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Zhiqing Zhang

Professor Marie Webb

Linguistics 12 5 p.m.

09 April 2019

Dear Child, Your Grades Are Not Everything

Test-oriented education will kill infinite great artists, musician, scientists,

and also designers, because decent grades alone will not guide children to

success. –Zhiqing Zhang

I was born in a typical Chinese family, which hopes their children are safe all the time.

Staying in my comfort zone and trying to get all A’s on my transcript were my goals, but I did

not know why I lived in that way. My grandmother influenced my mother deeply since she was a

child, whereas my father put all his attention to his career and knew nothing about my education.

My grandmother’s strict instruction controlled every step of my early education.

Last year I went back to my grandparents’ house, where I spent my first seven years of my

life. After sharing my stories in high school and reporting my grades to my grandparents, I

walked straight to my bedroom and had a tour in my room as if I were still a child. I flicked the

dust off and opened the old album which recorded my growth from zero years old to seven years

old, to the day that I left this house. A photo unpredictably dropped to the ground when I was

putting all the photos back into the album. I picked the photo up and sank into my memory, an

epitome of my childhood and my test-oriented education.

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The photo was taken by my grandfather in my bedroom. There was a small white plastic

table with a Mikey Mouse logo and also a small wooden chair. Some pencils, pens, and erasers

silently stayed in the black penholder, ready to be used. A table light stood on the desk and

illuminated the room with its yellow warm light. I sat on the chair with a thick book and

concentrated on my homework. Beside me was my grandma, quietly sitting. I could hear the

sound of the clock, “Tick-tock, tick-tock.” It pointed to eleven. This was my battlefield. My

enemies were the difficult questions that I could not solve. The war was brutal.

“Grandma, Jessica invited me to play games together this afternoon. I wanna go with her,” I

politely begged. “You have homework to do and you know this, right? Don’t waste your time on

games, go ahead and finish your work!” Grandma answered my request without considering.

I was six years old when my parents moved to another city for their business. They left me

to live with my grandma, a strict math teacher. From then on, I began listening to her

instructions. She gave me all her love and lessons as a grandmother and a teacher. Strict

education was painful for six-year-old me, so I hated grandma every time she blocked me from

games and TV shows. “You should only focus on your tests, exams and grades,” she said, “these

are the things a student should do well on.” There was a window in the photo. When I looked out

from this window and saw children playing around with joyful smiles on their faces, I always

wondered why they were allowed to laugh loudly without worrying about their homework. I was

jealous. The contrast between my life and those children’s lives made me sad.

Under strict education, I tried my best to avoid making mistakes and to answer every

question correctly for my homework, tests and exams. One night, I finished my thick homework
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book and went to sleep. I knew the teacher would not grade those questions one by one, so I did

not check my answers because of laziness. I fell asleep with the joy of finishing my work. When

I woke up the next morning, some answers in the homework book disappeared. Grandma

checked my homework, erased all the wrong answers and left me with unfilled blanks. I cried as

if I lost my favorite toy, although I had never owned a toy. I did not know why I cried so sadly,

but I knew that the accumulated pressure was too heavy for little me. “Grandma, this homework

is so annoying! How could you erase all my answers? I spent my whole week on it!” I shouted at

the top of my lungs, “no matter what, I’m not going to listen to you this time!” After releasing

my anger, I saw a glimpse of sadness and surprise appeared in her eyes. It was the first time I had

a quarrel with grandma. Soon, I found out that arguing with her did not work because my

homework would still be checked, and my answers would still be erased if they were not correct.

I was tired but I had nothing to do, so I accepted the fact that I must calculate all the questions

again and again.

My education from grandma ended the year before high school. My parents came to

grandma’s house on a hot summer day. I was in my bedroom, doing my homework as usual.

When I walked close to the door, I heard words like education, style, new, school, and tomorrow.

My curiosity forced me to open the door a crack and listen to their talking. I finally understood

that my parents decided to send me to a new school in their city. When I heard the news, I was

supposed to be happy because I would get toys, games, and freedom to hang out with friends.

However, I was not. The next morning, I packed my clothes, my notebooks, and the thick

homework book into my bag and left the house. Sitting in the car and ready to leave, I saw the
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tear on my grandma’s face and the wrinkles between her brows. When the car started to move,

my eyes got wet and I could barely see the shape of my grandma.

My mum explained to me about grandma’s old education style. She said that test-oriented

education was out of date. Besides, they decided to send me to a Canadian high school and study

abroad in the future. My life had changed, totally. She took me to a music school to study violin

and clarinet, which I had not been allowed to learn because grandma said that art was a waste of

time. My leadership was built from the experience of organizing activities in school. I studied

different languages like English and Spanish during my high school time. In addition, I

conducted chemistry and physics experiments and developed my interest in scientific study.

Through every new challenge, I understood that education was not only about grades. It included

all my curiosity, bravery to research and persistence during the learning process.

My eyes stopped on my grandma’s face on the photo. Getting a straight A’s transcript was

her goals and all Chinese families’ expectations for their children. “Is it worthy to study

everything only for the test?” I asked myself. Under the influence of grades, I had hidden my

wants and curiosity about the world from others. I was trained as if I was a learning machine. My

opportunities to step out of my limited world and to seek my interests were deprived by

grandma’s instructions.

