Will my life path be corrected after dropping out of school and retaking the exam?

After three years of studying science and engineering at a 985 university, Sun Rui decided to drop out and repeat his liberal arts studies, and the 24-year-old is waiting for his college entrance examination results. Textu has nothing to do with it. (Visual China/Photo)

Sun Rui decided to drop out of that 985 university.

Thoughts have been in my head for a long time. After a year of freshman and three sophomores, he couldn't stand the constant cycle of sophomore year. In 2017, he was admitted to the civil engineering college of a prestigious southwestern school and quickly felt unsuitable. In high school, his parents refused to sign his liberal arts selection form, immersed in the "complex operation between simple symbols" in science and engineering, and Sun Rui often felt a cultural hunger.

In the first semester of his freshman year, he successively hung up some basic general courses, including college physics and advanced mathematics. Professional classes are also difficult to cope with: his major requires 10 mechanics in engineering, and 80% of the content of some courses uses difficult mathematical operations.

The balance of dropping out of school and struggling to maintain the status quo was finally unbalanced in an experimental class in fluid mechanics. He watched his classmates do experiments and write reports, like playing a bunch of numbers games. He can pass the level by copying it, and still feels that he is as abrupt as a monkey in the crowd who can't climb trees. Solving difficult problems usually follows a linear logic, he said, and the greater the difficulty, the more effort is required. But at that moment, Sun Rui lost his ability to act.

He asked counselors and parents to withdraw from school, which was opposed. According to the school's regulations, the maximum number of years of study for undergraduate students is eight years. He had four years left to get a degree, far from hitting the red line of having to drop out. The counselor offered to take him off from school for a while to adjust his status. During the three months of his school break, he carried his schoolbag and traveled to Xinjiang, relying on hard seats, hitchhiking, and carpooling to try to find his mobility. After the start of school, he immediately dropped out of school.

Science and engineering are heavy in classwork. In college, he took time to audit some humanities courses. He said that those courses were like commodities in a window, and he was like a homeless man standing outside the window, envious but unable to buy. "Time itself (in college) seemed to me incapable of realizing its value, and I felt like I was forced to complete a performative job, did it, graduated and [it was done]." Sun Rui said.

Now 24 years old, Sun Rui is waiting for his college entrance examination results. After dropping out of school for two years, he switched to liberal arts, and everything seemed to be back on the track he wanted to set for his life. It's not that he hasn't analyzed the pros and cons - it's too long away from high school to get the scores he once had; After another four years of college, the disadvantage in age will be much greater than that of others. But he doesn't regret his choice.

Will my life path be corrected after dropping out of school and retaking the exam? Southern Weekend interviewed a number of college students and graduate students who dropped out of school and retook the exam, and their answers had one thing in common: it may be an opportunity to fill in regrets and correct life.

Turn on the switch called Dropout

Guo Yu, a graduate of an art college, still remembers the withdrawal conversation five years ago. At that time, she was still a freshman at a railroad college in the north. She is the first new college entrance examination student in Zhejiang, regardless of arts and sciences, she is good at liberal arts, she chose a technology, so she can fill in some science and engineering majors. Volunteering is largely influenced by the father's will. Her father, an employee of the railway bureau, chose her to major in engineering technology at a railway-type college.

Guo Yu wants to study choreography and directing in art colleges. In her third year of high school, she accidentally learned about choreography, and she also applied for art as a result of her interest. Without the guidance of an art examination institution, she successfully advanced to the third test of an art college in East China, but because she was not familiar with the content and process of the exam, she unfortunately lost by 5 points.

During the summer of her senior year of high school, she was hesitant to repeat it, but her thoughts were quickly diluted by the liberating, loose atmosphere of graduation season. "Without the courage to make that decision, I was afraid that I would fail."

The university eventually unfolded in the opposite guise. Science and engineering classes were a headache, and she didn't know what engineering drawing-like classes could mean in her life. In class or after, she reads Wu Nianzhen's essays, McKee's "Stories," and books on screenwriting methods. Railway colleges and universities have strict regulations, you must get up at 6:30 in the morning for a morning jog, quilts must be folded into tofu blocks, sheets and quilt covers must be made angular, not a single hair is allowed on the ground, and there must not be a single clutter on the table. This is contrary to her loose and free nature.

The thought of leaving is being conceived. At the end of the first semester of her freshman year, she went on another "pilgrimage" to the art school. At the school gate, a female teacher treated her as a student and gave her a ticket for an Odyssey-related play. She returned her high-speed rail ticket that night, watched the play at the theater, and confirmed that "this is what I want in life."

She decided to drop out of school and retake the exam. The worst case is nothing more than failing to pass the choreographer and direct, and then going through the cultural class admission. She persuaded her mother to sign the withdrawal papers, and the two went through the withdrawal formalities without their father.

