My younger sister recently came to me for help. Academic pressure has left her trapped in an emotional spiral she can’t escape. I talked with her for ages, but I still feel pretty helpless about it. At the end of the day, no one can truly walk in another person’s shoes. I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember my own high school years, hoping to find something that might help her—or at least give her some perspective.
I. My High School Years
Were my high school years smooth sailing? Not really. Looking back now, they were actually pretty rocky.
I started 7th in my class, around 30th in the grade. I don’t remember exactly—there were 4 honors classes, so 7 times 4 puts me at roughly 30. By the first midterm I’d moved up to maybe 15th. At the parent-teacher conference, my father looked worried. I reassured him: “Don’t worry. I moved up a little this time. Next time I’ll move up more. One day I’ll be first in the grade.” Afterward we went to a roadside shop, warmed up a pot of huangjiu, and drank together.
First place came sooner than I’d imagined—I hit it in the second semester of freshman year. But that was it. Just once. Later, during sophomore fall midterms, I placed 3rd in the grade and went on stage for an award. That was my high school peak. After that, I worked even harder trying to get back on top. Li Fei even asked me, “You got third in the grade—why are you studying even harder now?”
In the second half of that semester, I borrowed a classmate’s copy of Guo Jingming’s Ice Fantasy. It was my first encounter with the concept of “freedom.” The word captivated me. I decided to try it out. The results were… let’s just say touching. My grades became freer than I was. With no warning whatsoever, I plummeted from 3rd to 163rd by semester’s end.
After that? To hell with freedom. I still needed to get into college. I still wanted Tsinghua. I had to claw my way back.
But easier said than done. It was incredibly fucking hard. My school was the best in Nanyang, and my classmates were brilliant—every single one. Honestly, many of them had more raw talent than plenty of Tsinghua undergrads. This was Henan, after all—our acceptance rate was twenty times lower than Beijing’s. Put it this way: kids who get into Tsinghua from some provinces would have to beat out nineteen others just to have a chance if they were competing from here. Despite everything I tried, I never broke back into the top ten. Only the top 5 from our grade could get into Peking or Tsinghua. I still remember after the gaokao, Acai told me, “Forget Tsinghua. Just apply to Huazhong University of Science and Technology.”
How did I survive all that? Most of it’s gone from memory. What I do remember:
I cried alone in empty corners. A lot. I scheduled my days from 5:30 AM to 9:30 PM in fifteen-minute increments. I kept a diary recording my unrequited crush on Li Zhen and all the heartbreak. I put a Slam Dunk poster above my dorm desk. To this day I believe that without that anime, I wouldn’t have made it through senior year or gotten into Tsinghua. When I went back after the gaokao to talk to underclassmen, I wrote one line from it on the blackboard:
By continuously accumulating small differences, you can often survive even from a desperate situation.
Liu Xinle, Yi Xiangyu, and a bunch of us would sprint to the cafeteria every day, wolf down our food, and sprint back—total time under 15 minutes. (Actually I think it was 10 minutes, with our record at 8, though I have no idea how we managed that.) After Nie Yunfei got early admission to Zhejiang University, I moved my desk to the front row and went into hermit mode for months. I remember refusing to speak to anyone when I went home on weekends—relatives, neighbors, anyone. Oh, and I was class monitor sophomore year. Looking back, I was terrible—openly sexist, managed people by yelling, and kept interrupting class with my self-indulgent speeches.
Of course there were happy times too: We played basketball every afternoon during extracurricular activities, without fail. I learned a mid-range jumper from Sakuragi Hanamichi that I was proud of. Jin Lei and Dong Jia were our stars. Guangguang had his fadeaway, Li Yong swatted shots, Zhou Yu hit threes. The day before the gaokao I sprained my ankle playing volleyball and hobbled into the exam room. I was the long-distance champion—the 800 meters, specifically. In the 3000 I was perpetually second, always losing to Hu Tao. I earned the nickname “Class 3’s Number One Tough Guy”—or just “Huang the Fierce.” We messed around programming on our electronic dictionaries. I couldn’t touch Yi Xiangyu—he went deep. I was happy just making a yin-yang symbol. I slept through physics class with our homeroom teacher Atian. I often skipped morning study hall and slept till seven. I invented a bunch of “Huang’s Theorems.” Once I didn’t do my Chinese homework and acted like it was no big deal. Our Chinese teacher Zhao Xuemin bellowed, “Get out!” Actually, most of my workbooks were still blank at graduation. I have no idea what I was doing with my time. Oh right—copying song lyrics. “East Wind Breaks,” that “Jiangnan” song Teacher Huang always mentioned (the one who constantly said “for example”), something about “hundreds of years later.” Song Chenning, Yi Xiangyu, and I had steamed bun eating contests. Record was 6 or 8.
How does that Pushkin poem go—”If Life Deceives You”?
And all that is past will become a cherished memory.
Like our teachers always told us: the gaokao really is a treasure for life. Of course, like all famous sayings, there’s a second half: “For many of you at Tsinghua, the gaokao is the peak of your entire life.” Hahaha. Who knows? We’ll see.
