#长文创作激励计划##头条创作挑战赛##理想家生活##高考运势签##记录我的2024##2024头条高考季#
"
Last month, the truth published an article "Three Students, Get Together". In the background of the article, a doctor of literature left us a message, telling about his journey from a rural student in three colleges and universities to a young teacher teaching in one college.
"In addition to the help of the national training teachers to help me, it is also at the expense of parents' expectations for traditional family ethics and economic returns to the original family." He said.
In the world we live in, the imprint of birth lingers at certain moments, determining the openness or twists and turns of everyone's road ahead. On the way to work hard, he saw everywhere the imprints of rural children and three colleges, adding twists and turns to the originally flat future.
He was impressed by the student who shared the same teachers, textbooks, exam content and ambitions with him on campus. That's another world's self. He glimpsed through the ceiling the starting point and the road ahead of the other party, which was the life that he was qualified to work hard to reach after more than ten years of struggling to break down barriers.
The following is Wei Hui's (pseudonym) account.
above the ceiling
I could hear his voice as he endorsed it. As he walked, I knew it was his footsteps. He stood still, and I could feel it, just above the ceiling above my head, reading the same textbook as I did.
In my senior year, I learned about his existence because I was preparing for graduate exams in the school's "graduate school entrance building".
I never went to the other side of the ceiling to get to know him or talk to him. For most of the half year I was preparing for the exam, I felt his presence on the upper and lower floors of the corridor of the school's "Postgraduate Entrance Examination Building".
Above the ceiling, he's like another me. We were both Chinese students, reciting the same content, and when I asked my classmates, I also learned that we were going to apply for the same major in the same "C9" university. The difference is that he is a student of one university in the main part of the school, while I am a student of one of the three colleges run by this school.
Occasionally, I would try to compete with him, coming earlier and leaving later than him. At half past ten in the evening, the security guard drove me away when he cleared people, and I would secretly open a window in the corridor on the first floor under the pretext of going to the toilet, so that I could open the window and study in the building before the security guard opened the door the next day. I have always been the first to arrive and the last to leave in the "graduate school building". The days of heavy snow in winter are no exception. I was there when he didn't come. I think what he can do, I can do.
Figure | In November 2011, a corner of the postgraduate entrance examination building
My name is Wei Hui, and I was born in the late 80s of the last century, in a small village in an economically backward province in central China, and my parents are farmers. Due to the college entrance examination due to mathematics bias and other reasons, I only went to the "three books" line and came to Jiangnan, a three-book independent college run by a university, to study Chinese.
After the third year, in order to move the new students of the college, the senior students will move from the small campus in the north of the city to the large campus in the main campus in the south of the city, and borrow the campus space of the main department students to continue their studies. Because of this, my life has intersected with the top universities in China.
Luckily, we share a group of teachers with them. Professors, associate professors, and associate deans from the Faculty of Arts in the Faculty of Arts will come to give us serious lessons, and we will not be fooled by the fact that we are three students. I still remember an associate professor surnamed Li at that time. Once, after class, I saw him sitting in the flower bed at the school gate reading, with Erlang's legs crossed, and because his pants were very short, a section was exposed, and the socks inside were torn with a big hole.
I was impressed by the contrast between this scene and the back. I sensed that he looked poor and sour, but when we mentioned the principal's name in the recess chat, he gave us a strange look and asked us who it was. He said: "I really don't know who the principal is, I don't care about that, I just care about the research I do. ”
I was blown away by his character. As a child born in the countryside, the town mayor and county magistrate are unattainable, and these "long" things are all authoritarian and must be obeyed. How is it possible for a teacher not to know who the principal is?
I began to like Mr. Li very much, and I was fascinated by his demeanor. I was also fascinated by the way the teachers from other Faculty of Arts taught their classes. From elementary school to high school, I was a lover of literature, and it was only under the influence of these teachers at university that I gradually developed my own ambition and made it clear that I wanted to become a literary researcher.
More of a pity. Although we have entered a book of campus life, all kinds of details are suggesting that we do not belong here.
The headquarters issued us a new campus card to use for meals and other expenses. For students in the main department, the background picture of the school library, the college, and the student number are printed on the campus card, and there is nothing on our campus card, and the college, student number and name need to be written and pasted with the label by themselves. I later learned that it was a temporary card.
