Count the amazing people I met at Yale

Cap Yale taught me an important lesson: Don't judge a book by its cover. American culture is quite different from British culture and even European culture.

The two years spent in Britain have made me see the conservative and rigorous tradition of most British people, while Americans are more casual, advocating individuality and freedom.

While some Americans may have an extremely normal or even slovenly appearance, that does not mean they are mediocre. At Yale, the people you take classes with, the friends who live across the hall from you,

the brothers who sleep in the bunk above you, the people who come and go every day in baggy T-shirts and flip-flops, they all have their own strengths, their own stories.

Sarah Stillman

I first met Sarah Stillman in an economics class, and while the professor was holding forth on efficiency, this seemingly normal girl kept getting up and asking questions about labor. She speaks as loudly as a bean, with a strong dislike of free trade,

which she sees as unfairly applied to large numbers of workers. With her sharp, radical rhetoric and anger at the status quo, I immediately identified her as an armchair idealist.

However, after three years of contact with her in Yale, chatting in the dining room and communicating after class, I found that Sarah is far more than just an angry young woman.

She is not only a student with ideas, but also actively puts her ideals into practice. At the age of 15, she published her book, "Inside the Soul: A Girl Who Found Herself," to help teenage girls find meaning in themselves. It has sold more than 30,000 copies and has been translated into five languages.

At Yale she founded a prison mentoring program that offers writing classes to inmates in maximum-security prisons; She independently directed and filmed a documentary about Barbie dolls and the people behind them; She has also done a lot of research on the current living conditions of women workers in China and Latin America, and is actively involved in the cause of rights protection, committed to fighting for their equal rights.

Academically, Sarah is no slouch. She completed her undergraduate and master's degrees in anthropology in four years, achieving A 3.95 GPA (which means she got mostly A's in every course) and graduating as honors, which is A top 5% student.

Sarah is also A regular at national competitions, winning first place in the 2005 National Ethics Essay Competition. He ended up donating $5,000 to hurricane Katrina victims.

After graduating from Yale, Sarah was awarded the Prestigious Marshall Scholarship, a prestigious and competitive program established in 1953 that allowed her to attend one of the world's most prestigious universities, The University of Oxford. The brilliant young woman will be studying for a PhD in cultural anthropology at the century-old university, continuing her research on the impact of globalization on workers of different genders, including sweatshops, sexual abuse and labor exploitation.

Brandon Wai:

When I first saw Brandon, my Asian brother who lived across the hall from me, I couldn't make the connection between the skinny, lisping boy I saw and Yale's supposedly best tennis player.

We had only two rooms on our floor at the time, so AS I walked in and out of the dorm, I could see him in the hallway or foyer, and because of the shared bathroom, I could catch a glimpse of him in the bathroom.

Everywhere and at any time, he seemed to be in a daze. He was the No. 1 player on the Yale tennis team for two consecutive seasons. He was the captain of the Yale tennis team during the 2006-2007 season.

He has an undefeated record against other Ivy League players and has represented the Ivy League in the NCAA tournament.

Prior to Yale, Brandon had already made a strong showing in tennis. In 2002, he finished third in singles and second in doubles on the US Tennis Association Junior Tour at age 16 and junior. During my three years at Yale, I could not open an issue of the Yale Daily News (the popular student newspaper on Yale campus) without seeing his lithe presence. Although I had participated in many sports, I could only feel humble in front of this invincible master.

Dorothy Finnigan:

Dorothy was a thin little girl with a kind face. She chattered all day long and participated in activities as often as I did. She is not outstanding, looks not surprising, when I first met her, I fixed her as a typical American girl.

It wasn't until she performed an astonishing array of acrobatics in a school Halloween play that I realized she was more than just America's sweet, warm-hearted sweetheart.

As I got to know her, it suddenly dawned on me that she had so many colorful experiences and stories hidden behind her tiny body.

Dorothy's father was a hippie who was good at all kinds of acrobatics. Since her childhood, she and her father toured around the United States in a car. During this process, she also got the true biography of her father and mastered many acrobatic skills.

After graduating from high school, she asked her father for $300 and bought a one-way ticket to Amsterdam to travel around the world. Along the way, she traveled all over the world, including Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, Austria in Europe, Australia and New Zealand in Oceania, and Bali, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, Korea and Taiwan in Asia.

If she saw a dent in her purse, she would display her special talent in the local area, performing acrobatics, and then continue on the road after a small income.

Many of my friends and co-workers and I joked: "I have been there since a week around the earth, where it is because I am in Malaysia and the United Kingdom, after went to the United States from the east coast of the Yale at Stanford on the west coast, and came to work in Shanghai, now can be compared with her, it's dwarfed, my journey is nothing."

We tend to think that if a person is outstanding in one area, he or she will be inferior in other areas.

It was not until I entered Yale that I met all kinds of excellent students that I realized that there are mountains beyond mountains and there are people beyond mountains. It turns out that a person can perform very well in every aspect.

We think of others as flawed only because we feel insecure when we recognize their excellence. My life at Yale has taught me that there are outstanding people in all aspects of the world, and that I should not make excuses for my shortcomings.