I worked very hard in the middle school, and my math was excellent. At that time, you can avoid from the university enrollment test and join the top universities if you won the first prize of the national mathmatics competition. I was very confident on this. However, I was too worried about the competition and my status was very bad when walking into the examination room. And I lost the first price due to several stupid mistakes. In fact, these mistakes are not about math at all, but computation skills. For example, in the second-round exam, there was a combination quesition. The last step was adding three 5-digit integers togeter, which, however, I got the wrong answer. Another stupid mistake happened in the second-round exam as well. I lost a 2 in the denominator when I did the calculation. If I had answered them correctly, my score would be sufficient to win the first prize. That will be another story. After that, I didn't play well in the university enrollment exam and lost the chance to learn math in a good university.
In the first year of my undergraduate life, I studied very hard in order to obtain a good score to switch from my current major, an engineering program, to mathmatics. However, unlike the examination system in the middle school, the exams in the university employed a lot of contents from the exams in the previous years. Now I understand the reason: the teachers don't have enough time and energy to invent new questions for examing. So they took several from previous years and changed them a little bit for the test in the current year. I was too stupid to know that. Unlike other classmates, I didn't have a look at previous exams since I was quite confident about my learning. Soon I paid for my stupid. My score was in the middle of the class (my first time being a middle-class). However, it didn't influence my major transfer in the next year. The trouble is from the math departmnent, who requested me to restart with the first year undergraduate students. I felt very upset. I thought one year should not be wasted in this way. If I took extra year to take the university enrollment exam again, I could go to a much better unversity than the current one. I struggled a lot in that afternoon and communicated with my father many times. Finally I decided to stay with my current major and pursue master study in mathmatics. After making the decision, I played Warcraft III throughout the entire afternoon in an internet bar.
In the rest three years, I didn't pay any attention to my major, but took several courses from the math and the computer departments. However, I total lost my will to fight. I spent many time in internet bars on playing vedio games. I always waked up at midday and had lunch with my friends. After that, we stayed in a bar until midnight (sometimes we went out for supper). These three years past very fast. At the last year, I got a IELTS score 6.5 and start to apply for master program in Australia. I consulted the possiblitiy for major switch. None of these unversities agreed me to do that because the requirements of master in mathmatics were quite different from other majors. My final hope ended there. I still can remember that afternoon. I walked with my father outside. He suggested to keep going with my current major, because that is the best choice I can do. I still can apply my skills of math in applications. I accepted his suggestion. Soon I got admissions from two Australian unversities. And I picked up the textbook and completed them in the last half of year of my undegraduate study.
It was not my year. My visa application was rejected. I didn't have any plans for what I would do next. That was the darkest time in my life. No hope. Everything seems against me. I played games a lot. I got a job, but I was fired soon because I insisted not working during weekends. After then, I found another job with CNY500/month. During that time, I heard a way to study in the Europe with low cost. Finally, I've succeed in enrolling a college one year after my graduation. Then everything went great. Due to my solid math and computing skills, I was very success in the master program and got a PhD offer from a famous university.
To be honest, I didn't have idea about what I actually want when I started my PhD program. I just knew it was fancy to be a PhD student. I will generate a lot of interesting results.
2024-04-02