华盛顿大学-圣路易斯文书丨好奇、行动、失败、收获、成长,美中国际美国留学广州分部微信公众号文章

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华盛顿大学

圣路易斯

文书

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学校排名

U.S.News 综合第14

学校名称

Washington University IN St. Louis 华盛顿大学-圣路易斯

学校简单介绍

华盛顿大学-圣路易斯 Washington University IN St. Louis 以美国国父乔治·华盛顿命名，始建于1853年2月22日，位于美国密苏里州圣路易斯市，是美国历史上建校最早也是最负盛名的“华盛顿大学”。它是一所中等规模的研究型大学，它在校生人数12000左右。在众多学科领域，华盛顿大学-圣路易斯具备与美国其它一流大学想抗衡的实力。譬如，在理工科方面，华盛顿大学-圣路易斯的生物化学、生物物理、生物分子和土木工程在美国高校中处于领先地位。在人文学科和社会科学方面，它的德语、政治学、语音学和经济学都在美国高校的同类学科中名列前茅。此外，1993年后的近十年中，华盛顿大学-圣路易斯的医学院和商学院也不断取得令人骄傲的业绩，其分校医学院多次被评为全美最佳五所医学院之一，它的商学院也数次跻身于全美“十佳”商学院之列。

文书范本

April 2012, after month-long preparation and lobbying as well as half-year communication with departments of school and negotiation with social companies, our Library Building Plan was put on hold for lack of funding.

July 2013, after 10 hours of flight and a night rest, we, on behalf of China, came to the venue of Robocp Junior 2013. However, in individual event of the first day, our robot failed to finish the race, let alone win any medal.

August 2013, after nearly six-month of planning, the Ideas for Social Enterprise (ISE) finally kicked off. But we had barely 100 applicants, too few compared to the 300 as planned. 200 vacant seats can’t make up the cost and the committee was at stake.

Looking back, I found that the list could go on and on easily. As long as I tried, setbacks, sometimes failure itself, were inevitable. However, instead of complaining, I actually thanked for them.

Were it not for the difficulty my Library Building Plan encountered, I would not have learned that no plan was good enough to succeed by itself. It required a lot of observation and compromise. When my team proposed the plan to school, the principal could not agree more, but he did not want to pay the bill. Then there draw my conclusion that he cannot be relied on funding, but he can get us connected to all departments of the school. When we learned that the school planned a RMB 150,000 budget to purchase new books, we persuaded the principal to leave half the budget to our disposal. In paper, we helped the purchase and we kept the books temporally. In reality, we had the books and we had our library.

Were it not for the failure in the individual event of Robocp Junior, I would not have learned that no team was good enough to run by itself. It required coordination and cooperation. The failure ruined the moral. A quick analysis told me that our robot could not finish the race if no improvement was done. So, I started by talking to the programming guy and together we encouraged the hardware guy to give it another try. We worked into night, overhauling the algorithm and reconfiguring the parts. In three-day individual event, we ranked 7th due to the irreparable failure on the 1st day. But, the whole team was reinvigorated and everybody gave what he could. In the team event on the 4th day, our team became the dark horse and claimed the 3rd prize in the final.

Were it not for the initial failure in ISE, I would not have learned that even the best idea needed the best marketing strategy. ISE, as we designed, shall be a unique platform that invited the undergraduates to share their experience in learning for high school students. However, we did not give the market a clear prospect for our program. And for the pricing, we thought RMB1,900 would be ideal. Our research showed that it was too cheap for the students with a plan to study in US, but too expensive for those who didn;t. We thought we had the best idea and we took it for granted that we would have pouring applicants. But we were wrong.

ISE is still a work on progress. Will it end in good? I do not know. But it is not important. What’s important is the excitement I had when we were adventuring into the area unknown. It is the same excitement when I first had the plan to build the school library and when we knew that we were the first team in Chongqing to compete in Netherlands. I had planned many things; some are successes and some are failures; some have to change to succeed and some fail even after they change. But what will not change is that I will never stop trying.

申请顾问编著点评

这是一篇叙述“失败”的申请文书，如同所有其他描写“失败”这个主题的文书一样，它透露着作者的思考和成长，然而，不同的是这篇文书并非写了一次失败，而写了众多次失败，甚至还毫不避讳地说自己失败的例子还很多很多。

虽然他这么写，但是却丝毫不影响读者对他的认同，因为，作者在精炼的叙述了自己的失败之后，花了大量的篇幅来写他的总结、反思、收获和成长。而这正式一篇文书至关重要的部分。在描写Library Building Plan的时候，作者写到了自己遇到的实际困难以及如何解决困难，他的plan从最初的搁置终于变成了现实，取得了成功，这是他积极应对困难、思考解决办法的结果。

在描写Robocup比赛的时候，作者又将重心转移到描写团队合作和他在当中的协调方面，他们的团队由于最初配合度不够，在第一轮比赛中就遭受了重创，但是经过他的分析和协调之后，他们的团队在后面几轮比赛中后来居上，追赶了许多的比分并最终夺得第三。在描写ISE经历的时候，作者将重心放在他对于市场的认识，这是一个更加具化的认识。虽然这次活动也没有取得成功，但是能够从作者后来的分析中看出他理性的思考。整篇文书看似零散，但是却有一根分明的主线将这几个部分紧密地串联起来——那就是作者在失败中的所得和成长。

在文书结尾的部分，作者还点出了重要的一笔，“对探知未知领域的热衷”，这不正是高等学府想在学生身上所看到了优秀品质吗？好奇、行动、失败、收获、成长——这就是大学所需要的！