News

LI Tingsong: Lighting a Lamp—My Academic Journey at SOE

2025-12-04Views：44

Before joining the Graduate School of Education (abbreviated as "GSE", the predecessor of SOE) at SJTU, I was like many newcomers to academia—full of passion yet filled with uncertainty. I still remember how thrilled I was when I received my admission letter; in my excitement, I left my luggage at the hotel and missed my train home. Since then, the question “Can I truly grow here?” has been answered through experience: through insightful and supportive supervisors who opened the door to education research; through dedicated staff who made the long-distance academic “marathon” more sustainable; and through peers who shared late nights in the library and vigorous discussions in seminars.

My growth as a researcher has been guided by a few straightforward principles: start early and dare to try—treat every course paper as a potential article; communicate proactively—use regular meetings with my supervisor to refine topics, methods, and academic plans; stay driven by genuine curiosity—let real educational issues guide my questions; and rely on persistence, even when facing repeated rejection. One of my papers, for instance, went through nearly 30 rejections over five years before finally being accepted by the SSCI Q1 journal "Journal of Studies in International Education".

Looking ahead, I hope to continue writing research into the reality of Chinese education—using rigorous methods to respond to real problems, and through the work of one young researcher, contributing in a small but steady way to the larger story of education in China.

Written by LI Tingsong

Proofread and Edited by CHEN Ruoxi

Back to Previous