He's Definitely Right for Your Team!

Qi Hao and Old Wang spent nearly another twenty minutes discussing it at the whiteboard.

Old Wang grew more excited as they talked, adding his own ideas to the whiteboard from time to time. Qi Hao was equally unfazed. Whenever he was uncertain about something, he admitted it openly and humbly asked for guidance. His attitude made Old Wang like him even more.

Throughout the discussion, the graduate students sitting below them didn't dare make a sound.

Liang Wenhao even breathed more quietly, afraid that the slightest noise would draw Old Wang's attention.

At last, Qi Hao and Old Wang's discussion came to an end.

Old Wang told Qi Hao to head back first, and the door closed softly behind him.

Old Wang's expression changed in an instant, his face falling.

"I don't know what you've spent this past year doing. Playing games? Scrolling through videos?"

Liang Wenhao kept his head down, wishing he could shrink to the size of an ant and crawl into a crack in the table.

"You really are the worst group of students I've ever supervised."

At those words, everyone tensed up, afraid of what Old Wang would say next.

"I don't want to say anything more." Old Wang picked up his briefcase. "At Friday's group meeting, each of you will give a fifteen-minute literature presentation. I hope I'll see some changes by then."

"Can you do that?"

"Yes!" everyone hurried to answer, like a bunch of bootlickers.

After Old Wang left, the air in the conference room finally began to move again.

Liang Wenhao dropped his head onto the table and let out a wail.

The senior beside him nudged him. "All right, all right, pull yourself together. What topic are you going to choose for Friday's literature presentation?"

Liang Wenhao said in a muffled voice, "What topic? Reflecting on my life."

He rolled over and stared at the fluorescent tube on the ceiling, looking utterly devoid of the will to live.

"Are freshmen these days all this freakish?"

He muttered to himself, "When I was a freshman, I was still trying to figure out which canteen stall would give me an extra spoonful of braised pork. And he's already playing around with spectral gap convergence? Does that make sense? Is that scientific?"

"It really isn't very scientific," someone beside him agreed.

"I suspect he's not human." Liang Wenhao sat up, looking serious.

"Forget about that for now. What are we going to do about Friday's group meeting?"

"How about this? You take one for the team this time. Make your PPT a little worse and bear the full primordial force of our advisor's wrath, so the rest of us can escape disaster."

"In other words, sacrifice yourself for the happiness of the whole group," the senior beside him urged.

"Get lost!"

"Don't be so quick to say no! We can take turns being sacrificed!"

Old Wang walked down the corridor with his briefcase under his arm, looking thoroughly displeased.

The good mood he'd been in while discussing things with Qi Hao in the conference room had completely evaporated, replaced by frustration at his graduate students for failing to live up to his expectations.

Just as he passed the corner by the faculty lounge, a middle-aged man in a khaki casual suit approached him.

"Hey, Old Wang, your face is so dark it could drip ink. Did those graduate students of yours upset you again?" Professor Zhou came over cheerfully, looking delighted at his misfortune.

Old Wang paused and looked up to see who it was, which only made him angrier. He didn't stop, merely greeting him offhandedly. "Professor Zhou."

Professor Zhou was the vice dean of the Experimental College for Exceptional Talents, someone others at the university envied.

Professor Zhou noticed how cold Old Wang was being but didn't mind. He went on, "Come on, tell me about it. Let me hear it too."

"Stop standing there enjoying the show." Old Wang glared at him and unconsciously quickened his pace. "All the students at your College for Exceptional Talents are treasures, while mine are just weeds yellowing in a field. Satisfied?"

"Ahem, Old Wang, really, why get angry with your students? They're young. Just teach them patiently."

Old Wang couldn't be bothered to keep bickering with him. He turned and continued toward his office.

Professor Zhou followed close behind, still chattering away. "Old Wang, really, don't get so worked up. Your students haven't had a weak foundation for just a day or two. You need patience, and you need to look at things with an eye toward their development..."

"If you say one more word, I'm going to your Experimental College for Exceptional Talents' dean right now to complain that you're harassing a colleague."

"All right, all right, I'll stop." Professor Zhou wisely shut his mouth, though he still couldn't hide the amusement in his eyes.

The Experimental College for Exceptional Talents was the crown jewel of the entire university.

To better manage the experimental classes of the Rongdian Exceptional Talents Program, which had been piloted for two years, the university had recently established the college as an honors college.

The students selected were all promising talents who had ranked near the top of their provinces in that year's college entrance exam or won prizes in national mathematics and physics competitions.

The Experimental College for Exceptional Talents had the university's best teaching resources. It used small classes and one-on-one mentorship, and undergraduates could enter national key laboratories to participate in cutting-edge research. Of the thousands of new students each year, fewer than sixty were admitted to the college.

In Professor Zhou's own words, "Our exceptional talents students would be in the top tier even at Tsinghua or Peking University." There was some boasting in that, but it wasn't too far-fetched.

Since the Experimental College for Exceptional Talents was founded, its students had generally won prizes in all kinds of competitions, including ACM, mathematical modeling, and physics competitions.

As vice dean, Professor Zhou held such a strong hand that he naturally spoke with confidence.

Old Wang pushed open his office door, set his briefcase on the desk, and sank heavily into his chair.

Professor Zhou made himself at home. He pulled up a chair and sat down, casually picking up the glass water cup on Old Wang's desk for a look. "Oh, drinking goji berries today? Taking care of your health now, are you?"

"If you have something to say, spit it out," Old Wang said irritably.

Professor Zhou put down the insulated cup, finally toning down his playful grin and replacing it with a businesslike expression.

"Here's the thing, Old Wang." He straightened up. "Registration for the China Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling is about to close, and the college put me in charge of putting together a team."

"As you know, the mathematical modeling contest requires teams of three. Our exceptional talents class has already provided two students, but we're still missing someone with a solid foundation in mathematics, preferably someone who can handle theoretical modeling and algorithm derivation."

"You're with the School of Mathematics, and you have plenty of students. Can you recommend someone suitable?"

Old Wang leaned back in his chair and gave him a sidelong glance.

So the fellow had gone all the way around the houses just to ask him for a student.

"Yes." Old Wang thought for a moment, then blurted out an answer.

"Who?"

"A freshman named Qi Hao."

"He may only be a freshman, but he's exceptionally good at teaching himself, and his mathematical intuition is excellent. Combinatorics, graph theory, matrix analysis-he learned all of them by studying books on his own. Nobody taught him; he figured it all out himself. His thinking is clear too..."

"Someone like that won't be bad at mathematical modeling. What does the contest test?"

"The ability to abstract real-world problems into mathematical models, the ability to learn new knowledge quickly and apply it flexibly, and the ability to keep a clear head under pressure. Qi Hao has all of those."

"I'll personally vouch for this student. He's definitely right for your team."

After listening, Professor Zhou wore a polite expression, but the skepticism in his eyes was almost showing.

"A freshman?"

"That's right, a freshman."