1.
The Paradise a Meter Away
Yu Turnip
In the darkness, we groped for the door that leads to paradise. Once we all thought it was too far away, and with one fall, two stumbles, and three collisions, faith easily despaired in helplessness, collapsed in despair, and slacked off in collapse. And yet, one day at last, we still see what heaven looks like. Looking back at the starting point, it was but a meter away.
July 2002 early to step on the senior three can Road
Although the sophomore summer vacation has just begun, but the school on our behalf pity this two-month vacation, we then live up to expectations, very good behavior shuttle in the overwhelming tutorial classes. I officially handed over the position of deputy editor of the school magazine, sitting in the classroom to watch the blackboard flip around the formula sweat mixed with the smell of the electric fan under the drumming of the expansion of the uncontrollable. In those days, the college entrance examination is far away like in the sky, the blackboard behind the classroom seems to have advance consciousness, like to use hours to calculate the time from the college entrance examination, the result is counterproductive to make us think that the college entrance examination is a few hundred years later, that huge number to make us feel at ease. Tutoring, classes for us is just like a kind of psychological appeasement, we top the senior title every day on time to sit here to read words, sleep, chat. When we got home, we still surfed the Internet, rented video disks, watched the most overrated TV shows, and talked on the phone until our parents hated Belle. The days were good, so good that we forgot when to change from short sleeves to long sleeves. We ushered in the real senior year of high school in the midst of all the hustle and bustle.
The school officially opened in September 2002
The classroom seemed like it had a pride complex, and every year when we moved up a level, it had to follow us up a level, and the school seemed to want us to recognize who we were as we picked up the steps. But with little success, when school started, the only thing we complained about was climbing the stairs every day until our feet were weak, doing leg exercises while cursing the sky and the earth instead of increasing the heaviness in our hearts. So lazy people have lazy ways, except for earthquakes and fires, we never go downstairs easily. However, there are also exciting things, as the school's big brother and big sister level characters, we have the privilege of not wearing uniforms, a time, the classroom will be colorful, and classmates chatting in the topic of what to wear tomorrow more premeditated. The first half of the semester is undoubtedly easy, originally let us headache and distress of geography and biology are gone, the study of literature people do not have to drill hard physics and chemistry, happy to look at the past science teachers are high and mighty. Learning science people are completely to history say bye-bye, politics is not escape, but the atmosphere of the course is easy to a mess, simply political teacher as transparent, take the initiative to change to self-study course who know in the premise of the college entrance examination, the teacher is absolutely will be in these sub-courses to give you enough face. The heavy burden of senior high school sophomore class in the beginning of senior high school suddenly changed without a trace. This really made me a little too happy to believe. Although I still persuade myself to consciously do extracurricular exercises, memorize ancient texts and political views in advance, however, the mind is not on it at all, every night in front of the desk in the mediocre four or five hours, and then "11 o'clock before going to bed," this sounds good work schedule to deceive themselves and others.
I still can't remember when the tension started; it was premeditated, but it invaded without a word. The first time I saw this, I was in the middle of a long journey, and I was in the middle of a long journey, and I was in the middle of a long journey, and I was in the middle of a long journey. Thick tutorials were handed out as if they were free, and we would lament each one we received, swearing that it would never be finished, and then giggling as we signed our names on the front cover, saying that we would take them with us to the college entrance exams. However, it never occurs to us that they are just the beginning and have such a short lifespan that they are quickly tackled and pushed aside to be used for collecting dust.
I finished the first half of my senior year of high school, the final exam results in my half a year of desertion is actually not outrageous, I squeezed into the top 100 which in our city high school means that you can get into a first-class brand-name university. But this ranking is quite let my parents dissatisfaction, they do not understand the first two years of high school when I can still hold a grade back to the fourth, often around the position is in the twenties and thirties, how to the third year of high school is supposed to be the power of the time but regressed into this way. My explanation is that everyone has been powerful ah, and my force is too small, can not fight. In fact, I was quite relieved, because I know I did not in the first half of the semester to fight wholeheartedly, so I have enough reasons to strengthen their own confidence. New Year's time there are freshman and sophomore elementary school girls called to ask me senior bitter ah, I bit a string of ice candy gourds on the phone, vaguely answered okay, still alive and sound limbs. They laughed uncontrollably on the other end, and I was optimistic on the other end, and I was incredibly determined to believe in my own future.
