blog #4

Every student except me in this class is an undergraduate student. As a unique graduate student, I’d like to share my precious experience happened during my undergraduate and master years. I am majoring in mathematics, pursuing Ph.D at Ohio State University now. I wasn’t the person who originally wanted to be a mathematician. In fact, until I was in 2^nd year in college I’d never thought about pursuing professional study.

In my second year in college, I met a professor. I had taken his class related to his research area called analysis for 2 years, 4 classes from beginning of my first year to the end of the second year. He had always been nice to me personally and academically. He found out my potential intelligence so eventually he decided to support me financially for my rest of college years. He bought me lots of textbooks, made me participate in several projects. Especially whenever I got depressed, he could feel my depression and cheered me up by sharing his frustrating moment. I was so touched. Thanks to him, I could fall in love with my major, math. I wanted to be a person like him, who helps and has a good effect on students. At the final semester I made myself decide to study abroad in order to be a professional mathematician like him.

In order to study math abroad, first and the most important thing was going graduate school and getting a masters degree in my country because we needed good recommendation paper. So I naturally thought of him as my master advisor and he accepted me as his student. I was so happy. It was the beginning of my last undergraduate semester.

However, four days before the first day of graduate school, he told me that he can’t accept me as his student. He didn’t even tell me the reason. It turned out that there is another person who wanted to be his student and he wanted to accept her because her GPA is better than mine. I was frustrated. Anyway I couldn’t waste time spending on frustration. I had to find another person. There was only one available professor, who was female whose major was abstract algebra, which was my weakest study field. I felt devastated. I had gotten poor grades on any abstract algebra related courses so I had never wanted to study in this area. But I had no choice. I had to choose her and I had to be chosen by her. Decided to major in algebra for my master degree, I started thinking. How could I study in this area, take these courses. Furthermore, how could I write the thesis paper. I didn’t know what to do.

Surprisingly, I was able to be good at this area as one semester passes and another. Here is the reason. Since I wasn’t sure about my ability to study this area, I had to struggle with it, spend more time on studying. I tried to be good at all courses and I was. I was always the top of the courses during my master years. I was surprised by myself. I didn’t even know that I have ability to be good at this area. This frustration moment found out my potential. It was amazing.

On the other hand, my new advisor had a nice personality as well and I built a great relationship with her just like I did with him. Also she felt sympathy with my pain, what I had been through. She was always willing to help me, cheer me up and motivate me. She knew my situation even my background. As time passes, she has been impressed by my endeavor and ability to be good at any fields. Finally, I ended up publishing my thesis based on abstract algebra. Moreover, because of my endeavor, I could get great recommendation paper from my thesis committee members and my advisor. One of the committee members had good relationship with many American colleges. So I could easily be admitted by several American colleges.

Now I can say myself as an expert on any fields on mathematics. I am so proud of myself. From this experience, I have earned not only background of algebra and an admission but also a precious lesson saying that “in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” by Albert Einstein.