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全文分以下章节。 (1)高中课程计划 (2)高中选择 (3)SiSi闪光点 (4)Essay (5)推荐信 (5)高中生活 (6)高中四年计划

SiSi申请高中(3) – SiSi闪光点

本节有BSO嫌疑。但是，申请学校就是BSO的时候。 以下Qualifications摘自简历，我又添点油加点醋。记录下来作为我家老二的标杆。

#1 全县最小初中毕业生。今年十月14岁。可信度362/365。

#2 全县唯一完成高中数学的初中生。可信度99%。

#3 Spelling Bee 县亚军, 校冠军。

#4 Quiz Bowl 个人县季军，校冠军。

#5 全A生。高中只要7/8年级成绩单，全A, 包括选修课烹调缝纫。

#6 全县唯一同时学习钢琴，作曲，声乐的初中生。作曲老师曾培养出全国冠军，声乐老师培养出全国亚军。可信度99%。

#7 NCMTA Piano州赛最高级别(Senior B)连续两年最高奖 (7-10人/年).

#8 作曲9月比赛，老师说获州冠军可能性50%, 因为她还有一个很强的学生前州冠军参赛。

#9 ACT 8年级县冠军。暑假County Schools 办了一个All-Star Camp, 招全县前10%的8年级学生免费3周夏令营，结束时ACT考试，SiSi是3名最高分之一。

#10 合气道Green Belt, 跆拳道Brown Belt, 溜冰Freestyle 4, 参加过游泳队。

#11 写过两部小说。

#12 网上活跃分子。喜欢网游，一眼看不到就偷玩游戏。喜欢Dr. Who, Sherlock, 网上建了个Fan Club, 拥有300会员。崇拜英国文化，走在街上，听到英国口音，必过去搭讪。理想就是去牛津剑桥读书。整天穿着Dr. Who 衬衫，就想着能发现一个Dr. Who粉丝。喜欢Youtube， 对那些欧洲Top Youtuber了如指掌，每年挣多少钱，谁是同性恋，谁来Vidcon, … 一清二楚。

#13 4年级，5年级，6年级，7年级，一年换一个学校，也算破了记录。7年级换到新学校后原来的第一第二名竞争更加激烈，只不过是在竞争第二.

其实SiSi最大的闪光点是记忆力超群。以上#2-#10都是在8年级最后一学期完成。没有超强记忆力无法想象。背Spelling Bee单词只用8小时，准备Quiz Bowl只用4小时，比比赛用的时间还短，仍取得全县第二第三的成绩。对喜欢的歌，听一遍就能把谱子写出来。因为记忆力好上课基本不听，但所有其他同学回答不出的问题都由她回答. 多次反映坐在教室就象大学生坐在一群幼儿园学生中。

SiSi申请高中(4)– Essay

申请高中就是申请大学的预演。下面是她的Essay。

                                                                                                   Solitude

Solitude: the state or situation of being alone. What a simple definition for such a strong and biting emotion. People are designed to live with other people. We are instinctively programmed for it. Humans depend on social interaction. I don’t think, in the entire human race, that there is one person who really desires to be alone.

            We’ve all experienced it. One way or another. Perhaps we’ve been left alone at the grocery store as kids and had to wander around, lost and afraid. We might have felt a sudden bout of isolation when we were not included in a group or forced to go to a social gathering with nobody to socialize with. Whatever the case, seclusion is never welcomed. Of course, being alone doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  It matures a young child, as it did with me. It plants ideas in the mind, extraordinary ideas that have the capability of changing the world. It is embraced with open arms after a day of being bothered by people you don’t like. But it rarely comes without consequence. It can inflict emotional damage that can take years to recover from. We may lose the ability to function in a society, causing us to sound or look odd when thrust into a situation requiring the skills needed to thoroughly communicate with other people.

            This is a skill that I am lacking in. Communication. I didn’t learn how to speak English until I was 4 years old, and even then, my knowledge of the language was horribly limited. I remember small moments, bits and pieces of a life stranded in an environment that I could not hope to understand. But I thought that I could fit in. I thought that I was okay in my preschool. Even though I had never spoken a sentence of English in my life, I thought I could somehow manage the onslaught of a language I did not know. I could blend in with the crowd easily. I could just snap right into the simple-looking jigsaw puzzle of a life outside my home as a perfect piece.