The vacation is not over yet, but we still sit in the classroom early. The first time I saw this, I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night. Obviously, we are not like the summer remedial classes that loose, not only obedient to come on time, in the classroom also rarely see people lying on the table with the weekly meeting. The homeroom teacher praised us for being more and more like senior students. Of course, there are less than four months, now we have more or less observed the relentlessness of time, who do not want to put their future as a bet.
The other one-half of the senior year began in mid-February 2003
The day before the school year began, I wrote my motto on the Nth post and glued it all over the place - "Heaven will send a great task to the people, but must first be bitter to their hearts and minds, and laboring on their bones and bones, and starving on their bodies and skin ". I always believe that as long as you work hard now, even if it is bitter to the point of astringency, but as long as you endure it, then the future is bright. This idea is not only I have, I believe that every senior is so persistent. We all know very well that in today's society, what it means to enter a famous university, and what it means to fail. What we carry on our shoulders is no longer just our own destiny, but more often than not, it comes from the whole family. I've been taught this since I was a kid, so I know I have to work hard.
Teachers generally believe that the only way to truly reflect our current level of learning is to take tests, so they are becoming more and more difficult. I failed to break the 90-point mark (out of 150) on several math exams in a row, and began to realize the beginning of my nightmare. Faced with a paper full of red crosses, I was almost so desperate that I didn't want to see the numbers anymore. The homeroom teacher reassured me that it was okay, that the exams were harder and that many people had failed. But I'm not concerned about how many people get a low score, I see that there are still excellent students out of one hundred and twenty-three points of good results, this comparison is more alarming to me, I do not dare to imagine that I take a door did not break the pass line math results how to knock on the door of my ideals.
In the middle of the night, I asked myself over and over again: where is the "me" that was so confident a few months ago? I think I probably lost her. In those days, I frantically searched for a math tutor, drove to class twice by myself, and walked alone in the dark through long streets with no streetlights. It was hard for me to open up and tell my friends that I was taking a math tutor, and they would fuss and stagger, "You're still tutoring math? What about us?" Everyone's standards and ideals are different, characteristically, I am overly demanding of perfection, I want the version of myself I bring to the college entrance exams to be excellent, and I panic that a single slip-up could send me into the abyss completely.
The first mock exam, I was ushered in a state of disillusionment. The result was naturally bad. According to the ranking of the district, I could only enter the Huazheng. This prophecy makes me immensely disappointed, I am not demanding that I must enter a famous university, just from childhood, Fudan in my heart has always occupied a very important position, that is a dream of mine, an ideal, a pursuit. One day when I realized that this dream, this ideal, this pursuit, I do not have a grasp to grasp it, it seems to be farther and farther away from me, that heartache is the weight of life can not bear.
For months I was busy getting close to math. Every day, no matter how much homework I had that day, how late I finished, I strictly required myself to do how many pages of math practice papers, there is an old Chinese saying "diligence can make up for clumsiness", I firmly believe that, so I pressed the schedule under the table, and if I was lazy and did not finish it one day, I would put a cross on the paper with scarlet color, this method worked, because the next day I was again at the table to write, and the next day I would write again, and the next day I would write again, and the next day I would write again. Because the next day when I was at my desk again to do my homework, those forks stung my eyes very brightly, reminding me again of the heartache I felt when I flunked, and I didn't dare to break the rules again. I also plastered my several disastrous math papers all over my room, and those sweaty scores were able to motivate me in a very functional way, but every time my parents came in they were all over the place, and they said, "People put awards on their walls, but you're so good at flaunting such ugly papers." I said, "If it's not ugly now it will never look good later.
I don't know if the months of intensive training has effect, or the teacher in order to give us face and the problem is simple up, anyway, in the later exams, the score slowly beautiful, and also began to change the up and down the problem, which makes me a happy mess. However, according to the class teacher, it was the fact that my mindset was getting better and better that led to the stabilization of my grades. I don't know exactly what "mindset" means, but confidence is something that is indispensable. Later, when I went to university and looked at this period of time, I thought that sometimes people's self-confidence is supported by some very small things, a few failed exams can almost destroy a person, but similarly, a few successes can rebuild confidence, but this "success" is the most difficult head, depending on how much strength you have to climb up from the ground. I was in those months in a desperate assault on math, now I think of the role of the academic may not be as useful as in the psychological function, because I spent a lot of effort to overcome it, so I have absolute reason to believe that I can see the harvest after I put in the hard work. The power of this "absolute reason" to the mind is immense.