The main office has designated two dormitory buildings for us, located next to a wasteland in the corner of the school, separated from the students of the main department. The students of the various departments of the three colleges also took classes, and all of them were concentrated in the "graduate school entrance examination building" that was idle before. On weekdays, only students in the main department who are admitted to graduate school will prepare for self-study there. Each of their colleges has its own school building for classes.
When I was in graduate school, a teacher said that my foundation in "philology" was very poor, and at that time, I realized that I didn't know what "philology" was, because our curriculum did not cover these things at all. On the other hand, most of the students who are admitted to graduate school in this department will take philology.
As the Faculty of Arts, we also share a group of teachers with the main department, but our curriculum design is generally application-oriented. For example, in the professional class, we only take a simple "History of Literature", and students in this department also study "History of Chinese Literary Criticism". We also take many non-academic courses: social etiquette, speech and eloquence, web production, teacher speaking and etiquette, etc......
The school acquiesced to the future path of the three students, and after graduation, they would become teachers, civil servants, etc., and would not engage in academic research. At that time, the way out for our three students was nothing more than the public examination, the postgraduate entrance examination, and the teacher examination, which were not as rich as the students of the main department in the same period.
The same is the postgraduate entrance examination, and the students of the Faculty of Arts of the Faculty of Letters of the Faculty of Liberal Arts of the Faculty of Liberal Arts of the Faculty of Liberal Arts of the Faculty It's a transparent ceiling that we can't break through – you can see the diverse and brilliant future of our students, but it's a world that's hard for us to reach.
Figure | In 2008, a school building on the Sanhoni campus
It's like a metaphor that has been alluded to, and after a few months of intersection, I and the one on the ceiling have gone to our own ends.
He was admitted to the graduate school of that school, and in a short period of time, he studied for a master's degree and a doctorate, and is now an associate researcher at a national academic institution in Beijing. Of course, he is very talented, capable, and deserves to be an academic talent. Until now, I don't think he ever knew I existed.
I didn't get into that university. Because I had to repay my student loan and my family needed me to improve my financial situation, I had to work immediately. Later, I worked for three years, part-time work and study, and after paying off the loan, I was admitted to a graduate school in an old 211 university in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and went through two doctoral examinations, until I was at the doctoral stage, and I went ashore to the university of my dreams.
The failure of the graduate school entrance examination is also related to the fact that my English did not pass the line. In the countryside, I only started to learn "ABC" in the first year of junior high school, and the level of teachers in the classroom was limited, and sometimes I couldn't write the words correctly, and my English foundation was really too thin.
By the time we graduated, half of our class had passed CET-6. The students gathered in the Chinese departments of the three colleges have some characteristics: everyone is basically partial to mathematics, but the Chinese and literature are very good, and some people have scored high scores that students cannot reach. They are energetic and unbelieving. But their family background is not very good, so there is not much choice but to come to this three colleges.
I remember that there were more than 60 people in the class at that time, and more than 20 of them had to select poor students, because most of them were from rural areas. Some of them were born in the cities and were born in poor people, and their parents were laid-off workers or seriously ill.
The students stood at the front desk one by one to "complain about the poor and complain", and then the students in the audience voted. I didn't go for it because I felt it was too undignified. I also found that I was not the most miserable because my parents were poor in rural areas, and I was not willing to compete for places with classmates whose parents died.
This is the stratosphere in which I live, where I started.
People who steal toilet paper
Knock knock, the foot kicking the stool got harder and heavier, and my body was already shaking.
At the scene of the college entrance examination comprehensive examination, I sat in the penultimate row, and the child behind me was from a certain county leader's family. Before the exam, he had already threatened to ask me to copy the essay for him, but I didn't dare to agree, so I fooled two sentences. He kept kicking my stool during exams.
I swayed and shifted my stool forward in a panic. The invigilator was right behind me, standing next to him, doing nothing but slowly walking to the front of the classroom.
Looking at the essay paper, my mind was blank and I couldn't write a single word.