In the withdrawal conversation, the head teacher tried to convince her: you have been studying for a semester, and dropping out is a toss, a waste of time. After the choreography, the job is unstable, and it is better for girls to find a stable job.

"I felt like I couldn't communicate." Guo Yu told Southern Weekend.

Zhang Yi, who dropped out of a 211 university in Beijing, shared a similar journey.

College entrance examination to fill in volunteers, Zhang Yi's province, up to 96 volunteers, in the order of "professional + school", according to the score of the admission. She wants to give priority to Chinese language and literature, drama literature and law. Without consulting her, her father arbitrarily switched the order of the two volunteers, and she was finally admitted to the public administration major of a 211 university in Beijing. She is not good at math and has a hard time learning.

For college students who are not satisfied with their majors, there are two mainstream ways to solve the dilemma: changing majors and interprofessional graduate school. But neither road will work for Zhang Yi.

She tried to change majors, but was blocked by the strict mechanism of changing majors. At that 211 university, changing majors requires passing the dual examination of the college and the intention to transfer to the college. She told Southern Weekend that the college's explicit stipulation for changing majors is that the credit grades reach the top 30%, there are more than 100 people in the department, and only three or five are allowed to transfer out in the end. After excluding those who failed the written examination and interview of the intention college, only one or two people could successfully transfer.

Interprofessional graduate study means that it takes four years of patience to fight for an opportunity to change majors. Zhang Yi refused to wait long. "One of my urgent thoughts at that time was to study my own major as soon as possible." She told Southern Weekend that if she waited, "it would make me feel like my entire college career was wasted." ”

The graduation season is coming, but some students are going against the tide and choosing to re-enter the college entrance examination or graduate school in an attempt to correct the direction of their lives. (Visual China/Photo)

Receive a new set of life playbooks

For some people, dropping out of school and retaking the exam can indeed exchange a new script for their lives.

In September 2021, Zhou Shilin quit her HR job in a construction company and went to a comprehensive university in Hunan to study for graduate school. She was originally admitted to a financial university in the north majoring in business management, but she did not pass the national line of Area A.

In the era of inflated academic qualifications, Zhou Shilin has always been not very confident in her undergraduate degree. She made a hard effort to get ashore. Since July 2021, she has maintained a devil's routine: waking up at 4:30 a.m. every day, studying until 7:50 p.m., and after leaving work at 5 p.m., she learns from 7 p.m. until 11 p.m. Lunch breaks are also not missed.

The transferred major is under the same first-level discipline as the major you want to apply for. At first, she felt the joy of being able to go to school. After getting the timetable and browsing the research areas of her supervisors, she found that the two majors had different training priorities. She wants to deepen her career in the field of human resources, but her profession after adjustment is more inclined to accounting.

That's not what interests her. She decided to take another postgraduate exam. In 2023, she stepped on the line to enter the ideal major of her ideal college. I used to only have a bachelor's degree, "I don't feel confident, I am at the bottom of the mountain, and when I am admitted, I will feel that I am already halfway up the mountain." She said that withdrawing from school and retaking the exam to achieve her desired goals made her more confident.

But not all people who drop out of school and repeat their studies can make life as they want to sail into a smooth course.

Yang Beichen studied materials science for four years at a science and engineering university in the south, and began to prepare for a change of major for graduate school very early. The material major he studied was nicknamed the "Four Sinkholes" (biochemical ring materials, namely bioengineering, chemical engineering technology, environmental science and engineering, and material science and engineering) because of poor employment. For some science and engineering students who have a hard time finding employment, "transcoding" - transcoding - transcoding to write code was once a popular option. Yang Beichen remembers that a few years ago, many social platforms were filled with fanaticism for computer science. "If you study for a master's degree in computer science, you can get 200,000-300,000 yuan for the annual salary of cabbage after graduation." This fueled his passion for the profession.

In the first postgraduate examination, he attacked a master's degree in computer science from a double non-university in East China, and he found that "the competition was too fierce" and did not pass the retest score line. Finally, I went around in circles and transferred back to the material science of this school. He was relieved that he had at least another three years of school, but he was still confused and "didn't know what he really wanted to do." Looking back now, he said that when he rushed into the battlefield of the postgraduate examination, he was somewhat blind, and he was hugged by the people around him and walked forward.

A master's student who dropped out of a 985 college analyzed this mentality to Southern Weekend reporter: "From childhood to adulthood, everyone has always been in a competitive system, thousands of troops crossing a single bridge, as if they squeeze others down one by one, they will win." Everyone will think that the process of falling from the bridge to the bottom of the bridge is very scary, and under the bridge is the feeling of an abyss. ”

Yang Beichen initially suggested to himself that he would spend his graduate school career and plan to learn some programming knowledge. At his university, graduate students have a fairly relaxed graduation requirement: send a thesis on Zone 2 SCI, and then write a big thesis after graduation. Science and engineering graduate students have scientific research tasks, and his laboratory is repetitive and monotonous, constantly grinding metallography and polishing, "a lot of technical labor".