            Of course, this was not the case. My parents left me at the preschool clutching my little lamb plushie. My wild eyes darted around the place and my tiny fingers remained wrapped around my toy. I immediately realized that I could not understand anything. The colorful-looking signs and words on the wall were just weird looking squiggles. I didn’t know what message they were conveying. My teachers tried talking to me the first couple of weeks. But after getting nothing but silence, they all gave up, thinking I was a mute. The first time they saw me run to my father at the end of the day, babbling in rapid-fire Mandarin, they were absolutely shocked. It was like I had turned into a different person. They even told my father of their disbelief in my ability to even open my mouth and speak. When they were told that I could only speak Mandarin, my teachers made sure to keep their distance from me. And in turn, so would the kids. To them, I was just the quiet, weird, Chinese girl to stay away from. At that time, I was actually okay with that. As a 3-year-old, I never really comprehended the need for human contact. After all, I had all my Mandarin-speaking friends back at home. I had my grandparents to raise me and my parents to talk to. I was fine. I had tricked myself into believing that everything was the way it should be.

            I might have gone on like this for a fairly long time if it weren’t for the cruel teasing and absolute ostracism I was subjected to. It wasn’t majorly concerning, per se. Nothing that could be constituted as anything but the wicked acts of children that didn’t know better. But it was enough to shake me out of the illusion I had constructed so carefully around myself.

            I realized I had no friends in that preschool. No one to back me up when I was clueless about whatever the teacher was teaching. No one to play with during recess. No one to sit with during lunch or share my food with during snacktime. I didn’t even have a pitying classmate to defend me when the teachers would enunciate their frustration with me. On the playground, I would circle around a wooden pole. That was all I did. Just walk in circles around a stick in the ground for 30 minutes straight. No one would even come up to me. Whenever I had to answer a question during class and didn’t know the answer, everyone would cackle at my inability to identify the simplest words. That horrible, horrible laughter is embedded into my mind this very day. Even though the teasing wasn’t that bad, it still hurt me. The moment I fully understood the fact that I was completely by myself was the moment that I knew I might as well have been trapped in my own little world. I was cut off from everyone at school and it felt like there was nothing I could do about it. I realized that the only way I could break out of my accidentally-constructed barrier was to tear it down myself. My parents were immigrants from China, and they never took the time to properly teach me English. Their own English was broken and heavily accented. My parents never even tried speaking to me in the strange foreign language. I had to take matters into my own hands, because I knew that I would get nowhere if I didn’t take time into learning English. From that moment on, I knew I had to be independent. If I wanted something, I’d have to do it myself. I couldn’t always rely on my parents or my friends to help me.

            And so began my studies. At the age of 3 and a half, I started ‘learning’ English. I got a LeapFrog reader with several books and started perusing them. I listened to them again and again and again. The process was absolutely frustrating. More often than not, I became angry at myself for not picking up on the language immediately. I wanted to throw the LeapFrog reader out the window and never have to look at it ever again. But I always found myself going back to the LeapFrog reader. After all, my need for the English language was placed above my need for an easy childhood.

After about half a year of that, my parents finally saw the tyranny and unfairness of my preschool and moved me to another one. This one was a bit more forgiving and the teachers there were used to students like me. They specialized in children, and they seemed like they enjoyed supervising kids. I thought it was a paradise after the isolation of my first preschool. It was there that I made my first English-speaking friends. Although it was sometimes difficult to communicate with each other, we still played together. They were incredibly nice and patient with me, even when I struggled to understand their speech. The teachers were also kind and persistent in their mission to make sure that I was not the sad, quiet and lonely girl I used to be. They were the ones to introduce me to books. And without books, I would be a very dimwitted person today.

It was slow, at first. I had to learn how to sound out all the words by myself and comprehend the sentences. It would take me so very long to finish a picture book with 10 pages. But it became a sort of obsession for me. I had to get it right. I had to be able to understand everything in my books. Not one detail would go unnoticed by me. At first, it was nothing more than that. Just another learning block. However, as I read more and more, I was increasingly interested in them. I would force my parents to come with me to the library to hunt for books to fill my shelves. Whenever we went to the supermarket, I’d convince them to leave me in the book aisle so that I could spend hours just sitting on the floor, reading. The words managed to fly off the page and paint images in my mind. They helped me imagine things I couldn’t have done on my own. Their plots captivated my interest and I would spend hours and hours simply reading. I can recall one night in my childhood; it was the first night that I stayed up reading. I was absolutely fascinated with this one chapter-book; I don’t even remember what it was about. I stayed up late struggling to finish it. I was so drowsy that I could barely keep my eyes open. My eyes would close shut and then I would jolt them open again. I was so exhausted that the words blurred into indecipherable lines.