This year, I scored more than 120 points in the Chinese test and more than 70 points in the mathematics test, but the comprehensive literature was only in my early 200s, about 50 points lower than usual. When I walked out of the examination room, I burst into tears, got on my bicycle, and rode more than 20 kilometers home. I was afraid that if I stayed any longer, I would be beaten by the kid who found me.
Since I was a child, I had good grades and was not social, and I was often threatened by my classmates to copy homework and clean up for them. When other friends were playing in the mud, touching shrimp, and digging birds' eggs, I was always reading, memorizing, and writing at home alone. When I was in the third grade of primary school, I was pushed to the ground by several classmates from the same village, grabbed my neck and beat me, blood ran down my ears, and people at the township clinic said that my eardrum was almost perforated.
Figure |
In 2014, a field near his hometown
Finding a good job, leaving the countryside and finding a way out for myself and my family – it became an urgent goal for me at a very young age. I was always told by my parents to work hard: they told me that there was no way out for rural children, "either study or become a soldier." ”
My family is not well-off. When I was born, I was saddled with a huge debt to my family due to illness. When I was 9 months old, I suddenly had a high fever in the middle of the night, and my parents carried me to the township clinic for treatment. In the second half of the night, my mother noticed that I had been rolling my eyes, and the doctor realized that something was wrong and quickly asked my parents to take me to the county hospital for treatment. My father got on his bicycle, let my mother hold me in the back seat, and rode dozens of miles overnight to get me to the intensive care unit of the county hospital.
I was diagnosed with encephalitis. In the 90s of the last century, encephalitis was a life-threatening threat to children in rural areas, because the level of medical care in towns and villages was not high, and it was easy to be misdiagnosed when the fever was initially present. When I entered the hospital, one of the children in the same ward had died. Seeing that my neck was stiff and my eyes were rolling, my mother fainted in a hurry. Later she told me that she thought that day that she would crash if I died, and she didn't want to live.
I rescued for seven days. On the way, the money was spent, and the small-footed grandmother couldn't ride a bicycle, so she walked dozens of miles to the county hospital with the only 420 yuan left in the family.
When I was discharged from the hospital, I was fortunate to have sound limbs, and most of the other children in the ward had cerebral palsy or were disabled. The family also owes a lot of debts because of this. The village was closed to information, no one went out to work, and my parents relied on a few acres of land to farm, and after paying the agricultural tax, there was not much left, and it was not until I was in elementary school that I barely paid off the debt.
When I was a child, as much as I longed to read more, I didn't have many channels to find extracurricular books. The village is a world without a collection of books.
I went crazy to find it, and for this reason, I even stole the "toilet paper" of the village party secretary's house.
At that time, the village party secretary would throw some unused work and study materials and local newspapers in the toilet as toilet paper. Every few days, I always find an excuse to go to their house and squat in a pit and steal the unused "toilet paper".
When I got home, I dried and flattened them, and after reading them, I saved them up and used them to make dumplings and dustpans during the Chinese New Year. I don't dare to go through them very often. Because my hands are very dirty, I am afraid that if I turn them over too often, I will get them dirty.
When I was in the third grade of elementary school, I found out that the school had a library that was never open.
That year, in order to prepare for the inspection of the leader, the teacher suddenly asked me to clean the library. He opened the door, and I had seen so many books for the first time. The windows of the library were sealed, and the inside was pitch black, and the books were covered with dust, and no one read them. I was so excited that when I finished cleaning, my face was covered with mud, and the sweat mixed with dust turned into mud and ran down.
I asked the teacher if he could let me take the book home to read. The teacher only gave me one copy, which was "Romance of Language" published in 1995. I am still grateful to the editors who published this book, who tell the allusions in literary history, such as the Book of Songs, Chu Ci, and the lives of Tang and Song poets, in the form of stories, which is very suitable for children. It was the first time I saw the beauty of classical literature at the age of 9, and I can say that that book enlightened me.
I read it many times and made up my mind that I should learn something like this in the future. Later, I really engaged in the study of classical literature and history.
After reading "The Romance of Language", I went back to the days when I didn't have a book to read. The library was re-locked after inspection. Borrowing and managing books requires a labor cost, and no teacher is willing to do it, so the library will only be open when it is ready for inspection.
