Jiaozuo Girls in San Francisco

A Chinese girl who just graduated from Carnegie Mellon and worked as a data analyst at Oracle moved over. She is 24 years old, has a cute baby face, speaks slowly and politely, and knocks on the door on weekends. At my door, I introduced myself as Xiaoyu and invited my wife and I to try the Roujiamo and millet porridge made by her mother.

Auntie’s craftsmanship is great, and the rich flavor of hometown almost brought tears to my eyes. After feasting on some braised chicken wings and devouring a lot of meat buns, the pace slowed down, so while drinking beer, a few people started chatting.

Xiaoyu comes from an ordinary family in Jiaozuo, Henan. When she was in high school, in order to let Xiaoyu enter a good university, her mother decided to send Xiaoyu to Zhengzhou to attend high school. So at the age of 15, Xiaoyu left home for the first time and came to Zhengzhou began an independent life. Like everyone else, Xiaoyu's three years of high school left indelible memories, and the unique experience made this memory even more unique.

Xiaoyu has shown great talent in mathematics since she was a child, so she chose to take a competitive mathematics class when she was in high school. The so-called math competition class, as the name suggests, trains students exactly like athletes. According to Xiaoyu's own recollection, in the first two and a half years of high school, daily life was just a few very regular time points - those who joined the school at 7 in the morning Morning exercises, then start the mock exam on time at 7:30, take a one-hour lunch break at noon, and start talking about the last mock exam questions during class at 2pm.

Everyone in the math competition class understands that winning a prize in the competition and getting an admission spot is the only way to go to college. Of course, you can take the college entrance examination, but for all the time in high school except mathematics, For those who have not dabbled in other subjects, this serious "partiality" makes their chances of getting a good ranking in the college entrance examination very slim.

Of course, for Xiaoyu, living a mathematical life without hearing anything outside the window is actually very comfortable.

"I know that the topic of mathematics competition is very controversial, but for me, mathematics is my favorite, and all the students in our class take this path because they like it, otherwise No one can persist. The students in our class now have a WeChat group where we discuss various interesting math problems from time to time. For example, when I went to LinkedIn for an interview a while ago, I wrote a question for the interviewer. Everyone admired the algorithm. After I came back, I posted it to the WeChat group to show off. Unexpectedly, I was beaten by my classmates, saying that my algorithm was too cumbersome and too complex, and then gave various optimized versions. Later, I I sent the modified algorithm to the interviewer at LinkedIn, and he replied with several amazing words in succession. Xiaoyu talked about mathematics with great energy, which made me who had never been talented in mathematics find it really incomprehensible.

"She has loved mathematics since she was a child. When she was in third grade, I signed her up for a piano class and paid for it. As a result, the school opened a Math Olympiad class the next week, and she started talking to me when she got home. He said, "Mom, please quit the piano class for me. If you can't quit, I won't join. I want to study mathematics. I'm so angry that I don't know anything." Xiaoyu's mother also added with a smile.

"Then you were recommended to Peking University after winning the award?" I think the development of this story should be self-evident. Who knows that as soon as the words fell, the aunt who was smiling just now suddenly His face turned gloomy, his eye circles were red, and he felt like tears were about to fall.

"Mom, it's okay, it's been so long." Xiaoyu held her mother's hand and comforted her in a low voice, strong and mature.

The aunt relaxed her mood and explained to us a little embarrassedly: "I made you laugh, but it makes me feel uncomfortable just thinking about it.

In 2007, she participated in a mathematics competition when she was a senior in high school. She finished the test on November 20 and felt that she performed well. However, three days later, the Education Committee announced that the test was invalid due to leaked test questions. All contestants who participated in the competition had no results and could only compete with other students. She also took the college entrance examination, but it was less than half a year before the college entrance examination. She had never studied anything except mathematics. She was very confident that she would be recommended after getting the rank, but now, you know the feeling, I was I feel like the world is spinning..." At this point, Auntie got choked up again.

Xiaoyu shook her mother's hand, looked at us and smiled, a little shyly: "I did feel a little unacceptable at the time. , but fortunately I am not alone, all the students in our class are facing the same problem, so everyone decided to face this challenge actively after learning from the pain, and started preparing for the college entrance examination from scratch in half a year, so I always feel that the students in our class There is a friendship between them that goes beyond high school students. I think it is more like comrades-in-arms. You know, the cohesion that draws energy from each other in despair and persists together until the end is unparalleled..." Xiaoyu's eyes glowed.

“Wait a minute, you mean, you studied three years of high school courses in half a year? "I couldn't help but interrupt her train of thought, because I, who had also experienced the college entrance examination, thought this was incredible.

"Well, our school is also very powerful and has equipped us with the best Teacher, every subject takes turns bombing for 10 hours a day. At first, some teachers didn’t know the situation in our class. During the lecture, I asked questions and saw that none of the students knew the answers. I was very angry. Later, when I found out, I offered to go to her at any time to answer questions. , the people are super nice." Xiaoyu paused thoughtfully, "I still remember that the chemistry teacher cried during class once because she gave us an unexpected 10-hour lesson the day before and assigned more than 70 pages. She originally thought that we would never be able to finish the exercises. Unexpectedly, all the students in our class handed in their homework on time the next day. It was more than 70 pages. I did it at 3:30 in the morning...but the homework was really too stressful. Later, some students in our class became temporarily blind, so that the teacher forced us to go out for an hour every day and bought us shuttlecocks for us to kick." This story sounds like it still makes me feel scared. , when Xiaoyu recalled it, her face was full of happiness.

"Actually, I was lucky. For example, although my English was very poor in listening and speaking, we did not pass the college entrance examination English that year. The listening test, so I barely passed by relying on rote memorization, and because our session was the New Year - there were only 30,000 admissions for 1 million candidates, which still included the 10,000 admitted by Zhengzhou University - so the college entrance examination The math questions are extremely difficult. The top students in the ordinary class have a math score of about 90, while the students in our class are all above 140. This can be considered a little comfort to us... However, I still don’t know why. We are given so few places in Henan. Many of my classmates are actually very good, but they don’t have the opportunity to go to a good university..." Xiaoyu said a little sad when she said this, and I was a little sad too. The educational resources and educational opportunities Unfair, really the biggest unfairness.

"However, all the students in our class got a copy, which was considered a miracle at the time. However, after I entered college, I immediately felt the gap between me and other students in English. During class, I heard the beautiful pronunciation of other students and realized that this gap could not be made up overnight. So a dozen of our classmates who passed the exam in Beijing organized an English learning group and started crazily tutoring in English. All my scholarships were spent on English learning materials and TOEFL GRE exam fees. Sometimes I even doubted my computer sound card. It's all because of practicing listening." When she said this, Xiaoyu smiled teasingly, but her expression suddenly turned gloomy, "Oh, but I haven't been in love for four years in college, so my life is incomplete..."

I think the story can end here - I don’t want to write Xiaoyu’s experience into an inspirational story. After all, life has all kinds of wonderful things, and everyone’s choices, different circumstances, and different values ??will also Various.

However, as a Capricorn boy raised by a Leo mother, I cannot deny that this story still touched me. I can't summarize anything from this story. I just remembered a story about Kobe: When asked by reporters why he had achieved so many achievements, Kobe said something that was later talked about and widely circulated by countless fans. Quote - "You ask me why? Well, I tell you, it's because I know what Los Angeles looks like at 4 a.m. every day."

This is the "Jiaozuo Girl from San Francisco".