Chapter 108: Weight
New Year's Day in 2002 fell on a Saturday, another festive day. The various schools and departments at Nanjing University held their own New Year's parties to welcome the new year. Everyone knew that the month beginning with New Year's Day brought plenty of things to deal with, restless hearts, and, for those facing suffering, the beginning of their suffering.
The approaching end of an academic year meant final exams were coming. Final exams, and ultimately grade point averages, were what mattered most. Some instructors at Nanjing University were twisted: they were determined to fail half a class, as though anything less would fail to demonstrate their standards. There was an air of knives being sharpened throughout the university. Walking around campus, students no longer found their lecturers and professors quite so amiable. What sort of bestial gleam shone in the red eyes behind those glasses, glinting beneath desk lamps as these fellows, so impeccably dressed by day, sat at their desks setting exam questions at night?
Nobody wanted to fall under that blade, cut down and left to face failed courses, makeup exams, or retakes. If they still had to struggle next year under the heavy shell of this year's courses, the burden would accumulate year after year until they were dragged into the abyss of academic slavery. Dancing lightly through this mire took ability, the sort possessed by those freaks rated B+ to A at university, something many could only envy.
This final month would not be easy. First, the overwhelming volume of revision materials and the so-called key points marked out by Nanjing University's professors, dodging the important issues and mixing the real with the misleading, were enough to give anyone a headache. Then there were all the miscellaneous matters that had piled up