When I was in third grade, I was secretly reading "Storytelling" in math class and was discovered by my math teacher. He tore off the pages piece by piece, torn to shreds, and finally threw the piece of paper out of the window.
Our classrooms are on the third floor. I looked at the scraps of paper flying in the sky outside the window and cried very sadly. He tore my beloved literary reading to shreds. And the book is not mine, I borrowed it from the squad leader, and I am not even the squad leader, it was his sister who studied in the town specially bought it from the town and brought it back to the village. I need compensation.
I had to steal two dollars from home and pay it back to the class leader. From that day on, I started to hate math very much. In both the high school and college entrance examinations, I repeated them once because my math scores were too poor.
Figure |
In 2013, the dusk of my hometown
A sense of scarcity of books and cultural resources continued throughout my first eighteen years. When I was in middle school in the township, there was still no bookstore in the town, so I had to go to the workers' gathering area of a coal mine next door to buy books. We call it "the street", and the workers who live there are "street people". The "people on the street" are on top. Because they have an urban hukou and we have a rural hukou, they look down on us.
At that time, my living expenses were five yuan a day, and my mother gave me the money to buy dinner in the cafeteria. I would buy 10 very small xiaolongbao for 1 yuan. Therefore, a copy of "Story Club" is equal to 20 steamed buns, which is equal to my two or three meals, and is equal to my living expenses for two or three days. I often skip meals at night, save money to buy books and test papers, and my stomach falls into illness.
Later, when I was in graduate school, I took part-time classes in a teaching and auxiliary institution to earn money, and I heard a child say that his house had a wall of books, and the whole wall was full of extracurricular books.
I was jealous to the point of envy.
Embarrassed people
The opportunity to read and the spiritual level of life are really lacking for me. So when I get the chance, I'll try to seize it at all costs. But the economic constraints often stumble in my way.
After failing the graduate school entrance examination in my first year, I decided to fight in World War II. But because I had to repay my brother and I on student loans, I had to work hard and couldn't go to graduate school. That year, I passed the provincial public institution and provincial civil service examinations. The former is the provincial department, and the latter is the township where my family is located, and I chose to go back to my hometown without hesitation - my goal is to save money, it is not easy to live in the city, and I can save more money in my hometown by saving rent, water and electricity.
I live at home, ride to work, eat at work, and my salary is basically not spent to pay off student loans. The rest of the money, except for 50 yuan per month for canteen food, I use the rest to buy books. From the basic series of Chinese classical literature of Zhonghua Book Company, to the series of Chinese classical literature of Shanghai Ancient Books, the Book of Poetry and Chu Ci, and the collection of Tang and Song dynasties, I read them one by one and became obsessed.
In the past three years of work, I have a lot of business, and I can only review at the grassroots level in the most cumbersome townships and towns known as "a thousand lines above, a needle below", and I can't be seen by my colleagues. I have done a lot of work such as letters and visits, urban construction and demolition, land requisition compensation, city appearance and sanitation, etc., which are not one kind of work for a while, but always need to be done at the same time.
At that time, I liked the late night when I was on duty on behalf of others, and it was a good opportunity to revise. At that time, many township and town cadres except me were buying houses in the city, and when they wanted to go home at night, they would ask me to help with the night shift. The duty room is a small stairwell on the first floor of the office building, and many nights, it is just me and the security guard. I listened to the chirping of autumn insects and read a book, very quiet and attentive. Sometimes I would be scared when the toilet suddenly sounded flushing, and later I found out that it was the security guard who got up at night to go to the toilet. During the day, when I was on duty, other directors often came to visit and chat, and some villagers came to find someone to do something. The office was bustling with people and smog all day. That's how I reviewed.
This year, my favorite job to do is the ban on straw burning, because each person is responsible for a section, and I have time to read books after I finish it. It was May, the wheat harvest season began, the weather was very hot, and in the endless fields at the southern end of the Huang-Huai-Hai Great Plain, only the small trees at the top of the grave could provide shade - I sat on the grave and recited it. A lot of the history of literature and criticism was memorized by me sitting on my grave during those days when the scorching sun was high.
