Running into Neville in the dining hall was merely a small episode in Zheng Qing's campus life.
For Jiuyou Academy's students, there was only one thing that mattered most in the world during this time: final exams. Neither the lingering aftermath of the Winter Hunt, which had ended less than a week ago, nor the new issue of Arcana rankings soon to be released by The Wand could compare to the suffocating pressure of those ever-approaching exams.
Upperclassmen were doing better. Having gone through several final exams, they could regulate themselves to some extent when faced with this atmosphere and avoid a complete mental breakdown.
The lowerclassmen, especially the freshmen who had only enrolled this year, did not have such sturdy hearts.
Jiuyou Academy placed great emphasis on fairness, so exams carried significant weight in students' advancement. Final exams, as the most important means of assessing a semester's learning, were particularly valued.
It was already the eighteenth week of the term.
According to the curriculum issued by the school, classes would theoretically only officially end in the nineteenth week, when the academy entered exam season. But given the tense atmosphere pervading the school, the professors wisely gave up their dull, tedious lectures and returned the time to the young wizards below them.
"You are all adults, and this is not your first time taking final exams. You should each have more mature and effective study methods suited to yourselves." On Wednesday morning, Mr. Sima, the history lecturer, told everyone this during the last class: "I've been through it myself, so I know you're all nervous right now... My only hope is that you won't confuse the groups known as 'reactionary wizards' and 'conservative wizards' during the exams. Remember the enormous role the 1862 Declaration of Goblin Liberation played in modernizing