In the city's second mock exam, I did very well. I climbed to the top of the Arts class.
May, according to reason should be the last sprint of the time, but tense half a year of the string, so that everyone at this time are coincidentally began to get tired, and at this time, the whole of China came to a veritable uninvited guests - "SARS". ". More than anything else, our lives were turned upside down. In the midst of this chaos, we were told by our teachers that we should study hard and work hard every day, check our temperature when we had time, and wrap ourselves up tightly when we went in and out of crowded places. Shanghai is still calm, but the atmosphere is still tense, which makes us feel a little bit of excitement who have never experienced a big event, and the boredom of the dull hard study is also swept away. We try to find all kinds of beautiful masks from the stalls to wear a wobbly to the school to flaunt, but also have a good reason not to drink boiled water, and to go to the Department of the purchase of vitamin C-rich fresh orange more.
But this happiness didn't last long, because the school soon gave us a big vacation and sent us home to study. Back home all of a sudden there is a sense of loss of direction, the next day I slept until 2 p.m. then wandered alone for two days, and then remembered that the teacher in our departure several times urged us to keep up the tension. So I blamed myself, in order to curb my own delusion, I took down the test paper on the wall, replaced it with a pair of "heaven and hell is only one step away, success and failure is only one arrow swing", and the banner is "kill into the Fudan". I plastered this untidy couplet all over my room as a warning to myself. But my parents thought that my decision was to go to hell if not to heaven, so they yelled at me to tear it up again. But this time, I said no with a strong attitude. sometimes people have to use some kind of pressure to push themselves, as for what to do after really failing the college entrance exams, that's a different story. But if the beginning of their own too loose future, leaving too many retreats, then inevitably, in the examination, you will never be able to put all of your potential to play out, which is also exactly Xiang Yu broke the reason for sinking the boat. I said to myself in the diary: the world is a one-way trip, walked through the impossible to turn back, the college entrance examination is not to withstand a little bit of "carelessness", or I will go into another life track.
June 7, 2003, the college entrance examination officially began
I now can not exactly recall that three days of the scene, the only test after the first day of the math of the deepest impression and unforgettable. The math test in our year was very difficult, and I have many friends who were desperate after taking the math test, and then brought that desperation to the next four exams, doubling it indefinitely. In fact, I was equally horrible, horrible to the point that I now do not dare to think, with the heart of the original hope there is a great discrepancy. On the way home, I was so cold that I was about to lose my body temperature. But I kept telling myself that there was only one bad door, and I had no reason to give up like that. "Looking ahead is the best way to do it, otherwise I would have regretted for carrying my low mood to the later subjects in the exam.
When I looked at the results later, my math was as bad as I thought it would be, but the other five were normal, and a few were overachievers. So the total score was not that bad, and I got my dream admission letter.
Today, when I sat down in front of the computer, I saw my past year reappear on the screen under the finger tapping, the feeling is very complicated. The college entrance examination will indeed make people grow up, there are a lot of spiritual feelings can never be expressed in words, only really walked through this road to realize the taste. We often complained that year, said the world how to have "a test for life" this strange thing, however, now we reminisce about that period of time, but there is a slight thank you, we tasted all the sweet and sour in this year, cried, also laughed, in the trials and tribulations, we have matured. Looking back again, that really is just a meter away from heaven, walking through can embrace heaven and earth.
2. "What makes you go to Peking University"
The peach blossoms on the edge of Lake Mamiya opened just a few days ago.
I had dreamed countless times that I would be in the crowd of people folding branches by the lake when the strange flowers bloomed. At that time, my mind was as simple and urgent as everyone else's, but my eyes were more confused and in a trance than yours. The year of the senior high school.
Ten years of grinding a sword, I got almost just a piece of scrap iron.