"Maybe I don't really like doing science. My purpose was not to research anything, but to publish a thesis and graduate. ”

He decided not to work in his profession after graduation, but he had to spend time in the lab, and everything he did seemed like useless work. "You don't want to learn this thing, you don't like it, you have to learn it." In the second semester of graduate school, Yang Beichen decided to drop out of school and take another year for a master's degree in computer.

The second postgraduate examination still ended in failure. He ran to Shenzhen to find a job, Internet operations, product positions, one by one. The years of "tossing" left marks on his resume. He interviewed a company specializing in cross-border e-commerce, opposite a female interviewer in her forties, talking about the experience of dropping out of school, and the other party said that it was difficult to understand. After the end, the interviewer said to him, "If it weren't for you dropping out, I would have hired you on the spot." ”

"But I don't regret the decision to drop out at all, but I would be very happy." Yang Beichen told Southern Weekend, "I think people's feelings are very important, and you can not do what you don't want to do." ”

Accept the consequences

"Today's young people are largely pushed by an external process and indicator that supports the few personal wills left." Sun Rui said that in the first year after dropping out, he did not choose any repeat institution. He believes that he has seen through the essence of the college entrance examination, "without any productivity, consuming the energy and willpower of young people into a number that can be evaluated by the outside world." He had just dropped out of school and was "very repulsive to repetition."

He sees that year as a self-adjusting gap year. He considered studying abroad, but because his ideal major was Chinese language and literature, studying abroad was not a good choice. He also tried to apply, but most of the people who accepted him were sales positions. He thought that maybe he could do a freelance job and signed up for an online screenwriting class. The effect is not satisfactory.

Learning to write scripts in a quick way is difficult to achieve good results in the market, and it is difficult to satisfy yourself, and in the end, it is found that "it is difficult to find a job or to fend for yourself". Constrained by reality, Sun Rui found that "perhaps the only option is to retake the college entrance examination."

Only this time, Sun Rui's vision of the university is not limited to a diploma, but to find a space that meets his interests and can fully develop.

After dropping out and retaking the exam, Zhang Yi "dropped" from the original 211 University to the current double-African institution. Fortunately, her major was the law she wanted, and she was satisfied with the current situation. Many people have asked her if she can accept the gap. She shook her head. She said that she was once obsessed with the standardized path to further education: 985 books and 985 masters along the way, plus PHD from famous foreign schools, as if that was the standard of life. She used to be obsessed with the aura of a prestigious school, and now feels that the thinking that education is the cause and ability is the effect is actually a logical inversion.

Her experience attracted a lot of inquiries on social media. She found that many people have the idea of dropping out of school and retaking the exam. There is a student from a poor family, studying a minor language major, who wants to drop out of school and retake the law exam, on the grounds that the employment of the minor language is not optimistic, and the ceiling of the salary of the law major in the future is higher, which can permanently alleviate her family's financial difficulties.

A classmate who had aspired to study law since the beginning of high school was opposed by his parents when he applied for volunteering, thinking that the conflict would be eliminated when he reached university. As a result, his inner paranoia about ideals made it difficult for him to continue his studies. In the end, he really dropped out of school and retook the exam.

In a private message, the classmate said to Zhang Yi: He can calmly accept all the results of re-reading, this is a redemption for himself, no matter what the result is, there is no regret.

"Are you worried about the time cost of dropping out of school to re-study?" Southern Weekend asked almost all respondents this question.

"Things like time cost are more of an external standard, looking at yourself from the perspective of society and quantifying your life experience." But from my own point of view, life will always have all kinds of ups and downs, even if it is not a smooth process, it is a valuable experience, this is my life, my life itself, my life course, I will not feel a pity, just feel that there is a very good experience. Sun Rui replied.

"I think we have to take a long-term view, not just focus on the current stage. I think that many people want the result that they want at the beginning, but they keep putting the results they want back, thinking about it later, but many things drag on and there is no more. Guo Yu told Southern Weekend.

This graduation season, Guo Yu has just graduated from that art college. She is now working as a choreographer at a new media company, and her job is roughly to make short videos with film thinking, and she is still a little confused about the future. She said that these confusions were within reasonable range, and if she had not dropped out of school, she might have worked as a clerk in a railroad unit. She is glad that the choice now, because the clerk's confusion is too far away from the life she wants.

(At the request of interviewees, the characters in the article are pseudonyms)

Southern Weekend reporter Pan Xuan