After the joys of this second preschool, I had to go to kindergarten. To this day, I don’t understand the mechanics of what happened in kindergarten. For starters, my parents decided that I should start kindergarten when I was 4. I still have no idea why they decided that this was an appropriate age for me. I hadn’t even fully mastered the English required for a kindergartener. But I wasn’t that worried. I was sure that the school was going to put me into an ESL (English as a Second Language) class.

Surprise, surprise. They didn’t. I still don’t know why. After inquiring my parents, they also don’t know why. But I was put in a normal kindergarten class, with normal English-speaking students. I had to learn English, and fast. While the other students were learning more advanced curriculum, I was still trying to catch up to their level. I read so many books during kindergarten. I made a couple of really close friends, and I spoke in English that they could almost always understand. During class, I was still the silent girl. I barely opened my mouth, for fear of saying something that would embarrass myself. I spent my kindergarten year in a haze of trying to learn enough English to figure out whatever the teachers were teaching.

            Finally, in first grade, I took the English proficiency test, and passed with flying colors. I had finally caught up to my grade level, and then some. I had come from speaking in a broken combination of Mandarin and English to being one of the best in my class. I felt a sense of pride and finally felt that I could relax.

            I realized, during this long and tiring journey that took almost two years, that I was the master of my own fate. Nobody could do anything for me. Life doesn’t get handed to people on a silver platter; at least, not to most people. I grasped the concept that in the short finite life of a human, there are good moments and there are bad moments. The good moments don’t necessarily make up for the bad, but the bad moments don’t completely cover up the good. I had to learn the hard way that people have the unique ability to be terribly cruel…but they also have the ability to be incredibly kind. I learned that people will never stop being cruel; that wickedness is present even in the minds and souls of the youngest of children.

Without this experience, I may never have learned English. Well, that may not be the case. I would have learned it eventually, or be forced into it. Without having the knowledge I gained from this, maybe I would always have to lean on someone. Perhaps I would go to someone for every little decision I have to make and request their assistance. Now, that’s not a bad thing, but it’s always good to be able to go your own way sometimes. Maybe if I hadn’t been so quiet and afraid of everyone as a child, I could have made more friends. I wouldn’t be branded as the silent new kid every time I went to a new school. Maybe my elementary school experience could have been a bit more loud and fun. Now I’m not so silent. I’m not afraid to express what I believe in or announce my hatred or passion for certain things. I can talk to people, and they’ll listen to me. I hope, at least. I can control my own future, and decide what I’m going to do in life.

 

 这篇文章看的我眼泪都掉下来了，尤其是看到她围着树转了一圈又一圈。 几点说明。 1。 其实她妈妈英文非常杰出，她的同事和病人普遍以为她出生在本地。 但在华二代眼里仍是Broken English。 2。 我们为孩子教育呕心沥血，但目前孩子还没有意识到这一点，总以为自己是“Independent", 没有依靠任何人。 3。 若干年后她捐了自己写的书到原来的幼儿园及小学，把那些以为她是哑巴的老师震的一愣一愣的。 4。 后来这篇文章没用在申请，而是用了一篇更感人的。

SiSi申请高中(5)– 推荐信

学校要求3封推荐信，来自现任Social Studies, Language Arts, 及Math老师。Math老师问题就来了。
SiSi上的Online Algebra II, Online Geometry。 不仅现任老师，前任老师都没见过面。即使见过面的其他老师，她们也只了解SiSi的一个方面。SiSi背景很强，但必须要推荐人知道，让推荐人自愿花时间去写很强的推荐信。于是有了写给推荐人的 Sales Letter. 我感觉写的有点罗嗦，但至少表明SiSi很严肃地对待推荐信。

Mrs. Xyz,

Attached to this document are letters of recommendation for the Early College at Guilford, Middle College at UNCG, and Grimsley High School. To better know me as a person, I have included a list of achievements.

The instructions for filling out and mailing the form are written on the recommendation letter. You do not have to provide a separate sheet of paper; all you have to do is fill out the recommendation letter provided to you. When you have completed the recommendation letter, mail it to the Admissions Team (address is written on list of instructions) in a sealed and signed envelope. Don’t hesitate to ask me for assistance.

