months to learn thousands more words. “I said to myself, ‘let the storm come more fiercely’,” she says with a smile.
During those three months, Zhang went on an odyssey of building up vocabulary. When she was eating, she thought about words; while sleeping, she dreamed of words.
“As long as I was breathing, I tried to recite as many words as I could,” she says.
Finally, the hard work paid off.
When it comes to her beloved scientific research, Zhang was even harder on herself. She used to stay at the laboratory for 16 hours every day. Even in the last two days before Chinese New Year’s Eve, she was still in the school library searching for information.
“Doing scientific research is the path I chose. I must achieve it even if going through it on my knees,” Zhang says. “I never see myself merely as an undergraduate, a lady or a youngster” when it comes to painstaking efforts.
Wang sometimes feels pain to see what her daughter is doing, although she knows she can’t change her mind. Actually, it is Wang who made Zhang much more independent than other children when she was a little girl.
“My mom always told me that I was one-third of the family, so I needed to do one-third of the housework,” Zhang recalls.
On the first day of high school, she was surprised to find that her seven roommates’ parents were all busy helping their daughters clean the dormitory.
“It was the first time I realized that other children needn’t do housework at home,” Zhang says.
Wang encouraged her daughter, telling her, “the first lesson in high school is independence and you have won this already. You have won at the very beginning.”
In the summer of her second year at university, Zhang was employed at the age of 19 by New Oriental to be a TOEFL teacher. During that “summer vacation,” she stayed at home for only eight days and taught 19 classes in all. She has earned 50,000 yuan and used it to pay the tuition for the coming school year at Fudan University.
“She told me it felt really cool to use the money she earned herself to pay the tuition,” Wang says.
The whole applying process at New Oriental was actually difficult, especially the final test — trial teaching. Each new teacher has 10 minutes to give a lecture in front of a group of experienced teachers.
Zhang failed on her first try, despite a lot of serious preparation, because “I’m too young to look like a teacher.” She was told that she probably couldn’t hold the class.
After that, Zhang practiced every day at noon in front of Fudan’s Guanghua Building on campus. She spoke loudly and sometimes would interact with those passing by. After two months, she returned for a second try. This time, she made it and became the youngest TOEFL teacher at that time.
“I always believe that everything has a happy ending. If it doesn’t, that’s because it has not reached the end,” Zhang told a forum held last Sunday.
Zhang will spend five years at Harvard University.
“Sometimes I felt frustrated to find that my daughter is so independent that she doesn’t need me anymore,” says Wang, the mother. “However, when she planned to go abroad, I was glad again she was such a girl that I needn’t worry too much.”
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