Figure |
In the afternoon of 2015, I sat on the wheat straw and reviewed
In 2015, I was admitted to a graduate school at an old 211 university in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. I was 27 years old, five years behind my graduate students.
When I resigned in April, neither the district nor the unit agreed. At that time, I was already ranked in the organization department, and I was the top junior cadre. The old leader told me clearly: "In a few months, the two sessions in the district will be held, and the cadres will be adjusted." You young people have to go up, and when you are in your twenties, you will become the deputy director of the district, or you will be the deputy mayor of the town, and you will soon be able to grow into a leader. If you think about it, even if you graduate from graduate school, will you still have this opportunity? "He didn't paint flatbread. Indeed, not long after I resigned to study for graduate school, the young people who joined the company behind me took up the deputy positions of various bureaus and commissions in the district, some of them were promoted in the township and township, and a group of them were selected and transferred to provincial and municipal departments as deputy section chiefs.
It takes a lot to give up the iron job of a civil servant in his hometown and the opportunity to "be an official" at his fingertips, and insist on going out to study.
One is the parental close. I spent quite a long time "brainwashing" my parents and building up their psychology to convince them that I was not suitable to continue to be a township cadre in my hometown. "It's good that our rural children can work in the town, and when we become a town mayor and director, it's even more like the ancestral grave is smoking, what are you still thinking, what are you going to do?" The parents were very puzzled. A rural child working as a local civil servant is indeed a great help to the family. In those years, my parents also felt that their social status had risen, and the neighbors who had conflicts with our family in the past greeted them with smiles when they came in and out.
The second is money. In the past few years of work, I have repaid the student loans of myself and my younger brother, and I have also saved tens of thousands of yuan as a fund for studying, but I am still under great financial pressure to continue my graduate studies in a big city. A rural family has already done its best to provide for the brothers to go to university. When I quit my job to study for graduate school, not only could I not be able to provide for my family financially, but I also needed help from my parents.
But I don't want to wander around my hometown anymore. So there was the only time in my three-year work that I begged someone to do something: I went to an acquaintance with the right to speak with a cheeky face to intercede, approved my resignation, and let me go.
For a while, I was very depressed, and I read ancient literary works, from the Book of Songs to the words of Tang and Song poets such as Su Shi and Jiang Jie, and the more I read, the more immersed I became. I read some of the notes and felt that it was not quite right, and I felt that my thoughts were better. I felt my passion. I feel that when I was studying, my inner personality and enthusiasm were completely different from when I was working. It was another world, another life.
At that moment, for the first time, I had a concrete vision of a life with academic pursuit: reading, writing, commenting, and teaching every day, and being tied to books for the rest of my life. I realized that this was the life I wanted to live the most.
I want to go into that world and live my life.
In the summer of 2015, I had two surgeries in my hometown due to acute enteritis and other injuries. After the surgery, I was supposed to be hospitalized for at least half a month, and in less than a week, I was discharged early to attend the master's interview. The scalpel was still open, oozing blood and fluid, and the flesh of the wound was still turning out. When I was hospitalized, I couldn't eat, and I was on a nutrient solution. On the morning of my discharge, I ate some millet porridge, drank a cup of soy milk, signed a confirmation form for early discharge at my own risk, endured the pain, and set off alone with hemostatic and anti-inflammatory drugs.
I started from the city hospital, transferred to three buses and a rural passenger shuttle, bumped for more than three hours, went back to the countryside to get the required documents and preparation materials, spent the night, and then took the train to school the next morning. After arriving at the school to register the information, I breathed a sigh of relief, walked to the street park outside the school, and passed out on the street bench.
It wasn't until I was woken up by the cold wind of the night that I realized that I had passed out. I glanced at my watch and it had been hours.
In September 2015, I finally started my graduate school studies. Throughout the first and second years of graduate school, I was intoxicated with reading and buying books, almost the same as when I was in graduate school, I first went to the library to wait in line for the door to open, and then kicked me out when it closed to catch people, and the few savings I had after paying off the loan were quickly spent.
When I was stretched thin, I went to work as a teacher at the largest educational institution in the province, and I worked part-time while preparing for the doctoral exam. In 2018, I failed to take the PhD exam because of the increased cost of renting a house, and the financial pressure became more and more great. A graduate student roommate who was admitted to a high school in the city once added a bed to my dorm for me to sleep in.
