I, Jiang Yurong, remained open and honest all my life

Even if there are thousands of people, I will go

When I was a representative of Harvard’s graduate speech this year, I knew that once I became a public figure, there would be countless right and wrong, just a breeze. I, Jiang Yurong, remain open and honest throughout my life. As much praise as I can withstand slander.

In this era, someone needs to speak out, do things, and make themselves into materials. And such voices are not for oneself, but for more people who do not have the chance to make a sound.

A recent English poem read–

If I don’t speak for myself, who will speak for me?

If I’m just talking for myself, then what am I?

If not now, then when will it last?

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If l am only for myself,what am I?

And if not now,when?”

Many of the contents of the following statements are family affairs that are not worthy of being spoken by outsiders, but since I have chosen to speak out for the public, I am also calm.

Since childhood, my parents have been separated and divorced. My dad basically doesn’t care about me. I am very far away from him and each has his own life.

Since childhood, I have been wandering with my mother and moved everywhere to school. Junior high school is a random lottery school in Qingdao. The students are basically migrant workers from other places or ordinary small business families in the vegetable market. Many students have to go to their own shops to help out before morning class and after school.

Because no one cares about school or family, I have suffered very serious bullying in junior high school. Many times I was pushed in the wild by a group of girls and stripped naked. Many times I hurried in the small compartment of the teaching building toilet after school, waiting for an hour or two before I dared to go home – because I was afraid of being blocked.

During those times, when I was a little bitch, the only thing I could do was read, read a lot, read all the books I could find, and search for answers to the world in the books.

Many years later, in my graduation speech, “If there is a girl in the world who dares to go to school because she is worried about being harassed, it will also threaten my dignity.” Because I know that there was such a girl once.

In the ordinary high school entrance examination, I was admitted to one of the best high schools in Qingdao, and there were no extra points. The next year, he passed the GCSE unified examination and was admitted to one of the most stringent high schools in the UK with no backdoor.

I first studied Political Economics and Philosophy (PPE) at the University of Warwick, UK. We don’t have a public grade ranking, but in my transfer recommendation letter, my professor Mattew Watson wrote that no one in this major has such a high score. So if you say I am the first in the grade, there is no problem. I’m very proud.

In my junior year, I transferred to Duke University in the United States, with a total score of 3.96 (out of 4), a double degree (economics and politics), and a very honorary degree (Magna cum laude).

I applied for graduate students at Harvard Kennedy School, and the system restricts the submission of three recommendation letters.

The three recommendation letters I submitted came from:

*My instructor of my graduation thesis at Duke Economics, Professor Michelle Connolly;

*My instructor of my thesis for the Duke Political Science major, Professor Joseph Grieco;

*After graduating from undergraduate, Daniel Reynolds, my team leader when I worked at Credit Suisse.

During my four years in college, I did work as an unpaid intern at the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, responsible for some document translation and conference assistance. The foundation did issue a letter of recommendation for interns at that time. This is a normal category in any internship unit. However, when applying for Harvard, it was not submitted in the end due to the limit on the number of letters applied for, and they were not clear about the specific situation at the time.

All the above information is verified at will, please feel free to check.

Those who imagined that I entered Harvard by going through the back door would have made it too easy to think about entering Harvard’s back door. If a letter of recommendation from an NGO can help you with the back door, Harvard will not be able to expand its recruitment ten times in a year.

I know very well how lucky I am compared to many people. My family can afford four years of tuition for undergraduate overseas; at the same time, both primary and secondary schools, both materially and lifely. I have also experienced a lot of pain and struggle.

My graduate tuition at Harvard comes from all the savings I saved after graduating from undergraduate studies at Credit Suisse and Probitas Investment Company for almost four years.

In fact, I received the admission to Harvard in the fall of 2022, but I was forced to postpone it for one year and didn’t enroll in the fall of 2023 because I couldn’t make up enough tuition and needed to work for another year to save money.

Many of the trauma and experiences in the past have hardly been told to anyone except the closest people around me. Once upon a time whenever I think about it, I feel traumatic and stressed and can’t help crying. But gradually over the years, I was surrounded by the infinite care and love of my lovers, friends and teachers around me, giving me a lot of confidence and courage.

All my online social platforms are new because I hardly used them before, and I have a very wonderful life myself. But when I walked so far and reached the podium of Harvard graduation ceremony, as the first Chinese female graduate representative in the school’s 400-year history, at this point, it was no longer just for myself.

I am not a heroine from heaven, and I am not interested in creating a perfect character for the pride of heaven.

My original family is fragmented and my parents are absent all year round.

I learned things very slowly. When I was a child, no one praised me for being smart or clever. Only the teacher thought I was stunned and unconscious.

In elementary and middle school, I have always been bullied because everyone knows which child lacks love at home and which child is foreign.

The only thing I can trust is my persistence in knowledge, my love and enthusiasm for the world. Through education step by step, we have gone very far.

I know that in this world, there are many me who are as small as the ugly duckling back then, ordinary me, hiding in inconspicuous corners. If there will be a little classmate, a stranger, who will be moved by seeing that speech, or encouraged by knowing the way I came, if this can bring him or her more confidence, beauty, courage, and strength to his or her life, then everything is worth it.

So I decided to give up something and stand up and speak. It’s very difficult, and you have to give up a lot of things. Your personal privacy, your private life, and more. Everything you have will be thrown out and judged by everyone.

Some people say seemingly unreasonable things, maybe because they are suffering too.

Some people say perhaps cynical things, maybe because they are angry and disappointed with the world. What I said in my speech, the most important thing I learned at Harvard is to try to understand and empathize with someone who is completely outside of your world.

In difficult times, keeping your heart soft and not getting hard is my greatest heroism.

So even if there is overwhelming dirty water and insults, I am very calm. So far, I haven’t deleted a single comment. Even if there are all kinds of filthy private messages and insults in the lower three channels, I am too lazy to even report them once, just a breeze is passing by.

Just as my boyfriend encouraged me to say – you know you are doing the right thing and what you should do, then, even if there are thousands of people, I will go.