Zixuan (Brian) Wu
Hometown: Zhaoqing, China
University: University of Illinois
Major: Materials Science and Engineering
BIOGRAPHY
Hi! My name is Zixuan Wu, called me Brian everyone. Here talking to you is an international freshman from the Guangdong province of China near Hong Kong. I grew up in this small town in Guangdong called Zhaoqing and lived there for sixteen years. Later in my life, going to a Quaker high school in Maryland for three years has turned me a environmental and nature lover. From a young age, I have this aspirations of achieving the Nobel Prize, and I am still in my stubborn pursuit of it! In my free time, you could find me playing basketball, watching anime or episodes, reading novels, in particularly detective novels (my favorite would be The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino), or just staring into the blank wall in meditation… I am also a WhoLock Fan, and my favorite incarnation of the Doctor is David Tenant. I am currently in civil engineering, pursuing a environmental direction, but then material science seems to grab my attention. So now, I am steering my path into exploring my potentials in material engineering, and hopefully someday, a biomaterial serving as the new panacea of the times or the room-tempt superconductor will be named after me. Yep, I guess that will make my day! Lastly, after seeing US for three years in an eastern state, I hope to see more and more, by traversing the States in a diagonal line. I believe this will a life-impacting journey and one of the summits of my college experience! Thanks for reading about me.
PERSONAL STATEMENT
In my nineteen years of life, many relatives of mine have been afflicted by the agony of cancers or tumors. Not only did they face with the challenge of losing everything or the world they love, but also did the people around them. None of the stories have an easy way out, or even an exit at all, but hope and love has never been absent. My grandpa and aunt passed away when I was still young due to lung and breast cancer. Some of my other close relatives were also suffering through it. Nonetheless, I cherished the fact that there was still hope shining in my life through the clouds, given by my own mother. She was the one who performs the task of impossible and showed me the power of strong will. My mom confronted brain tumor when I was in fifth grade. She was one of the toughest woman or person I have ever known, no matter in starting up her own actuarial company or battling the disease. Seeing her suffering and fighting through the disease, I have been depressed for long, so did my family. Fear of the unknown path ahead was what everyone in the family shared. However, she, with our support and her own toughness, managed to sustain not only the pain, but more critically the horror of uncertainty and despair, stood up in her life. Up to now, she has battled with her condition successfully in the aid of chemo and radio therapies and stabilized her tumor condition. She also helps out people around her in similar pains and facilitates them to stand up with the right attitudes in lives. Witnessing her subduing her own limits and creating miracles to the doctors, I knew there exist more stories like this. And that is my personal connections to the disease; I have seen miseries, but I have also witnessed the stand against miseries. I hope to listen, really listen, listen to all these stories of battles that these amazing people have to offer. I know there are courages and optimism out there that can create an atmosphere, which can relieve the psychological stress in the cancer scenarios. And it can be my job and honor to help with spreading that message by biking across the States. Cancer exists, but hope persists.