Figure | In 2018, I failed my first exam and was a little lonely standing in the study room
In 2019, I was finally admitted to the "dream school" that I wanted to take when I was studying in three books, one of the "five schools in East China", and my doctoral supervisor was the top teacher in the field.
During my PhD, I went crazy and posted papers. During a pre-defense of my dissertation, a respected teacher in the field was very dissatisfied after reading my academic results. Other people's results are only one or two lines, and I wrote a side of A4 paper that was not enough, so I turned it over and wrote it. He criticized me and said that I was impetuous.
Because of the dozen or twenty papers I have published in the past few years, many of them are general journals, and there are also some mainstream newspapers that are the results of the theoretical editions, and he does not like them. In fact, most of those general journal papers were split from my unpublished master's theses. The reason why I keep writing, revising, submitting, and accepting manuscripts is just because I need to earn manuscript fees.
I do a lot of work to earn extra money, in addition to being a reviewer for publishing houses, I also ghostwrite other people's books without signatures, or do some project outsourcing. A manuscript for a magazine can get about 2,000 yuan in manuscript fees, which is an important channel to make money.
Also, I know that I was just 35 years old when I graduated with my PhD. Since those over the age of 35 cannot apply for the National Social Science Fund Youth Program, many colleges and universities will set the age of recruiting teachers at under 35. I know my three origins and ages, and I will be discriminated against when applying for a job. If I finish for more than a year, I won't be able to find a job at all.
Under the high pressure of the red line at the age of 35, I dare not relax in the slightest. Almost every year in our school, there are doctoral students who commit suicide. And they were all younger than me, ending their lives in their twenties.
Figure | In 2017, the day of reading books in the library
I even thought about suicide if I didn't graduate before the age of 35. People who have not studied for a Ph.D. may not be able to understand this kind of pressure: more than 20 years of study have been wasted, a doctorate cannot be completed, and no amount of hard work in the college entrance examination, postgraduate entrance examination, and doctoral examination is in vain. Thinking about this, I often can't sleep at night with fear and anxiety, my hair falls out a lot, and I cry bitterly in my bed in the middle of the night. Only my girlfriend, who was away from home at the time, stayed with me for those nights.
Why do I write so many papers? Not only do I have to earn money, but I also have more weight when looking for a job, and prove to others that I can, I can write, and I can provide value to the school.
In the face of the criticism of "impetuousness", I did not respond, and it was useless to explain. The big people are easy to say, and they never know the embarrassment of the little people.
Uncompromising people
When I graduated with my Ph.D., I was just 35 years old, many years later than my classmates who graduated in the same period, and I also reached the red line of most colleges and universities recruiting young teachers. Most of the PhDs who graduated from the same class as me in the school have entered 211 colleges and universities as teachers.
From a three-degree graduate, admitted to a graduate student of 211 universities, becoming a master's degree with a national scholarship, and then graduating from a class A discipline in a leading university with a doctorate, he is a famous teacher. I've been trying to go where I can go by my own uprightness, not only because I was educated to have such moral qualities, but also because I'm just a person from the bottom with no background and can only work hard with my bare hands.
During my Ph.D., I achieved very good results, and published several "C Journals", "C Collections" and "C Expansions", which were enough for three or four people to graduate according to the latest requirements of the school.
But what I didn't expect was that I was still rejected by all 985 and 211 universities. Because of my undergraduate degree and age, many schools don't even give me the opportunity to interview.
A recruiter from a double-first-class university in the central region said on the phone that they now graduated from Peking University as long as they have bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees, regardless of whether they have scientific research achievements or not. The personnel secretary of a veteran 211 university in the south told me that they wanted me very much and went to the personnel office many times to ask for a teaching position, but the personnel department said that I was not from a good background: "Our school is a 211 student, and you let a student of Sanben come to teach our 211 students, how can the students agree?" ”
Some colleges and universities had a good effect in the early stage, and they were about to sign a contract, but later found out that the staff of the personnel department did not know what "so-and-so college" was written on my undergraduate education background. They thought it was an honor college like Yuanpei College of Peking University and Zhu Kezhen College of Zhejiang University.
