8 During calls home every two weeks, my mother pleaded with me to take chemistry or biology. Science was the same everywhere, she said. And I, like everybody else from China, was well prepared in math, physics and chemistry. (To graduate from a standard six-year Chinesehigh school, one needs to take five years of physics, four years of chemistry and three years of biology.)
9 Instead, I visited the writing tutor - there is one in every undergraduate residential hall - for every paper I turned in. My papers were always written days before they were due. I lingered after classes to question professors. My classmates lent me their notes so I could learn the skill of note-taking in English.
10 By the time I missed home so much that soup dumplings and sautéed eels popped up in my head as I read, Nietzsche had replaced Plato on the chronological reading list and Flaubert Homer. And every paper of mine came back with an A.1.
[释义]每交一篇论文，我都会去找写作导师——每个本科生宿舍都有一位写作导师。
