留学文书的种类：嘉文博译“个人历史陈述”范例

Instruction:
The Personal Statement of History is required to be considered for university fellowships. This statement is an important component of your financial support application. Please note that the Personal Statement should not duplicate the Statement of Purpose. Please provide a statement about how your personal history or experiences have influenced your intellectual development and future goals. This statement can include a discussion of educational and cultural opportunities or of circumstances that deprived you of these; family background; economic circumstances; special interests and abilities; and community or social service involvement, especially as they intersect your academic goals and intellectual pursuits.

In my personal history, my father is the person who has exerted the most decisive influence over my intellectual development and my academic goals. As professor of economics at Sun Yat-Sen University in southern China with a published book Principles of Income Distribution, my father has been performing some of the most pioneering research on industrial economics and Chinese economic restructuring. He ushered me into the realm of economics by instructing me, since my childhood, to be a person of social responsibility. This doctrine resulted in my choosing economics as my area of specialization upon entering Peking University, a discipline in social sciences that I believe can allow me to fulfill my social obligations most directly.

Following my father’s footsteps, I have been performing intensive research on Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations since my undergraduate career. My first two research papers on Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations— Mechanism of Formation of Industrial Clusters in Small and Medium Cities in China and The Advantages of Labor Division Among Industrial Clusters (the latter published this July in Economics Dynamics, a leading scholarly journal in China), was the result of my close collaboration with my father. In performing our research, my father taught me how to construct highly simplified mathematical models whereby to demonstrate how an optimum pattern of labor division among the industrial clusters contributes to an unparalleled regional competitiveness.

Translating research findings into research papers has been a trait I share with my father. So far I have completed a total of 6 research papers, mostly on Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations. Every time I return home to visit my parents during summer and winter vacations, such occasions would more often than not turn into father-daughter economics seminars or workshops where we would agree and disagree. Yet, behind all such family academics, I am acutely aware of the differences in our academic views that are apparently linked with the educational opportunities my father had decades ago and those that I have had over the past five years.

Although upgrading his knowledge by closely following the cutting-edge research in the international academia, my father is a product of orthodox teachings during the notorious Cultural Revolution in China’s contemporary history during the 1960’s to 1970’s. China’s economic reform during the 1980’s and its subsequent and gradual transition from the centralized planned economy to market economy have caused great confusions in the minds of the economists of my father’s generation. The social and economic development of the country is so dramatic and the drastically changing social and economic realities far outpace their thinking. It has been painful for me to notice that they have to negate their own theories formulated in their early stages of research. And there are visible traces that they are still confined by the ideological barriers, which hamper them from becoming receptive to mainstream theories and research findings of western economics.

Compared with my father, I have enjoyed much more stimulating educational and cultural opportunities that would have been totally inconceivable during his student career. Whereas he was instructed in dogmatic Marxist economic theories, I have been receiving an exciting education in the most updated mainstream western economics. Peking University, being the institution with most dynamic scholarly thinking, has attracted a large number of international scholars as well as leading Chinese scholars with profound western training over the past decade to teach there. Even though I was in China during my undergraduate education, I was already receiving an international education, my economics textbooks are all western classics and much of the teaching and coursework was carried out in English. In addition, my present Master’s program at the Department of Economics, University of West Ontario, has allowed me to be exposed to standard economics teaching and to work with some of the most distinguished economics scholars in North America.

Academically and culturally, my perspectives as embodied in my economics research have been more cosmopolitan than that of my father. My thinking is no longer circumscribed by any politic ideology and dogma. Being exposed to different schools of thought, I tend to be eclectic in my perspectives and methodologies, critical of all those that I deem not true. This is why I am ready to have dialogues with all the great minds of economics, and even to question and challenge their theories. In this instance, I have written a critique of the symmetric monopolistic competition model of Avinash Dixit and Joseph Stiglitz. Entitled The Asymmetrical Factors of Differentiated Products, my paper introduces the asymmetrical factor and deducts a more general formula of price elasticity. My aim is to offer an alternative way of monopolistic competition research.

My father and I represent two generations of economics researchers. Our differences are indicative of the different underlying academic and cultural implications across two generations and those academic and cultural implications are essentially connected with the changing social and economic realities of my home country. I have had more resourceful academic and cultural opportunities than my father. But this is no reason for my complacency. Instead, it makes me all the more appreciative of the educational and cultural opportunities that are accessible to me, including the potential opportunity at Berkeley.

Nevertheless, to keep alive the intellectual tradition and to reflect on the issues of important concern of my home country, which is unique in both its economic growth and its economic system, is a pursuit my father and I share. We further share the commitment to inquire into what we believe to be the truth of our country’s economy in the spirit of free play of the mind.

The completion of my graduate study at Berkeley will definitely put me on an unparalleled foundation for a research career. As the small and medium enterprises in the private sector are rapidly supplanting the conventional state-owned large enterprises as the main components of the country’s vibrant economy, I am interested in studying their organizational behavior and industrial relations. As a matter of fact, my past research has happened primarily in this realm. There will be quite a few first-rate research institutions in China where I can pursue this professional path, including my alma mate—Peking University—where I can teach and research at the School of Economics, the Guanghua School of Management, Center of Economics Research, or School of Government. Peking University, in its drive to become a world-class institution, recruits annually a substantial number of Ph.D.’s with educational background in the West, especially in the United States. In joining Peking University, I will introduce into it the intellectual vitality of Berkeley. Therefore, I consider your Ph.D. program as a fresh starting point leading onto a more advanced level of scholarly research.