University Survival Guide

Foreword: While attending online classes, I stumbled upon an article titled “What is the Purpose of Going to University?” which resonated deeply with me. I felt compelled to share my thoughts.

90% of a person’s life is determined by their choices.

Everyone has the power to choose. When making a decision, its impact may not be immediately apparent, but as you traverse through life, you’ll find it shapes your journey significantly!

One must have either body or soul on the road.

As stated above, choices hold a crucial role in life, and knowing how to calmly select the best option becomes paramount. I believe this depends on experience. Only by seeing enough and absorbing sufficient wisdom can we choose the optimal path.

The undergraduate education in most domestic universities is not on the verge of collapse; it has already collapsed.

In this statement regarding the nation’s top universities, I was initially shocked but have come to understand it more. In today’s assembly-line education system, we are produced like cheap components. Because of the large numbers, no one takes responsibility for the teaching quality of each individual.

Current State of Universities

Leaders will not take responsibility for you; they only strive to manage laboratories and work towards becoming a world-class university. Undergraduate education, in their eyes, is not profitable.
Professors will not take responsibility for you; their focus is on securing funding, publishing sufficient papers, and meeting the college’s requirements for survival.
The so-called “teaching cultivation plan” must be scientifically validated by educational authorities. However, the recommended course lists we receive are often disappointing.
As for specific courses, the outdated nature of the syllabi is astonishing. Of course, using the same textbook for ten years in the name of “teaching experience” is somewhat understandable.

Take university life, for example; there is a phenomenon—high scores through pre-exam cramming.

Students coast through classes, relying on copying homework.

As finals approach, they shake their heads awake, quickly initiate a “brainstorming” session, and sit like sculptures in the library, frantically cramming for days and nights, even losing the desire to eat.

When grades finally come out: “Oh wow! 85 points? Not bad!”

Isn’t that absurd?

After a few months of genuine effort, the results are often not as good as cramming at the last minute.

The first 16 weeks are spent coasting, with just 2-3 weeks dedicated to exam prep. Many classes aren’t attended at all, and self-study in the dormitory is the norm, yet scores remain above 80.

I suddenly realize: university means you have to study on your own.

What Do You Want?

“In ancient times, those who wished to manifest virtue in the world must first govern their country; to govern their country, they must first regulate their family; to regulate their family, they must first cultivate themselves; to cultivate themselves, they must first rectify their hearts; to rectify their hearts, they must first be sincere in their thoughts; to be sincere in their thoughts, they must first attain knowledge; knowledge is obtained through understanding things. When things are understood, knowledge is attained, and when knowledge is attained, thoughts are sincere; when thoughts are sincere, the heart is rectified; when the heart is rectified, the self is cultivated; when the self is cultivated, the family is regulated; when the family is regulated, the country is governed; when the country is governed, the world is at peace.”

“Cultivate the self, regulate the family, govern the country, and bring peace to the world“ is what the sages envisioned; what about us?

Different people have different aspirations:

Some say, “I want to travel the world and see different landscapes.”

Others say, “I want to live a life of extravagance and luxury.”

Yet others say, “I want to experience mountains and seas with the ones I love…”

But all these beautiful wishes have a fundamental condition: a stable source of income + corresponding abilities.

To achieve these, you need to continuously explore and grow during your four years of university. Here are a few suggestions that may help you:

Recognize Your Skill Set

With the expansion of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs, China is currently enjoying an “engineer dividend.” The education level of professionals in various industries is steadily improving, and upgrading the manufacturing sector is also a national priority. However, there is a mismatch between the increase in mid-to-high-end job openings and the number of university and graduate graduates. Coupled with the economic slowdown, we see headlines every year about “the toughest job market for university graduates.” To land your ideal job and position, you need to have a clear understanding of your skill set and the technical requirements of your target roles and address any gaps accordingly. Skills you may need in the future include but are not limited to:

Specialized knowledge in your field: This is fundamental to your existence, and you need to have medium- to long-term insights into your area.
Communication skills: How to persuade your supervisors and customers to understand and accept your ideas and products.
Information retrieval, filtering, summarization, and visualization skills.
Interpersonal skills: Showcasing your value to others and finding the right friends to seek help when you need it.
Stress resilience: Mainly refers to adaptability, tolerance, and endurance in adverse situations, and the ability to cope well with setbacks in life and work.
Independent thinking: In the age of information overload, try to avoid being misled by false information.
Time management: In the future, you will be consumed by the everyday trivialities of life and numerous tasks outside of work and study, and no longer have parents to manage most things for you. You need to efficiently manage and utilize your remaining time.