Knowing that it was an independent three colleges, they were silent.
Until I passed the interview of the provincial double non-university where I currently work. When I met the dean during the interview, I was afraid that they would not see it clearly, so I emphasized again: I am from a three-book background, and now I am 35 years old, and I can no longer get the youth program.
The dean said, "What about the three books?" Heroes don't ask where they come from. What about 35? It still seems young to us. I'm in my 50s. ”
Finally, I became an ordinary young teacher with 8,000 yuan a month and no house or car. Every time I talked about my income, my neighbor would tell my parents openly and slightly mockingly that his son had dropped out of junior high school to become a contractor and was now earning tens of thousands of yuan every month. In the years that I have been studying, my peers have already started a family, and children are not allowed to play soy sauce, but have reached the age of "junior high school" or even high school entrance examination. I didn't care, but my parents were under a lot of peer pressure in their small circle of people back home. My mother was so anxious that I couldn't sleep because I wasn't married or had children. It makes me feel very sorry for them.
I started the academic life I had so much desire to do when I was younger, but it didn't come without a price. I also know very well that I will never be able to become a first-rate scholar, or even a second-rate scholar.
Figure | On his birthday in 2020, his girlfriend ordered a cake at that time
I have long found that in traditional literature and history research, if a person starts to get in touch with academic research from graduate school, there is basically no prospect for development. First-class scholars in this field are those who have their own wisdom roots, and at the same time have a deep family history, have received a complete education in Chinese culture since childhood, and then read from a famous school to a famous school, and finally work in a famous school. The second-rate scholars are those who are now working in 985 universities. They have the blessing of the school's good resources, and they are young, and they also have the opportunity to get the youth program as a springboard for promotion and apply for talent hats.
I know I'm not that talented. I used to publish a journal as a student when I was a Ph.D., but now as a young teacher in this double-non-African university, I can't publish it. I can't get a youth program if I'm over 35 years old. Other programs that are more competitive require not only academic skills, but also social skills, networks, and networks.
Once, I had dinner with a few famous professors and a young editor of an authoritative journal. The professors took the editor as their upper seat, sat him in the middle, and toasted him in turn. It dawned on me that I couldn't do such a thing.
In fact, I know exactly what to do if I want to go "up". My teacher is famous, and there are many classmates and friends who work as editors in C magazine, so I just need to communicate with them, entrust them, and ask the teachers to come forward to intercede, maybe I can really send it out. But I don't want to do this, but deliberately avoid it - the journals I am submitting to now have nothing to do with me.
I don't want to use the same way that some scholars do. I don't want to go against my will, I don't want to flatter, I don't want to whisper and beg someone and cause trouble to others.
I just want to know, if I don't rely on anyone, just rely on my own efforts and abilities, where can I go?
Sometimes, I feel like a relic from an old era. Looking at my doctoral supervisor born in the 50s of the last century, I feel that my spirit is in line with him: he is upright, has the hard bones of a literati, is a leader in his field, and often criticizes people who are not solid in academics. He doesn't rely on resources, he doesn't make connections, even if he may offend people, he only relies on his excellent academic ability to stand firm.
It's something I've always longed for. If I reach the age of forty or fifty, and I am not yet a professor or doctoral supervisor, if I really can't go on, will I go to my old classmates who are editors of the C journal and the teachers, brothers and sisters who are experts in the evaluation of fund projects at all levels? I'm not sure. But at the moment, I don't.
I've come this here on my own for so many years. I found that I had to take the entrance exam twice before I could move on to the next stage. The high school entrance examination, the college entrance examination, the postgraduate entrance examination, and the doctoral examination are all the same, and even the on-campus pre-defense of the doctoral dissertation is passed for the second time.
If there is really a so-called fate that has drawn a box for me, if I am really destined to not reach a high level, I still have to do things.
Even, I don't believe that the box is completely incapable of prying: can it be pushed up again? Is the so-called "ceiling" still moving?
I didn't get a good job this year, and I want to try again next year.
Narrator丨Wei Hui (Doctor of Literature, University Teacher)
Written by Fontaine
(Excerpted from the WeChat public account real story project)