The year of my senior year, I really almost scraped myself into a piece of rusty iron. Sleeping in class, chatting, reading comics, snacking, yelling after the boys in the back, exasperating the young female teacher to the point of tears in her eyes, and then feeling smug. That is a really bad time, like a colorful black hole, looks strange, ghostly attraction but unknowingly a little pull you to the bottomless abyss. So the decline, so the fall, and more sad is to know that they are down in the fall but powerless to change. The power of habit is so great that I can do nothing about it, so I gave up the last struggle and effort. Now think about it, that's just cowardice, that's just laziness, that's just their own self-degradation to find a seemingly grandiose reason, everything is self-deception.
But at that time, there was no one to point to the tip of my nose and scold me, saying, "Do you just want to be so broken, just want to play through your whole life." Maybe they've given up on me, sometimes I think. And then there was its mocking disdain, disdain and self-righteous spontaneity - who cares. In fact, at that time there really should have been someone, as so many people have experienced, pointing at the tip of my nose, poking me in the spine and saying, "Do you know what you're doing, are you clear about what you want, do you understand what your tomorrow will be?"
But even the most indifferent person will have his own bottom line, just as even the deepest valley will have its low point. Everything is like a slide, laughing with abandon and openness all the way down, and then finally falling hard, head over heels, at the bottom.
Perhaps, people only in pain, will seriously reflect on their own wrong step it, always have to fall some heel, in order to learn to go around the road. And this is simple, but the truth, I paid a whole year of youth to really understand. A year, 365 days, can let Madame Curie discovered radium, a year can let Einstein prove E = mc square, a year can let a baby learn to stumble towards the mother's embrace, a year can let a roaring love began to have the end. But this year, all I got was that one sentence. Fortunately, it wasn't a loss, and it wasn't too late.
Second year of high school, I chose literature. You can't imagine what a lousy liberal arts class my high school had -- three undergraduates. The first thing you need to do is to get your hands dirty. When my current university classmates quite proudly told me that their high school class of Peking University Qinghua a go dozens of time, I gently smiled. The liberal arts class I was in was a liberal arts class with three undergraduates on the line, and even more ironically, all three were repeaters. It was in the eyes of everyone, either helplessly or sarcastically or unnecessarily, that I resolutely wrote my name on the liberal arts enrollment form. It was truly the best writing I've ever done in my life.
I just had a sudden awakening that I couldn't live my life like that. A lot of people asked me afterward what happened, maybe they wanted to hear a legendary story of the prodigal son's return from me, and all I could think of at the time to explain was that I just felt that my whole life shouldn't be spent dangling like that.
But I still underestimated the impact of that past year on me. On my first monthly exam, I came in 12th in my grade. Maybe it was a poor-sounding grade, but conscience and reason alone were still enough to remind me that it was a liberal arts class with three undergraduates on the line. What's the difference between 12th place and 120th place if you can't leave all those people far behind? To this day I still remember the girl who came in first that time. She was an unknown girl, thin and small, with a pair of thick black-rimmed glasses, often hunched over her desk. And this impression came because all the people can only ever see her lying on the table figure. She was always the first to come and the last to go in the class. I have always held a kind of inexplicable rejection and resistance to that kind of students, always think you have what is great, not just die reading it, if I am like you so hard to study early is the city's first. In fact, until that time when the test results came out I still do not care about her. Then came the most important class meeting of my life. I don't know what weight to thank the class teacher, because if not for her words, now I am not sure where. At the class meeting, she said, "The results are very telling. Everyone who should have done well did." Then she glanced at me, and I understood her subtext to mean that in her opinion I belonged to the group of people who had no reason to do well. Oddly enough, I didn't blush. I don't know whether it was because too much degradation had unconsciously worn away the originally sensitive self-esteem, or whether I subconsciously remained unperturbed by her words, but I met her gaze with an expressionless face. Her eyes just calmly swept me there, and then continued: "I know that some people think they are very smart and talented, look down on those students who study hard and work hard, and always think that people are stupid birds fly first, is inherently deficient. But I want to say, you are just weak! You do not dare to try, you just do not dare to go as hard as they try to work hard, because you are afraid of their own hard work can not be compared to them, hard work can not be the first test, the results of the anti-people laugh, you would rather not try, just because there is a risk of failure, and you can not afford to take the risk even this, because, in the bottom of your heart, you have no certainty about themselves... ... "I can't recall what she said after that, and I honestly admit that I was completely blindsided at the time, because of the words she said. "You're just cowardly ......". It was like a thunderbolt that jolted the whole thing, and the only thing that echoed in my head over and over again was, "You're just weak." She was right.