Here’s the translation of your text into English:

Wrong Mindset

Gaokao Mindset

Our education system tends to summarize and measure a person with a quantitative score. This system reaches its peak in the Gaokao (National College Entrance Examination). In university, we also face countless quantitative grading mechanisms: from exams in various subjects, comprehensive evaluations, to studying abroad, pursuing graduate studies, and working in Shanghai, we are constantly dealing with scores. In the face of these scores, we must remain clear-headed:

If a person makes the pursuit of score policies their highest goal, they become a victim of that policy.

Even if you thoroughly memorize the content of textbooks, it does not mean you truly understand the subject (on the contrary, those who truly understand may not be able to score high on exams that focus on test points). Please remember: the four years of university are for your life; by the time you graduate, that string of pale scores will have already become obsolete.

Passive Thinking

Whatever we do, we need to give ourselves a reason. Every day, under the pressure of life, we busily act without opinions, which can be considered a great tragedy in life.

When stepping into the university gate, the biggest question we face is: why go to class? Perhaps the question is so superficial that we are even too lazy to think about it. But who among us has really thought effectively about this question?

“I’m afraid the teacher will call on me,” “to copy notes and assignments,” “to record exam points”—these are merely excuses for being forced to attend classes and cannot serve as reasons for us to willingly go to class.

The only thing that can genuinely become our reason for attending class is our thirst for scientific and cultural knowledge.

If attending class doesn’t significantly affect your exam scores; if the knowledge we are interested in isn’t on the school’s curriculum; if the effectiveness of learning in class is so poor that self-study allows us to master knowledge in a shorter time—then do you still need to attend class?

Tragic Learning Methods

The stories of ancient scholars who studied hard still play out around us today. It is said that every day, thousands of students study in the library and various halls. Students toil away beside piles of exercises, which are undoubtedly a beautiful scene at our school, one of the leading universities in the country. Students are racking their brains to study problem-solving techniques, while teachers similarly devise examination strategies, creating a perfect circle. In the repetitive mechanical labor of both, I only see paper, electricity, and food continuously wasted, yet I do not see the rise of China.

I do not mean to entirely deny the hardworking spirit of my classmates, but this spirit can only be termed tragic. The vast amount of time and energy we expend mastering exam points and techniques will not earn us a place in the true temple of knowledge. Even if we become skilled at eigenvalue calculations or complex integrals, China’s manned spacecraft will not fly successfully as a result.

I have a 1,300-page mathematics manual that records the major mathematical achievements of human civilization from ancient times to the late twentieth century. However, the content covered in our school’s higher mathematics textbook (two volumes) does not exceed 130 pages. A true aspirant to build the scientific edifice should not cling to a single brick and carve it meticulously.

What learning requires is not tragic perseverance but a thirst for the infinite unknown.

Ultimately, the purpose of acquiring knowledge is to lay the groundwork for subsequent knowledge and to cultivate creative thinking. Effective learning should be aimed at acquiring knowledge with the highest efficiency to serve these two goals. From the current situation, we find that our desire to solidify every aspect of our learning habits results in extremely low efficiency, while the “knowledge” we effectively master through extensive exercises is incredibly limited.

Today, how much have you learned?

Correctly Wasting the Remaining Time

If a graduation diploma is an added value service, then four years of university is an investment. When it comes to investment, let’s imagine if you currently had five million cash, how would you invest it? Perhaps you would invest it in stocks, real estate, foreign exchange, mutual funds, or start a business. However, at our age, very few people would agree to exchange that money for gold and silver jewelry and store it in a safe. Of course, given the trend of inflation in recent years, the interest earned from keeping the money in the bank would probably not even keep up with the depreciation rate.

