2022a Midyear Review: Misty Flowers

A brief account

It is one in the morning. Unable to sleep, I climbed out of bed and decided to write something.

For three days in a row, I have slept more than ten hours. Lately, I have mostly been wasting time, caught in the familiar combination of post-exam relaxation and holiday syndrome.

What did I do during this busy semester? I took sixteen courses and eight final exams. Four were laboratory courses, and the timetable totaled 30.5 class hours, occupying most of each week. It was the heaviest course load I had carried since entering university, though two classes were make-up requirements after changing majors. The next semester this busy will be the second half of my third year...

Four exams in two days, six in four days: with that schedule and my less-than-ideal exam performance, unremarkable results were perhaps exactly what I should have expected.

Here is a small account of the semester, or roughly the past half year:

• Competitions: I still entered a great many and finally won a national first prize, though the paperwork remained unfinished.
• Study: I made it through a difficult second semester of my sophomore year and completed nearly all the courses required by my change of major.
• Student groups: I neglected Weiyue, continued hanging around the mathematical modeling and ACM associations through their leadership transitions, and joined the newly established HSD.
• Daily life: conflict with my roommates sharpened. I lived through factional disputes within student groups and arrived at what seemed to be the best possible ending.
• Research: I tried to join a group led by Professor Yuan, but other commitments squeezed out the time, and I did not communicate proactively with the professor. I was removed from the group. Several others were removed too, so it was not unbearably awkward.
• Intimate relationships: I let go of more anger and pain, and more of her, becoming capable of holding pessimistic expectations for whatever relationship might follow.
• Habits: the number and irregularity of my courses made regular sleep even harder. Early in the semester, however, I developed the habit of reading WeChat Books on my iPad after getting into bed.

Overall, things went reasonably well, though many details still ended in disappointment.

I cannot buy a ticket home. Apparently the railway department does not want me to leave tomorrow either.

A marker: scattered thoughts

The second semester has ended. More than half of university life has passed. People say the third year goes quickly; by the fourth, one is already doing research, preparing for graduate entrance exams, looking for work, or traveling somewhere far away. Counted that way, little of university remains. Yet I feel as though I have learned nothing...

What now? Time is short, and there is so much I want to learn. At university, if you do not teach yourself and fight for opportunities, you truly learn nothing.

And yet I cannot find the time or space to keep myself company, or simply let myself breathe. The course load will be lighter next semester. Perhaps I can try then.

Still, I remain lost, though this uncertainty is different from the kind I felt when I first arrived.

Regrettably, these past six months held few brilliant days and few unforgettable memories. There were no stories, and no one to record them.

Perhaps that is the tragedy itself.

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Continue with 2022a Midyear Review: Boundary and the 2022 year in review.

This entry was first published at the Fengqing Inn archive. It is preserved here as part of the personal record.