Blog Post #4: Personal Statement

My experience in life is one adventure where I set out to pursue my goals and aspirations. One of my guiding philosophies in life is to undertake ‘Human Revolution’ in my own life; to resolve and take concrete action to surmount my own limitation. With this principle of life, I took full responsibility of my life to seek ways to polish and to build strong character, and actively challenged my shortcomings rather than taking shortcuts and hiding my weaknesses. Thus, this enabled me to treat everyone with humility and to live a life away from self-centeredness.

Since three years ago, I set my long term goal towards the field of research in chemistry. Beginning with that goal in mind, I worked with my short term goals, avoided being result oriented and prioritized my work to develop my soft skills which would be important in the long run. This is one of the important skills I had learnt from my favorite book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey’. I saw how my life transformed from winning for myself to winning for others by taking my first step to be proactive in life; I recalled the vivid image of myself during my first year in university, boldly volunteered to work in my professor, Dr Lu Yixin’s research laboratory. It was my courage and will to step out of my comfort zone, to be independent and to see how the world can be my stage; I was able to spend six months in Dr Victory J. Hruby’s research laboratory to engage in serious research work and to interact with fellow American students in University of Arizona under sponsorship from National University of Singapore.

Through participation in various community services to gain victory for others, I understood the importance of being courteous to people whom I was commuting with; showing respect for people around me (regardless of their social status) allowed me to inculcate humility. Thus, I could learn from others in every way. Being a trainer for numerous public performance, there were numerous occasions when training fifty participants twice a week became a chore especially when I played this role for seven years. However, my strong determination and perseverance, and the satisfaction I gained from all the grateful words from my participants about how they benefited from all the past trainings at the end of every performance kept me going through these years. I realized that being a trainer is not simply training others but it is about training my own personality and interpersonal communication skills such as empathy and active listening.

An inspiring writer Dr Daisaku Ikeda once wrote, “No matter what kind of difficult situation one may find oneself in, some opening, some opportunity to fight one's way out, can always be found. What's most important is to hold fast to hope, to face the future with courage.” With hope and courage, I can definitely overcome deadlocks in my life and future research endeavours.