Personal Profile

I am Yuanzhe Li from China. I am a freshman at The Ohio State University (OSU). I live on the 23rd floor in Morrill Tower now which provides me a good living environment. Many people call this floor “the Chinese Floor” because only six people who live in this floor are not Chinese. Also, our Residential Advisor (RA) is Chinese so it seems like I did not leave my home country. I admit that it makes my life easier than I thought it would be before I came to the OSU. I can communicate well with each other easily both in academic aspect and in daily life in Chinese (?). However, the reason I come to the OSU is not only for gaining knowledge but also for knowing the local culture and native speakers. Thus, it is hard to say whether I have a perfect surrounding.
(source: English.dreams-travel.com)
I am the only child in my family similar to most of Chinese families. My hometown is in Hebei Province, which surrounds Beijing, the capital city of China. It is not a wealthy land in China, but I believe it is one of the most hospitable places in my country. According to the data from China Central Television, Chinese official media, my hometown Shijiazhuang is top 10 the most happiness city in China. My interest is playing soccer and making videos. Playing soccer is not only a good way to exercise but also to intensify the team-collaboration. I consider making videos will be a useful technique for my future job. After I watched a good video on the Internet, I said ‘it is pretty cool!’, and this thought encourages me to learn about making videos.

I spent twelve years in Chinese schools, including my primary school, middle school and high school. The school systems are totally different from those in America. Some of my American friends said that Chinese schools are really boring because there are little time for students to hang out with their friends and develop their own hobbies. I think it is a rigid label on
（picture source: www.nfdaily.cn）
Chinese schools. I have talked with many students from different countries and they told me that in their impression Chinese schools are those which require students to study all the time and make students become bookworms. When I was in the high school, I had my best three years with my classmates and friends. I did have much homework and tricky questions to deal with, but I also enjoy this process. We were able to foster our hobbies. For example, when I was in high school, I joined Model United Nation (MUN) club. I was not good at math. Every time when I did my homework, I was almost the last one to get the answer most of the time. I felt upset but did not give up studying hard on math. It is quite common for high school students to give up studying hard due to the difficulty of math. Once when my friends and I solved a really difficult traditional Chinese high school’s derivate problem. I think it is more difficult than what I am learning now in calculus class in the Ohio State University (OSU). I got the answer early compared to other classmates in my group by using a clever method. I still do not know how I came up with that technique, but what I remember is that I was so exhilarated that I can do better than others as well.

To be honest, I was not certain whether studying in the U.S. or in China is better at first, but after I talked with some of my high school’s alumni who had studied in the U.S., I realized that Universities in the U.S. are comprehensively better than the ones in China in terms of the studying environment and the arrangement of courses. For example, the Foundation of Higher Mathematics (Math 3345) course at OSU, covers introductions to logic, proof techniques, set theory, and real numbers. In Chinese University, it will be comprised of sum of the knowledge in the Differential Calculus of the Pluralistic function, Multiple Integral and so on. I believe that most of American students who are majored in math will never learn them in the University because they are useless in most of time. Even though OSU has such courses, it is not what everyone has to learn. If you find you cannot hold the class, you can drop it. In China, the property of this course is similar to General Education (GE) in America, but it should be taken by everyone. I do not think that every student can learn it. As a result, the initiative of their study is low, which means it is impossible for people to gain the whole relative knowledge, which means that they do not understand the knowledge deeply. At OSU, I want to learn something that is really useful for myself. Some people take too many GE classes but do not do a good job on their major. I also find that if I take math, I have to take almost 60 credit hours of GE. I do not think I can learn a lot if I major in Financial Math, the subject I wanted to enroll initially. Thus, I changed my major from math to data analytics. I am interested in computer science and number. That is also the reason why I change my major.