II. Experience and Lessons
When I first got to college, I went to Nanzhao County to volunteer teach. I told the high school students there to learn to force themselves. That’s what I’d done senior year. But I don’t recommend it anymore. The side effects are huge.
If there’s one thing I’d share now, it’s this:
Interest
I still remember nearly twenty years ago, in middle school, copying down famous quotes and coming across a story about Bill Gates’ five keys. He said:
Your deepest interests often hold the secret to your life.
I believed that. And as I’ve written before, I have this vague sense that many things get set early in life. The forms might change, but the core stays the same. During my dark college years, I often drew strength from Tokugawa Ieyasu:
Life is like carrying a heavy burden on a long road. If you accept constraint as normal, you won’t feel deprived.
There’s truth in that. From the outside, you might wonder how anyone carrying such weight could keep going. But if the person finds meaning in it, maybe it doesn’t feel unbearable.
Think about it—when we look back at middle school now, studying seven or eight completely unrelated subjects at once seems insane. In eighth grade I took eight: Chinese, math, English, physics, politics, history, geography, and biology. I averaged 96/100, with a perfect PE score. Probably my testing peak. Did I find it agonizing then? Did I treat it like a to-do list, the way I would now? No. I genuinely found it interesting.
Even politics and history, heavy with ideology. Someone might ask, “If you scored over 90, doesn’t that mean you got brainwashed?” Not really. People develop critical thinking very early—way before adulthood. That section in my eighth-grade history book arguing only the Communist Party could save China? I had doubts even then. Never understood the supposedly inevitable logic. But it didn’t hurt my grades. Unlike some classmates who rejected it as state propaganda, I actually found the concepts and logic fascinating to study.
That “heavy burden” idea is real. Like in Buddhist texts—our lives are full of crises. Even if you’re on top of the world, confident and triumphant, you can’t escape birth, aging, sickness, and death. Interest might really be life’s saving grace, the key to its mysteries. As Qian Zhongshu put it:
Happiness in life is like the sugar coating that tricks children into taking medicine—or the mechanical rabbit that lures greyhounds around the track.
Yesterday I told my sister: if the lessons you’ve fallen behind on feel like tigers blocking your path, set them aside. What’s the worst that could happen?
Start with what interests you. Read a poem aloud when you wake up. Read your textbook out loud. Memorize English. When I first started physics in eighth grade, I was lost too. Then one day, reading a study guide, I discovered the underlying principles. Something clicked. Oh—it works this way. Everything suddenly made sense.
Interest doesn’t come from being force-fed. Swallowing tasks others hand you—even tasks you set yourself—that’s passive acceptance. Joy doesn’t come from that. Joy comes from discovery and creation, from taking initiative. This is what worries me about my sister’s approach. It’s not the path to excellence.
So: find joy in learning.
**1. Start by understanding the logic, then try solving it different ways.**Go further: find simpler, more efficient methods. Or perfect one technique—master a single move completely. I still remember my ninth-grade physics teacher’s face when he assigned dozens of problems and I turned them in after fifteen minutes. A top student from another class came over to verify. The secret? Just Ohm’s Law, over and over.
**2. Connect subjects.**Look at the English terms in your physics textbook appendix. When limestone comes up in geography, think about calcium carbonate from chemistry. Use derivatives and integrals from math to solve physics problems. When you learn about great scientists, place them in history—what era, what was happening in the world, what dynasty in China. This might sound like extra work, but seeing things from different angles actually fights fatigue.
**3. Derive your own conclusions. Invent your own theorems.**Sure, others have done these things. But something you discover yourself versus something handed to you—the understanding is incomparable.
Easy for me to say, right? This requires having mental bandwidth to spare. Like in the novel when Zhang Wuji watches people fight at Bright Summit: a bird sees lions and tigers battling and thinks, why not swoop down? Not realizing that while lions and tigers are fierce, they can’t fly.
But even with a bad hand, you can play with flair. Or at least have fun. These are just my tricks from back then. Find what works for you.
Beyond that—take a higher view of your learning. Treat it as a project you manage.
**First: know yourself.**Understand your strengths and weaknesses, what needs work and what can wait. Daily summaries and planning help. Review your state each day. Vent in a diary. Make detailed plans—for a while I planned every fifteen minutes. I couldn’t complete most of it. If I finished 20-30%, I was happy. The point is understanding where you are.
**Second: be clear about your goals.**Understand how class content and homework relate. Know your priorities. Homework and practice are tools to reinforce content. What really matters is understanding and mastering the material. Most of my workbooks were blank at graduation. So what? Those diligent kids who filled theirs? Still scored lower. When I ranked third, the school photographed me and asked for my motto. Someone submitted “Heaven rewards diligence.” I despised that phrase. Every problem should teach you something. Quality over quantity.
Some people have read War and Peace and think it’s merely an adventure story. Others can read the ingredient list on chewing gum and unlock the secrets of the universe.
—Lex Luthor
So, my dear sister: Don’t worry too much. I believe in you. You’ve shown me what you’re capable of. These aren’t empty words. If they were, you know I’d tell you. The gaokao matters—it really does. But even if you mess up, you’ve still got plenty of options. Have fun!