约翰霍普金斯大学个人陈述文书案例：如何把实验写成热血成长故事

约翰霍普金斯大学JHU

personal statement范文

这篇来自JHU的PS文书没有宏大场面，也没有“改变世界”的标语，而是通过真实的小白鼠实验、一个有点逗的导师和一次思维的升级，把个人成长写得真诚又有力量。

科研经历的起点

I remove the latex gloves from my hands.I oscillate between looking at the rats enclosed in the acoustic startle chambers to my right, and my team project advisor to my left. A silver lab table, cluttered with syringes, vials, and countless notes, separates me and him. A lab rat’s cage sits at the center like a cornucopia.I begin to sit on a cold lab stool, and upon confirming that the Startle Reflex software is indeed running, I settle into my seat.Though the atmosphere smells faintly of urine, I am comfortable.

我摘下手上的乳胶手套。我左顾右盼，一会儿看看被关在声学惊吓室里的老鼠，一会儿看看我的团队项目顾问。我和他之间隔着一张银色的实验桌，上面摆满了注射器、药瓶和数不清的笔记。中间放着一个小白鼠笼子，就像一个聚宝盆。我开始坐在一张冰冷的实验凳上，在确认 "惊吓反射 "软件确实在运行后，我坐了下来。虽然空气中弥漫着淡淡的尿骚味，但我还是觉得很舒服。

These lazy afternoons collecting data defined my experience at the Governor’s School in the Sciences. Our team would spend hours with the acoustic startle chambers, startling rats in the presence of anxiogenic pheromones from other rodent urine in order to evaluate their altered behavioral responses — freezing, excessive grooming, urination,that sort of thing.Turns out,scaring rats enough to pee their pants takes a long time.

这些收集数据的慵懒午后，决定了我在科学总督学校的经历。我们的团队会花几个小时在声学惊吓室里，在其他啮齿动物尿液中的致焦虑信息素存在的情况下惊吓老鼠，以评估它们改变的行为反应--冻结、过度梳理、排尿，诸如此类。结果发现，把老鼠吓得尿裤子需要很长时间。

导师启发与价值观影响

My team project advisor, Zach, made these long hours, not only bearable, but pivotal in my understanding of the applied sciences. Zach was the youngest counselor at GSS and was definitely the easiest to talk to. He would always entertain me and my peers with tales of his college club’s calls for divestment in the fossil fuel industry. He relayed to us an inspiring tale: one day, while completing some organic chemistry assignment, Zach felt the commanding urge to start a protest. Against the backdrop of the divisive presidential election of 2016, Zach felt increasingly frustrated by a general feeling of listlessness amid a rapidly transforming world. He eventually found environmental activism, drawing on his scientific background, as a vehicle to make tangible change in the global landscape. And while Zach’s angsty musings were easy to tease,always ornamented with quintessential frat-boy idiosyncrasies, like the overuse of the words “bro” and “yo,”they forced me to consider my own passions in the context of scientific inquiry. Zach, motivated by the pregnant intersection between environmental science and civic engagement,oriented my own career goals in a very profound way.

我的团队项目指导老师扎克不仅让我能够忍受这些漫长的时间，而且对我理解应用科学起到了关键作用。扎克是 GSS 最年轻的辅导员，也是最容易沟通的辅导员。他总是会给我和我的同伴们讲他所在的大学俱乐部呼吁撤资化石燃料行业的故事。

他向我们讲述了一个鼓舞人心的故事：有一天，扎克在完成有机化学作业时，突然有一种想要发起抗议的冲动。在2016年总统大选出现分歧的背景下，扎克感到越来越沮丧，因为在这个快速变化的世界中，人们普遍感到无精打采。

最终，他凭借自己的科学背景，找到了环保行动主义，以此为载体，为全球环境带来切实的改变。虽然扎克忧虑的思索很容易被人取笑，总是带有典型的兄弟会男孩的特质，比如过度使用 "兄弟 "和 "哟"，但这也迫使我在科学探索的背景下思考自己的激情。扎克在环境科学与公民参与之间的交集的激励下，以一种非常深刻的方式确定了我自己的职业目标。

个人兴趣的融合

Prior to GSS, I had always found myself trying to mediate between my interests in public policy and science, from obsessively reading about America’s diplomatic relations to Middle East, to madly teaching myself about the neuroscientific underpinnings of behavior.Zach’s endeavors, his involvement in activism while studying science,revealed an entire sphere between two worlds where my own passions in both could finally coincide. The fruitful conversations I had with Zach demanded that I consider the pragmatic applications of the research we were doing, engaging with the real world in the same manner he had.

在加入 GSS 之前，我一直试图在公共政策和科学兴趣之间斡旋，从痴迷于阅读美国与中东的外交关系，到疯狂地自学行为的神经科学基础。扎克的努力，他在学习科学的同时参与社会活动的经历，为我揭示了两个世界之间的一个完整领域，我对这两个世界的热情终于可以不谋而合。我与扎克进行了富有成果的对话，这要求我考虑我们所做研究的实际应用，以他的方式与现实世界打交道。

Researching chemical signaling in rodentswas an exploration of the social transmission of fear in humans— a study with numerous political applications, especially in today’s age of demagogic political rhetoric. Indeed, a rat gaining awareness of a fearful situation is analogous to a human’s awareness of a fearful situation; hysteria in large groupshas often lentto social chaos, falling victim to the same conspecific negotiations as in our rodent study. Application of our study in a political context made me realize that my interests are interwoven,though kaleidoscopic.

研究啮齿动物的化学信号传递是对人类恐惧的社会传播的一种探索--这项研究在政治上有很多应用，尤其是在当今蛊惑人心的政治言论时代。事实上，老鼠意识到恐惧的情况与人类意识到恐惧的情况类似；大群体中的歇斯底里常常导致社会混乱，成为与我们的啮齿动物研究中相同的同类谈判的受害者。将我们的研究应用到政治背景中，让我意识到我的兴趣是相互交织的，尽管是万花筒式的。

跨学科思维与未来方向

At GSS, whether it be in the lectures I listened to or the labs I did, my professors borrowed ideas from all fields alike; political implications arising in neuroscientific research, cultural anthropology in human evolution — even philosophical inquiries appeared in courses on special relativity. I loved everyacademic excursion onto these intellectual, peripheral avenues, as they always contextualized science in a broader sense.This interdisciplinary way of thinking is where I have found my passions to reside, inspired by Zach’s ruminations on activism amid a place of suchintellectual vitality; I knowthis is, not only where complex solutions to the world's problems reside, but where my future does too.

在GSS，无论是听讲座还是做实验，我的教授们都从各个领域借鉴思想；神经科学研究中产生的政治影响、人类进化中的文化人类学--甚至哲学探究也出现在狭义相对论的课程中。我喜欢在这些知识性的外围途径上进行的每一次学术探索，因为它们总是从更广泛的意义上为科学提供背景。这种跨学科的思维方式是我发现自己激情所在的地方，扎克在这种充满知识活力的地方对行动主义的反思启发了我；我知道，这不仅是解决世界问题的复杂方案所在，也是我的未来所在。