The shock of that sudden awakening is something that words can't describe, and something I don't want to put into words. You can only imagine it through the outcome, and only through the outcome. That night I wrote in my journal, "Try it! I'm not going to force anything, I just want to try, try to see if I will see results if I study that hard and that diligently for a month." At that time, I didn't dare to promise myself any results, and I really couldn't afford to do so. I just had the idea to give it a try. Then came the most dramatic month of my life. The reason why I say it is dramatic, is because just as it is difficult to imagine that the Tang Monk is no longer nagging the Monkey King is no longer belligerent the eight precepts are no longer gluttonous, I simply can not believe that from six o'clock in the morning morning self-study classes to ten o'clock at night self-study classes, a motionless sitting on the seat of the people can be my own steady and steady and down-to-earth. It's not that simple, it's not that easy to say. I went to do little by little when I have found: to want to change in a few days to 365 days to form habits, too difficult; and to want to create a month in the mouth-watering miracle, but also too difficult. Habits become nature, just like the saying, "the heart is like a horse in the plains, easy to let go and hard to take back", the wild heart, how easy it is to take back all of a sudden? Often sitting and sitting can not help it, the heart began to float, the eyes also began to drift away, several times almost to give up. Just, in that the most dangerous edge of the swaying I always pressure, tell myself, can not help it, and then hold back a little. In fact, to put it bluntly, it's just that: when you can't help it, hold it a little longer. I admit that I am a person who is quite arrogant in my bones, I just don't believe that my hard work will be inferior to that of any other person, I just don't believe that I will not be able to do it when I really go to do something, I just don't believe that there is anything impossible in the world.
Then, I ushered in the long awaited midterm examination.
Then came the long-awaited midterm exam. I still remember how I felt after the test. I was walking home with my books in my hands, looking blankly at the traffic and the people coming and going, and wondering if I was really done. Why is the heart of the empty without landing? That is indeed the most special exam in my life, because it is related to my direction and choice of road, the risk is too great, how can I rest my heart? In fact, the results of the examination must have been guessed. I did let all the people really rift once. Yes, I came first in the exam, first in the class.
You can never imagine how much that result meant to me. I was unusually calm when I found out the result. At that time I realized that the impulse to shout and scream would only end in peace. When that long-forgotten name appeared in the first line of the report card, I silently said to myself: Remember, nothing is impossible in this world.
After that I never changed that attitude and approach. In fact, all methods are, to put it bluntly, no methods at all. There is only one word: hard work.
I held fast to my method that wasn't a method, and to my name on the report card, and I always came in first place until the last exam before the college entrance exam. But the real challenge had not yet begun. Even if I could hold on to the first place, even if I could leave the second place behind by a few tens of points every time, I knew that Peking University was still too far away from me, too far away to be seen even in my dreams. All the teachers were convinced that I would be the best liberal arts student ever in the school, and in their conception, the best liberal arts student meant that you could go to Shanda, and with a little bit of luck, you might be able to stretch your hand to get to the threshold of Fudan or even NPC. But I just wanted Peking University. I've never told anyone about my volunteerism - if you can call it that. I just wanted to build up all my strength.
In the second semester of my senior year of high school, we moved into a recently completed school building. On the day of the move, the building was noisy, and the sounds of dragging desks and pulling benches were incessant in the corridors. Alone and without a word, I jumped through the window and stepped onto the large platform outside the window frame on the second floor. Across the street was the playground, where the first snow hadn't melted, the air was damp and cold, and the bare branches of the trees stabbed straight up into the sky. The snowy sunlight poured coolly through my eyelashes, and my eyes were silent as I looked into the distant sky, and I said one word, and one word only. To the distant sky, I silently said in my heart, "Just wait, I want you to witness a miracle." I know that there is indeed nothing impossible in this world.