Now, a little bit about why I have decided to apply for my high school and not go to a normal high school. My base school is Northwest High, and although that is undoubtedly a good school, I don’t feel the need to go there. I don’t want to limit myself to a traditional high school where just anyone can attend. I feel that magnet high schools would be good for me because I want to challenge myself. I need to push back my limits more and more. Throughout my short life, I have learned that there is always room for improvement. Magnet high schools (especially Early College) can provide me with the knowledge and experience needed to further improve my abilities. I want to learn more, because I know that I could spend the rest of my life learning and still not know half of what is out there in the world. When you’ve got 4 years until college, you want to learn as much as you can. I also feel that these schools would be the best option for me since I am trying to prepare for applying for Ivy League colleges/universities. Traditional high schools don’t really prepare their students for that type of work. In magnet high schools, I can be surrounded by people who took the time and dedication to apply for their school. I can be in a learning environment with people who want to learn, and that might be one of the best parts of applying for a magnet high school. (Also, my mathematics situation is very complex and if I were to go to a normal high school, I’d probably have to take classes with upperclassmen and eventually, online classes again. I would actually really like to have a normal math class for once.)

            From this moment on, I will be highlighting the reasons that I chose to apply for the specific schools I am.

            The Early College at Guilford – possibly the most popular and sought-after high school. ECG is different from other high schools because it crams 4 years of high school into 9^th and 10^th grade, and then the remaining 2 years are spent on college campus, taking college level classes. At the end of the 4 years of schooling, students will have received 2 years of college credit. There are going to be so many applications flooding the Admissions Team and they will have to pick out 50 of the best students they can find. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the high school that is first on my list. I am amazed at Early College and what they have done. I am excited at the prospect of completing 2 years of college in my 11^th and 12^th grade years. I am not afraid to work hard my first 2 years of high school, trying to learn the content needed for an entire 4 years of college. No, I am not concerned about the fact that I will not have a football team to cheer on Friday nights. I am happy that the class size is small and the faculty is a staff of just 8 teachers. I want to go to a school that will provide me with all the options I want, with all the challenge I need, and a push in the right direction. I believe that Early College will do that for me. I am a bit used to rigorous courses, considering my math situation and the fact that I have already attended magnet schools. The workload won’t be too much for me because I am adaptable to change and possess the skills needed to study and complete assignments on time. Being a school that focuses a lot on writing, I feel that I would be most appropriate in ECG.

            Middle College at UNCG – first of all, I want to say that I have a faint idea of where I want to go in life and I’d say that it would be a health/medical science career. Although Middle College doesn’t provide the same opportunities as Early College, it has its perks. For one thing, Middle College specializes in one field while Early College covers a variety of different fields. Naturally, Middle College would be filled with students aspiring to become doctors, surgeons, nurses, psychologists, and so on. It would be awesome to be part of a group of kids who have such a passion for the medical field that they apply to a rigorous magnet school just to learn more about their field.

            Grimsley High School – the IB program. It sounds absolutely marvelous. Before I moved to Greensboro, my magnet middle school actually fed into Enloe High School, which is a high school that also provides the IB program…but that’s in the past. I have several friends in Grimsley and they tell me that it is one of the best experiences they’ve ever had. Which is saying a lot since most students don’t particularly enjoy schooling of any sort. Grimsley is a school that would focus on developing people that are not only intelligent, but also generous and humane. Not many high schools can do that. I love how the IB program promises to make students more understanding of the people around them and more respectful of the world they share. It strives to make students questioners, thinkers, communicators, caring, and many more great adjectives. Even though this is my third choice for a high school, and I would be a bit disappointed at not being accepted into my first two choices, I would still be glad to be enrolled in such a great school.

            Thank you for taking the time to complete the recommendation forms! Please remember to mail them to the addresses listed on the forms (don’t mix them up now! That would be sort of disastrous…J). The forms are due back on February 21, but I went to an ECG information session the other night, and they said that the recommendation letters (for them, at least) did not have to be turned in by February 21; that they were separate from the application and as such could be turned in at a later date. I don’t know if this is truly correct or not (the guidance counselor stated this) but I think it would be a better idea to make sure the forms are in by February 21, just to be safe. Don’t rush, though! You can take your time on these. Thank you again for filling out the recommendation forms for me.