The major elective course pharmaco-nutrition I took during my undergraduate education at The Ohio State University promoted my interest in nutrition field. As a Pharmaceutical Sciences major student then, I had already learnt a series of courses of chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, physiology, mathematics, and biology at first two years’ college study. Although nutrition science is a combination of all these subjects, when I took the course, I realized that nutrition explained these sciences in totally different aspect. For example, many of the common diseases, such as hair loss and toothache may be caused by malnutrition. The pharmaco-nutrition course opened me the door of a new world. Since then, I decided to learn deeper in nutrition field. The INTO Mason MS Nutrition program is a well media in preparing me to transfer from pharmaceutical sciences major into nutrition major. I plan to pursue MS Nutrition to learn nutritional research in the future.
I developed a special interest in dietary alternative therapies of disease during my exploration of nutrition field in the course and determined to do research in the future. Chinese culture has its own tradition to treat patients by Chinese medicine therapeutic diet. Similar to dietary supplement, seldom Chinese medicine therapeutic diet is scientific proved even though they have been practiced for thousands of years by nearly one fourth population on the earth. I believe there must be benefits, which makes people keeping the tradition diet behavior for years. I am interested in doing future research to dig out whether these traditional Asian therapeutic diets are effective.
The sciences knowledges, lab skills and related working experience in medical field build me a solid foundation of doing research in the future. Besides taking comprehensive sciences courses with an emphasis on chemistry, I am familiar to the medical settings of the field by internship in hospital. I volunteered 2 hours per week during high school. During undergraduate vacation, I worked as pharmaceutical department intern at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine. There I assisted with researchers for the research and inspections of drugs. The internship experience allowed me to learn the examination process (clinical research II) of a cholesterol-lowering medication.
As a girl bred by East Asian culture and educated in US, I have always been paying attention to study the diet differences between the east and the west. I believe my addition to your campus will bring you more different perspectives of health and nutrition. I would like to analyze the diet behavior on the other side of the earth. After finishing my graduate studies at George Mason University, I would like to apply to a PHD program to do future research in the topic and explore more in the field of nutrition. I want to translate my career dream into reality with my hard working and effort. I believe applying to your esteemed program would be a giant step toward my career goal. It would be an honor for me to contribute in improving people’s health. I believe my passion and determination would help me to march into the genre of elites of the field.