A record of the year 2019, now just behind me.
I still remember the sign-off Teacher Cheng wrote at the end of an email after helping me revise my thesis:
Wishing you
success on the exam.
Keep Going and You'll Pass
That winter break was unusually agonizing. Uncertainty about the future and a low-grade anxiety wrapped around me like a transparent film I couldn't tear off. Having survived a bout of depression probably strengthened my psychological immune system. I didn't lose my will to learn or to live entirely.
My days were formless and unstructured. Aside from wondering what life was all about, I spent what time I could writing my graduation thesis. The goal I set for myself was to send a first draft to my advisor by the end of the break. Some nights, ideas flowed freely and I'd work until one or two in the morning without feeling tired. I was also losing sleep. I still held out a sliver of hope for my graduate entrance exam results β just a sliver. The days before they came out were the hardest, so I'd pull all-nighters playing video games, pretending that could trick my brain. I also dabbled in what I called "confessional studying" β watching study-channel videos to help me fall asleep.
The strongest skill I developed this year was probably thesis writing. I remember posting my thesis progress updates on social media with a subtle sense of superiority, eager to show off how fast and efficient I was. While my classmates were getting ready for the New Year, I had already started writing, churning out two or three thousand words a day. Looking back now, that first draft was a mess β wordy and imprecise, logically muddled and unable to hold up under scrutiny. Yet at the time I thought I was finally putting all that accumulated knowledge to work. My learning ability and everything I'd absorbed were on full display. The content was reasonably substantial, and the overall quality was a notch above what the previous year's seniors had produced. In the words of my teacher, it was more than enough to coast through the defense.
But I knew my limits. Before sending it to Teacher Cheng, I revised the draft again and again. Every day, reading through my own writing, I'd find new passages that made me cringe. When I reread the thesis from a reader's perspective, everything β from the overarching logic down to the typos and awkward phrasing β was laid bare. Read, revise, read, revise. It was more draining than digging through papers and writing the first draft had been. I couldn't help thinking: how deep must an author's skill run to write something that doesn't need endless revisiting and polishing? First satisfy yourself, then try to satisfy others. I sent the revised draft to Teacher Cheng right on schedule.
While I was writing the thesis, the graduate entrance exam results came out. I slept until noon, then looked up my score. A way to close the chapter. That sliver of hope was why I hadn't seriously thought about post-graduation life and work. Sometimes I did prepare for the worst β scrolling through job listings online, researching the local industry, which only added to the anxiety. That was the source of my insomnia. My score was slightly higher than I'd estimated. A senior had told me, "Keep going and you'll pass," and it turned out to be true. I failed biochemistry, as expected β I knew it the moment I walked out of the exam.
I breathed a little easier. Maybe I could sleep tonight. Still lost, but with hope flickering somewhere. I wanted to do research as a career, but I also hoped for more time on campus to find my answers. That afternoon, I casually replied to friends who'd asked how it went. My family didn't know the results were out that day. They never paid much attention to these things β they didn't even know I had taken the exam, let alone when the scores would be released. They only noticed I seemed happy today. This was something I carried inside. I understood that my parents hadn't had much education and that the information they received was limited and outdated. Just the weekend before, I'd been telling myself to "start fresh" β to prove something to myself by seeing one thing through. So I set my sights on the English exam the following semester, the last chance to pass the CET-6, China's national College English Test, in my undergraduate years. Not passing CET-6 had always bothered me. In the quiet of the night, my mind would wander, and I'd open a vocabulary app β only to scroll through social media for the next half hour.
Looking back, I had two reasons for taking the graduate entrance exam. One was to keep up with my old friends, who kept getting better and better. The other was to change my environment, to get away from people who dragged me down.
The University at My Doorstep
After graduation, I reported straight to work at the university near my home β the one just a ten-minute drive away. I met up again with two classmates from the entrance interviews, and it seemed we really were meant to be friends. The people in my cohort were genuinely good people. We often ate together in the cafeteria, talking about our respective research projects, talking about our plans. The problem was, I'm an introvert and slow to warm up. When they were chatting and laughing together, I was usually just listening. By the time I'd figured out what I wanted to say, the conversation had already moved on three topics. It wasn't that I didn't want to join in. I just didn't know how to slip into a conversation naturally.
