Five College GPA: 3.805 (till 2022 Fall)

Hampshire College uses evaluation as its grading system. For more explanation, please see "Transcript Key.pdf" below.

We don't have an official GPA, but as we got letter grades for Five College courses, we can calculate our GPA for those courses. Please see "Unofficial GPA Report.pdf" below.

(My unofficial GPA for 18F-22S is 3.795, for some systems, it rounded up to 3.8 automatically.)

I was on leave in the spring of 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak in China.

Then I did a remote semester in the fall of 2020, but attending class at 4 a.m. is definitely not a good idea. So I decided to have another semester on leave in 2021 Spring.

What did I do when I was on leave?

In January and February 2020, at the beginning of the COVID outbreak, I volunteered for a data collection project on medical resources for Wuhan.

Then, from August 2020 to July 2021, I worked as an audio engineer, music tutor, producer, and DJ while taking remote lessons in the 2020 fall semester. I developed a curriculum combining music genres, contemporary music, and the origin of the dancefloor from a multicultural perspective, focusing especially on the impact of music on society, the relationship between disadvantages and different genres, and how music empowers minorities.

Hampshire and the Five College Consortium are definitely places that promote inclusivity, equality, and diversity.

Attending college and pursuing a degree in physics was not easy for me, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak. As a student from another country, I feel very lucky and honored that everyone has been kind to me during my undergraduate studies.

Besides benefiting from a diversity-friendly community, I have long been committed to diversity and recognized the difficulties faced by minorities engaging in knowledge.

I believe learning is about "exploring, knowing, and applying." I want to apply this knowledge, either as an application to the world or by sharing it with other people, specifically disadvantaged people that have less chance to be exposed to the knowledge, and let them benefit from the knowledge they learn.

With such an idea, in the summers of 2017 and 2018, I participated in a volunteer teaching program run by the Green & Shine Foundation at Dukang (village), Luoyang, Henan, PR. China is one of the poorest areas of Henan, China. Kids couldn't receive a basic education due to the lack of teachers and resources. I taught them English and music and also participated in building their mini library. I believe having equal opportunity is very important, and I will try my best to continue sharing my knowledge that might have other benefits in the future.

In addition to my own actions, I also worked to raise society's awareness of the disadvantages of minorities in different ways. When I was on leave and taking a remote semester from college in 2020 and 2021, one of my jobs was as a music tutor in music production and DJ. I developed a curriculum that tells my students about the multicultural aspect of music. Taking disco and the LGBTQA community as examples, I want to increase the visibility of such social issues and support building an equal and diverse environment.

My Story

I am interested in many different disciplines, and they are very disjointed. Physics is the one that appeals to me the most. But it's hard to point to a specific reason or story that brings me to physics. My love for physics stems from very many little things.

The earliest one I can recall was in middle school. In the seventh grade, I was in charge of the technology section of the school TV station. I was very into new technologies and the discovery of new sciences. I remember introducing the discovery of the Higgs boson, the limitations of the classical chip and its fabrication process, and how quantum machines could be the future. The original purpose of that TV program was to get other kids into science, but it turned out that I ended up in physics by coincidence.

I studied IB Physics HL in high school and wrote my physics extended essay. That was the first time I proposed, investigated, and conducted an entire research project. I fell in love with the feeling of solving problems. Besides that, I was interested in computers and participated in many extracurricular activities, like teaching coding to K-12 students from low-income families. In addition, I also participated in many activities, such as jazz ensemble and band. These high school interests made me realize I wanted to explore more possibilities in my undergraduate life.

With this guidance, I came to Hampshire College to pursue my undergraduate degree. At first, I was very confused because I hoped I could learn something different about physics. I wanted to go and use my experience in other disciplines to find an interdisciplinary path with physics. With this in mind, I specialized in music and computers, and of course, math, hoping that I would find my way to physics. However, worries about whether or not I could contribute or do something for myself, the field, the community, or society frequently frustrated me during my first two years of college. I questioned myself: "There are already so many excellent and gifted physicists; how will I fit in with such a collection of people?" That is, I may have forgotten the natural curiosity of the younger me, the kid who once wondered how everything worked: whether we could build the ultimate quantum machine, whether we could use nuclear fusion power, and why mechanics and mathematics cause our universe to behave the way it does. Instead, I begin to lose the "courage" to pursue physics, math, computer science, and other science topics. My self-questioning reached its peak during the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. There was a moment when I wished I was a medical or nursing student. But the only thing I could do was put on my mask and quarantine myself at home. So I focused on music, hiding from other concerns. I became an audio engineer, producer, DJ, and music tutor.

Because of the epidemic, I could not return to the U.S. to continue my studies. So I started to work as an audio engineer, producer, DJ, and music tutor. I have met many people in my teaching (tutoring) career. Most of my students are older than me, and most people don't have any basic knowledge of music. Passion is the only reason for them to study music production or DJing. I realized that I shouldn't be worried too much about whether I could discover some physics laws or others. Instead, I need to pick up the curiosity of the younger me and have the courage to try and explore.

When I returned to college again in 2021, I resumed my path in physics—not a traditional one, but my unique and irreplaceable one. Researching nowadays is like walking in the dark because we don't know what lies beyond the cutting edge, and most attempts fail. Nevertheless, there must be people working on things that seem impossible and slowly pushing the limits of what we know.

I don't know exactly what topic in physics I will be working on in the future. But I know I would like to explore more in physics, and I am willing to contribute to the field and to society.

Why Physics?

I believe the progress of civilization is inseparable from technological breakthroughs, especially in physics. Every time basic physics produces an advance, our world becomes a better place. All other sciences benefit from the advancement of physics. Controlled fusion and quantum computing, for example, are the "superstars" of physics' application in our world right now. In my own interpretation, the former may represent an almost unlimited (clean) resource for humankind to exploit, while the latter could represent an almost infinite virtual resource. I think the new technologies have the potential to solve many global concerns, including but not limited to war, poverty, climate change, and so on. Considering COVID-19, with quantum computing's application in biotechnology, like simulating molecular formulations, we could speed up the development of the pharmaceutical industry.