I never knew that stress to a certain extent could actually stimulate one's potential to that extent. I am an extremely restless person, but during that time I was incredibly patient and calm, as solid as an old cow. In fact, I was on the verge of breaking down countless times, having memorized all five of my high school history books six times over. When you memorize a book six times, you know how it feels. Tears were falling down my face as I memorized, and I was so close to throwing the book away that I couldn't go on memorizing it. It's just that, when you can't help it, you can't help it any more. Persistence is indeed one of the greatest qualities in the world. The only way I rested during that time was to stand in the hallway and look at the sky in the distance. Then I noticed a big red line on the wall of the building across the street, something the school used to motivate students, I'm not sure. But it was that line that stayed with me through the last days of my senior year - the power of will, the power that determines success or failure. I used all my experience and experience to practice and prove this sentence: the power of will, is the power of success or failure.
The wind was whistling with yellow sand in the sky, and in that northern spring, we all had disheveled hair and rough skin. Dead silence and clamor alternating as the United States of America's ruling party, let a person suspect that there may be a pair of strange and magical hands in the underworld, terrified and bewildered we ushered in the awe and anticipation and sent away in the first model, the second model to the N-mode, every nerve has been hammered by the cold and merciless reality of the impenetrable, no matter whether it is accustomed to chanting willow willow willow willow willow shore dawn and moonlight poetic feelings, or accustomed to the hand of the painting of the graffiti. In this season of hurry, all sensitive cells are as extravagant as Julius Caesar's thick clothes, leaving countless times of hope in front of countless times of disappointment crashed to pieces, countless times of excitement in the countless times of disillusionment under the fall of a bloody head. Everyone understands more than yesterday the insurmountable gap between ideal and reality, and at the same time is more desperate than yesterday, trying to struggle, trying to squeeze through that narrow wooden bridge, even if you know it is futile.
-Could it be futile?
When this conical question mark at the end of the night time again and again violently knocked on the door of the heart, everyone is difficult to bear the tide of panic and confusion, and so forced themselves to be buried into the books, buried into the test papers, buried into the airtight black cocoon -----. -The only thing I want to do is to break the cocoon into a butterfly someday. Green and black circles under the eyes, swollen eye bands, dry fingers, anxious blistered corners of the mouth. That spring I didn't know whether the trend was pink, blue, green or purple, silver and gray. The little mirror was quietly put away, for fear of seeing my haggard face and bleary eyes, for fear of what might streak across my long-drought-stricken face - God, I'm a girl.
God is speechless. Speechless smiles. A smile that tells me that you, willingly. Yes. I am willing I do not regret the original intention I chose this road flat or rugged, I have to go on. I'm going to go on. I will go on.
So all the shouting was swallowed, so all the heroism was put away. I am like a February bull, silently stepping, silent forward. When the struggle is replaced by desperation, Shangri-La has been transformed into a constant and hazy dream in the heart, and all the efforts are just to make this dream no longer "beauty like a picture across the clouds", even if the long days of the blue sky, even if the green water ripples.
The time I stepped into the examination room I was very calm. "I will do my best but I can't get there, I can have no regrets." In fact, I never thought I would get into any school other than Peking University. Rather than a sense of self-confidence, I would say it was a premonition. I just thought, even if Peking University only admits one place, why couldn't it be me? Nothing in this world is truly impossible.
Walking home after the exam, I looked at the crowd that was still in a hurry, and my heart was still empty. My eyes were blurred from the mist of tears, but things in my field of vision became clearer and clearer. This is scientifically explained, but I prefer to believe that it is because all true perception is at the cost of tears and suffering. Yes, we always have to learn to give up something in order to gain something else. If what you care about is worth everything you have to give up for it, then all the giving up is just the throes before labor. There are always trade-offs to be made. The butterfly's life is so short because its wings are so delicate. Sometimes giving up is just a way to really get, it all depends on what it is exactly that you want and how far you are willing to go for that want. God treats everyone equally.
The truth is I miss that time and am eternally grateful for it. Not just because I made my own transition and transformation during that time, but because everything that happened back then is burned into my moldable character as an everlasting treasure for this life. It was a treasure that no amount of money could buy. The persistence and dedication, the sweat and tears, what a touch and celebration, what a relief and respect - respect yourself. Yes, in this process, please allow me to repeat, the most important, is yourself. I thank my parents, my teachers, my classmates, my friends, all the people who care about me and help me, but what I am most grateful for is myself.Nothing is impossible.This is what I have gained in my little by little efforts and attempts. And I also believe that this will be something that will benefit me for the rest of my life. Here, I give you the quote that I believe in the most: Nothing is impossible.