I once posted a log entry on QQ Space called “Not Graduated.”
It was the kind of thing you write when you are bored late at night, so I’ve always thought of that version of myself as a bit dazed and out of it. In truth, graduation or not graduating never felt like such a huge difference to me. Even now, I still can’t really feel it. So this time I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining in a half-hearted way, as if I refuse to admit graduation is actually happening.
Some people look forward to graduating. I’m not one of them. I would rather the school find one excuse after another to keep me here, so I could have a safe place to spend the second half of the year doing the things I have no choice but to do. But the school isn’t going to give me that chance, and I don’t have the courage to create it myself either. I’d rather that opportunity came by accident than by necessity. If it ended up upsetting my family, that would not be worth it. Someone who worries about too many things the way I do probably isn’t meant to accomplish anything major.
I also don’t like the idea of achieving anything great. The people who achieve things have to endure pressure from all sides. With my poor mental resilience and my not-quite-grown-up mind, I really don’t seem suited to living under that kind of force. The fact that I spend every day doing things I have no choice but to do says enough. The word achievement simply doesn’t fit into my life. My life feels more like it is pushing that word away while still somehow continuing on.
Sometimes I feel like what I write becomes deep by accident. Maybe that’s because my thoughts are this deep in the first place, and once I put them down on paper, they end up looking like this mess. I don’t know what a psychologist would make of these words. Of course, no psychologist is going to see them. A nobody’s writing is just that—unless one day the nobody becomes somebody, nobody will bother to pick it up. And I’m the kind of person who wants an ordinary life and has no ambition to climb anywhere, so I’m not going to reach that point anyway. If a psychologist did see this, they would probably say I’m not normal.
But how many people are really able to write down what is going on inside their heads? And how many inner thoughts actually look normal once they’re exposed?
I used to be very picky. Over time, I’ve been worn down until there isn’t a sharp edge left. I can compromise on almost anything now, but whenever I give in too much, I eventually find a chance to let it all out.
That makes me think back to sophomore year of high school. Under all that academic pressure, I spent every day doing things that went against the teacher’s wishes, and every night going to sleep very late, again against the teacher’s wishes. Even in what people call senior year repeated after failing, I once argued with a teacher. Right before the college entrance exam, I could see that the person shaking was the teacher, not me. I looked obedient enough on the surface, but if a teacher caught me doing something wrong, I was never willing to just accept the lecture and bow my head.
I also remember my senior-year homeroom teacher. One time I was late for morning self-study and she made me stand outside for the whole morning in the snow. Later, during class, she came to apologize to me. I actually respected her a lot. I never felt like complaining about a punishment like that, since it was really the system that forced that kind of discipline. Maybe she also didn’t trust my ability to take it. To be honest, I was moved. There were four people made to stand, but she only apologized to me.
My homeroom teacher in the repeated senior year had a kind of mysterious presence. He always faced things with optimism. He didn’t hit or scold students, and he preferred to guide people in his own way instead of relying on rigid rules. Because of health problems, he missed a lot of chances to move up, but I could still tell he genuinely loved teaching.
The graduation photos in academic gowns were taken yesterday. I didn’t arrive at school until 6 p.m., so first I had no gown at all—only about 80% of the gowns had been handed out. On top of that, they had already been taking pictures for a long time. I left the empty suitcase I had brought from home and went straight to the studio. There I got in touch with the class monitor and found out they were still shooting, so I headed over directly. Since I still didn’t have a gown, I just helped take a few photos for them and that was it.
That meant I wasn’t in their group photo. They did take photos with our university counselor, Li Weiwei, and with Ai Yongle, the advisor for our graduation project.
Among the university teachers, I don’t have a very deep impression of Ai Yongle, since I only dealt with him during the graduation project. In the end, my project results were the worst in the class, but I still felt that he was very capable and seemed like one of those people who truly do academic work. These days, people like that are really rare.
As for Li Weiwei, I didn’t have much contact with him either, but my impression of him was also very good. The other teachers never really left much of an impression on me. The only one I genuinely liked was the teacher who taught high-voltage engineering. He felt like the quietest teacher of all, the one with the least unnecessary talk. Maybe I only felt that way because I had already started studying seriously when I took his class. That was in the second semester of junior year.
Today was the flea market. I handed three worn-out pieces of clothing, along with some books for the English II and politics entrance exams, and anything else I could find for the CET, to my classmates so they could help sell them. The weather was hot, and I sat there for a while too. I don’t like buying secondhand things, and I don’t like selling my own things either, so I just sat there in an awkward sort of way, not even knowing how to call out to passersby and try to get them to buy something.
I treated it as a chance to experience what a senior-year graduation clearance sale feels like. While I was thinking about what to sell, I also saw a lot of things from when I first arrived as a freshman. Some of those things had been sitting there since the first year, and they had never been moved at all.
My thoughts jump around without any real order. I don’t like the atmosphere around graduation, but I also don’t feel like I’ve really become part of it yet. There are still seven days left before I graduate. Maybe the feeling of graduation only comes at the exact moment when you really leave.