My advisor was a different story. The criticism I received in group meetings wasn't academic debate β it was condescending scrutiny. I gradually realized I wasn't doing research. I was trying to read minds. On typhoon days we still had to show up at the lab to clock in. Meetings dragged past midnight. Late nights were the norm. Once, walking past my senior labmate's desk, I saw her shoulders trembling, her head buried in her arms. Only when I got closer did I hear the muffled sobs. I didn't know what to say. During the lunch break, when everyone else had gone, I left a pack of candy in her drawer. Later, I heard that a postdoc who had just finished his term had returned to Malaysia and couldn't come back to continue his work. The senior students discussed it among themselves, their tone as flat as if they were talking about the weather β he did it on purpose. I suppose this place really didn't offer much to hope for. Another senior student, who had planned to start her PhD there the following year, came early to work as a research assistant and get familiar with the environment. She didn't last a week.
In the days before I left, I kept talking to my cohort. They knew I wanted to leave. They didn't press me with questions, just encouraged me to study abroad, saying I should go see the world while I was still young. My departure also gave them something that finally gave them a reason to hold their heads high β someone had actually dropped out. Right before the new semester began, I submitted a draft paper. The strongest skill I'd developed all year ended up being useful after all. I packed up my desk, had a meal with everyone. I didn't explain much. They probably understood that some things don't need to be spelled out.
The drive home was ten kilometers, and it rained heavily the whole way. I only found out later that, around the time I dropped out, my mother had gone to the hospital and been diagnosed with hepatitis B and diabetes. The university at my doorstep β the whole point was to be close to home. This guilt stayed with me for a long time.
Have I Graduated?
After leaving, I went back to my undergraduate alma mater. I had to deal with my academic file, which had been sent back to the records office. Just when I thought my four years of undergrad had been neatly wrapped up, everything got dug up again and I had to go through the entire graduation process a second time. I was temporarily staying in a dorm room arranged by Teacher XCG β a small north-facing room with a window looking out onto the sports field. Sometimes at night I could hear the footsteps of students out running. During the day I sent out rΓ©sumΓ©s from the dorm, looked up IELTS prep strategies, and occasionally had meals with my former teachers. It happened to be the annual campus sports meet. I found myself wondering: have I graduated? The question sounds melodramatic, but I genuinely couldn't answer it. Teacher XCG introduced me to one of his graduate school classmates, an uncle-figure who had switched careers into real estate sales. He would occasionally stay a few nights in the dorm with me, and we got along well. Once, when I went to Xiamen for a job interview, he took me around Xiamen University.
I finally found a transitional job. One evening, I was eating takeout in the company dorm when a photo popped up in the family group chat β my father, foaming at the mouth in the emergency room. He had collapsed from a heart attack on the side of the road. A passing traffic officer had taken him to the hospital.
In a way, he was incredibly lucky.
By the time I got to the hospital, he was already unconscious and was soon moved into the ICU. After several days, the test results came back one by one, and the doctors said he needed surgery. His kidney numbers weren't great. The doctor mentioned that after the angiogram and bypass, he would need dialysis going forward.
The day I quit my job was Christmas Eve. I bought a ticket home. One last time, I went to Teacher XCG's dorm to pick up the things I'd left there, and sent him a message to let him know. When he found out, he actually rushed from his office to the train station and handed me an apple a student had given him, asking me to bring it to my father. I admitted that my relationship with my father wasn't good. It was pretty awkward, honestly. Between a father and son, some things are hard to say out loud. We usually went about our own business, and during holidays, even when we sat down to eat together, we'd each be staring at our own phones. That day at the station, holding the apple, I didn't know what to say. I had already braced myself for the worst β if he was gone, I would just have to take care of my mother for the rest of our lives. Teacher XCG said he understood. After a silence, he added, you're a grown man now. Some things can't be rushed. I nodded, not sure whether he was comforting me or himself.
After I got on the train, I cried. Not for my father. Not for myself. It was a feeling of not knowing what I had been doing for the past half year. Dropping out, job hunting, my family's health β everything crashing together into an indistinguishable mess. The train traveled a long way, the scenery outside the window receding into the distance. I leaned back in my seat, eyes swollen, hollow inside, and yet, strangely, I felt a calm settle over me.
Have I graduated? It seems like I have. And yet, it seems like I haven't. I got into graduate school, then dropped out. I wrote a thesis, but only submitted a draft. Over the course of the year, I played many roles, and I didn't see a single one through to the end. Life has quieted down a bit. It's just that sometimes, late at night, I think about the ceiling of that lab, and about the people in my cohort who could have become good friends.
Have I graduated? I suppose so.