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News Release
Office of News and Information
Johns Hopkins University
3003 N. Charles Street, Suite 100
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-3843
Phone: (410) 516-7160 / Fax (410) 516-5251
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May 1, 1998
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT:
Leslie Rice,
lnr@jhu.edu
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The following are a few of the interesting students
who are graduating from The Johns Hopkins University on Thursday,
May 21. Photos of the students are also available.
Journey to Wisdom
One might think that winning a rare Fulbright Scholarship to
study in England would
be the highlight of a young life. But after a youth marked by
upheaval and the isolation of
being a stranger in a foreign country, Johns Hopkins University
graduating senior Tang Ho
views the grant more as the next step in what has become, for
him, a more important journey
towards wisdom and self-expression.
Tang spent his first 13 years raised by his teacher-father.
Though his father was demanding
and strict, the two were close, and Tang knew he was the center
of his father's world. But his
father's health had never been good, and after he was injured in
a fall, he believed he could
no longer care for his son.
So Tang was sent from the lush greenscapes of Taiwan to Abeline,
Texas, to live with a
mother he didn't know. Though they hadn't seen each other since
she left for America when
he was 2 years old, mother and son overcame the awkwardness of
years of separation and
grew close. However, Tang was not as quickly accepted by his
mother's family, with whom
he lived, and who had never condoned his parents' marriage. Tang
had always been shy.
Now, lonely and homesick, he struggled to learn English and to
make sense of his new life.
The pain of separation from his father was made more confusing
because, after a childhood of
vigilant attention, his father refused to contact Tang in any
way.
In high school, friendly classmates and caring teachers worked
after hours with Tang to get
him up to speed. He worked hard at school and in the family
Chinese restaurant. By senior
year, he was named class valedictorian and was accepted into
Hopkins. Still, he never shook
the feeling of being different from everyone else, and sensing he
didn't really belong
anywhere.
That changed at Hopkins. There he met other students who had
similar immigrant
experiences, and -- probably more importantly -- while at Hopkins
he worked hard to
overcome his shyness and help other people who were also feeling
lost or alone.
It wouldn't be until a 3 a.m. phone call his junior year at
Hopkins that Tang would once again
receive word of his father. A former student of his father's told
Tang his father was in a
hospital, dying. Tang packed his bags and took the first flight
to Taiwan. But by the time he
got there, his father had already died.
"Now I look back and I think he wouldn't have any contact with me
all those years because
he wanted me to get on with my new life and not look back," says
Tang. "But I'll never
really understand."
Now, as Tang looks back, he is less proud of being a biomedical
engineering major -- with a
combined 4.0 average -- than he is of being president of the
student social events
programming committee, making sure there was something happening
on campus going on
for everyone.
Or getting up the nerve to join the speech team freshman year and
overcoming his fear of
public speaking.
Or for putting together a group of students to visit patients at
a nearby VA nursing home
once a week. (It was the dying, old soldiers' stories of the war
in Europe that gave him a bit
of the wanderlust he has now.)
"I'll always be shy, but I've learned how to put myself out there
and not wait for people to
come to me," he says. "I think that you can go to college and
study hard and get a great
education. But education and wisdom aren't always the same thing,
and I think you gain
wisdom when you open yourself up to new ideas, new experiences
and new people."
His Fulbright will either take Tang to the University of London
or the University of
Edinburgh where he will study the biotech industry and its
effects on public policy. He hopes
he is offered a place at Edinburgh. He spent a day there last
year during a summer study
grant at Oxford University and the greenness of the country, its
fresh air and the farming
villages reminded him a little of his childhood in Taiwan.
When his studies there end, he will enter medical school.
Best Friends at Hopkins Share Love of
Scholarship,
Adventure
Two of the country's top grants for graduating seniors have been
awarded to two Johns
Hopkins University seniors who also happen to be close friends,
roommates and fellow
history buffs, athletes and fraternity brothers.
John Saxe (pictured on the left), of Fair Haven, New
Jersey, is one of 18
American students awarded the
Luce Scholarship, a $25,000 grant that provides stipends and
internships in Asia. He will
work in the Nakasone Institute, a national security research
institute in Tokyo, while taking
graduate classes at Tokyo University. Saxe, as one of his
professors says, is one of the last of
the "scholar-athletes." A varsity tennis star and member of the
varsity football and Olympic
weightlifting teams, he is also president of two honor societies
and will earn his master's
degree in American government at the same time he earns his
bachelor's in political science.
He is able to juggle so many things, and do them well, because he
has learned how to be
goal-oriented and completely organized.
His roommate and fellow weightlifter, Robert Smith
(pictured above on the right), of
South Glastonbury, Conn.,
was awarded the East-West Center Grant. The grant includes
tuition and a stipend to study at
the center, a University of Hawaii-affiliated think-tank that
researches issues involving Asia
and the United States and receives federal funding.
Smith is more of a by-the-seat-of-his-pants type, who, with a
little bit of luck and a lot of
personality, managed to obtain the first and only interview ever
given by the leader of the
Tibetan resistance army. Last summer, with a Hopkins
undergraduate research grant, Smith
traveled to the mountains of Tibet, and set out looking for the
elusive former monk-turned
general-turned monk again. Everyone he met told him it was
unlikely he would find General
Baba Yeshe, let alone interview him, and that he really ought to
have a back-up research
project proposal. He said he did (he didn't) and traveled to
Katmandu where he literally
knocked on peoples' doors, asking for directions to Baba Yeshe's
house until he finally got
lucky. He hit it off with the general right away, and for the
next month, Baba Yeshe told
Smith the story of the Tibetan resistance movement. By the time
they were finished, Yeshe
told Smith he knew they had been loyal friends in a previous
life. Today they still
communicate. Yeshe even sent Smith a Christmas card.
While Smith was in Tibet, Saxe was in Denmark, also funded by a
Hopkins undergraduate
research grant. There he interviewed survivors of the Danish
Resistance Movement and
chronicled their rescue operation of Danish Jews in World War II.
That study, and his
master's thesis, titled "The War in Yugoslavia: Its Causes and
its Cures" -- which examines
ancient ethnic hatreds in the Yugoslavia and which offers, what
he believes, a more realistic
model for peace -- are both highly publishable works, says
Benjamin Ginsberg, a Hopkins
political scientist and director of the university's Center for
the Study of American
Government in Washington, D.C.
"John does painstaking research," says Ginsberg. " And he has a
lively intelligence and good
interpretation of the evidence. It's not always easy to find all
that in an undergraduate. Add to
that, someone who can offer tips on your tennis game ..."
If you'd like to talk to Tang Ho, John Saxe or Robert Smith,
please contact Leslie
Rice at (410) 516-7160.
Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the
World Wide Web at
http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/
Information on automatic e-mail delivery
of science and medical news releases is available at the
same address.
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