My memory stopped. I put the photo back to the album and opened my thick homework

book again and held it tightly. On the last page of the book, there was a paragraph. I read it out in

a low voice, “I am sorry for giving you a strict and cruel childhood, and I need to admit that I did

something wrong. My lessons are old now. If time could go back again, I would not only focus
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on my grades. Be brave to step out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself. BUT still

remember, your hard work is worthy and please keep fighting for what you want to be.” I had

recognized the familiar handwriting, clear and strong. Just like few years ago in the car, I closed

the book and was ready to continue embracing my academic journey with curiosity and

challenges.
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April 20, 2019

Humanities and Social Science Building

UC Santa Barbara
University Rd, CA 93106

Dear Ms. Victoria:

You had a fabulous academic performance in your first college year. As a freshman, you have
already experienced the life as a college student. Few months later you will no longer be a freshman
but a sophomore. Under the influence of your grandma, you have been educated by her test-
oriented education since you were a child, so it is not difficult for you to maintain a decent grade.
However, decent grades are not enough for you to achieve success. To be prepared for continued
academic success and your future career, you should find your true interest and work harder for it.
This letter is a list of objectives for your future college study, and it is a well-organized plan for
you to follow.

To build up a plan for your future, you need to decide you major in advance. Learning different
academic fields through activities will point you in the right way of deciding your future. In the
past year, you did not go to any academic competitions and seminars in school. These events were
valuable because they were access to provide opportunities and experience that you will never gain
in classrooms. For example, student organizations about finance organized seminars in the
university center which taught students about world accounting companies, stock exchange centers
and explained the complex financial system in business. Also, students in computer science major
once opened workshops for those were interested in programming and computer languages. There
are some upcoming events you can participate in campus like career fairs and business seminars
about finance.These activities are important resources to you to decide your future discipline. Hope
Jahren, the author of the book Lab Girl, was influenced by her family since she was a child.
Although she knew that she was expected to finish her mother’s dream of studying literature, she
did not obey the expectation and decided to be a female scientist. She said, “There I transformed
from a girl into a scientist, just like Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man, only kind of backward”
(17). Jahren found her interest and destiny by experiencing various academic fields. Gaining
knowledge in different academic fields will help you to find the right path of your academic
journey

After deciding your major and studying related courses, you need to participate in internships to
strengthen ability of teamwork and leadership. Working in a company is a valuable and meaningful
experience in your pre-professional life. The concepts you have learnt in class cannot teach you
how to work in a real company. For example, Jahren chose to work in a hospital pharmacy as her
part time job. She considered it the most important experience in her life. Although she was new
to the job at first, Jahren could always find an efficient and effective method to solve the problems.
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During the time in hospital, she had faced sadness, failure, doubts, choices, confusion and success
(Jahren 49). Eventually, she abandoned the stable work in the hospital and chose another harder
work provided by her professor (Jahren 50). Jahren participated in many jobs and field trips in her
life. She learned from every job and improved her ability after finishing each task. From Jahren’s
story, you will learn that each internship will gradually guide you to bigger stages. The process of
writing a resume, preparing for interviews, designing for your profile and stepping into a new
environment are beneficial to you. Through every difficulty and challenge that you will encounter
in the future, your ability will be improved greatly because actions speak louder than words.

Keeping decent grades while you are attending extracurricular activities and internships is
significant. No company will hire you if you do not have a strong understanding of what you are
doing or working for. The more time you spend on your internship means that you have less time
to improve your academic performance. The ability to seek for the balance between them is what
we called time management. Allocating your time is an important skill in your life that can improve
your efficiency. To finish your works efficiently, you need to find a way to complete your work
fast and accurate. For example, most of your course require you to do assigned readings as
homework. Some of them are hundreds of pages long, and they take you, especially as a
multilingual international student, extremely long time to read them. Instead of reading word by
word, you should utilize various reading strategies towards different types of academic reading. In
the book The Transition to College Writing, Keith Hjortshoj presents diverse ways of reading to
scholars. In his book, he considers linear reading is not useful, because you will forget everything
few days later (37). On the other hand, selective reading, analytical scanning and close reading can
be skillfully used for specific reading purposes (Hjortshoj 54). For example, when you are assigned
a heavy reading work, you should use analytical scanning first to distinguish the most important
section in it. Then, you should read these sections using close reading which will require you to
analyze and explain the section sentence by sentence. Using diverse strategies in your everyday
reading will save enough time for you to prepare extracurricular activities. Finding the most
suitable study strategy and managing your time well are not easy but it will definitely help you
perform better in both academic field and future part time employment.

Listing out the goals is an effective way to inspire you to work harder. Finding your interest,
deciding your major, attending academic activities, and experiencing internship are the main broad
objectives in this letter to lead you to success. Moreover, you not only need to make your broad
long-term plan, but also should consider specific activities you can participate in your short-term
goals. Louis Pasteur, a French biologist, once said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind.” Please
seize your time and grasp chances tightly. This action plan serves as a guide for you to follow to
continue your future successes.

Sincerely,
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Zhiqing Zhang,
UC Santa Barbara,
Room 1237, HSSB, University Rd.
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
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Works Cited

Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl. Vintage Books, 2017.

Hjortshoj, Keith. The Transition to College Writing. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.