The reason we do not agree with the idea of exchanging wealth for gold and silver is that we know having this wealth should not mean sitting idle; it should contain greater power, bring broader opportunities, and yield richer returns under our management!

Compared to our precious youth, the tuition and living expenses we incur during our studies are almost negligible. The truly valuable chips we invest are time. Faced with the golden time that could change the trajectory of your life, do you feel its weight? Have you thought about how to plan this significant investment?

If you are a good student who goes to class properly every day, completes assignments diligently, and reviews until bedtime, living a positive and healthy life, but lack effective self-management (if you follow the school’s plan, you will find that the free time you can allocate is very limited). Then, retreating like this is no different from locking away your youth in a safe to wither away with time. We must remember this golden rule:

A mediocre lifestyle is a sedative. It will only bind you, preventing you from achieving anything, and may cause you to spend your four years in university without success.

Regardless of whether what you do is meaningful—indeed, even if you do nothing at all, time will slip away from us. We must reflect three times a day on whether our time is spent valuably.

Generally speaking, the value of a task depends on its efficiency in the time scale. By exerting the same effort, we should strive to do more tasks that positively impact our entire lives, do fewer tasks that influence our medium-term future, and avoid tasks that only have a short-term impact. Naturally, tasks that have negative impacts should be avoided altogether. In this sense, spending appropriate time exercising can benefit us for a lifetime and is worthwhile; however, even if it takes the same amount of time, we should not play games because that only provides fleeting and empty spiritual pleasure.

In fact, it is not just physical exercise versus gaming. We must rationally and critically consider whether attending classes, studying, and taking exams are truly worth doing.

Many students attend classes for the sake of their GPA. Their mistake lies first in not realizing that there are many more effective ways to improve GPA than attending classes. Moreover, these students do not consider whether GPA itself is something important. We regretfully admit that due to public opinion, GPA has almost become everything in our university life. In the short term, it is undoubtedly important. Unless you are preparing for graduate school or switching majors, GPA is not the most crucial factor. Especially for students studying abroad, the importance of grades has been excessively exaggerated.

If we broaden our perspective even slightly, even just a year or two after graduation, GPA will become worthless. Should we compromise our long-term goals for this “stepping stone”?

The principle of time management is really quite simple: successful people often take pride in the professional qualities they developed during their school years, but few mature (even if not successful) people enjoy boasting about their top scores in advanced mathematics.

At other times, we may find a more noble reason for “attending class”: learning knowledge. Regarding the quality of teaching in university classrooms and the so-called “problem-solving techniques” that classrooms focus on, I no longer want to elaborate. In short, the efficiency of acquiring useful knowledge in class is so low that any effective self-study method will easily yield greater returns. For example, a semester of English class, with four sessions a week totaling 48 hours. In class, we endure half the time listening to classmates’ fragmented English. However, with the same amount of time, a normally intelligent student can easily memorize 2,000 words (this number is a conservative estimate based on the preparation status of many GRE test-takers). This 2,000-word vocabulary is enough to elevate your overall English level. May I ask, what can you learn in a semester of English class? At most, you will only master the already unimpressive text. Of course, English class is just an example; you will find many more reprehensible instances around you, many even worse than English class. These often include (but are not limited to):

Student meetings. Almost all student meetings, whether held in large auditoriums or small gatherings in classrooms, share a common characteristic: inefficiency.
Disorganized student activities. Typically, in poorly organized collective activities, waiting for people and chatting can waste half an hour, leading one to suspect that the theme of the activity is simply to wait and chat.
Time-consuming but unproductive temporary tasks. Many teachers or student leaders in school like to use students as labor. But you must always be clear that your identity is not that of a temporary worker. The concepts of “helping in an emergency” and “work” must be distinguished.

We should have enough awareness of the workload planned for our time. From an hour to a day, from a summer vacation to a semester, or even to four years of university, making practical and achievable plans and holding ourselves accountable for not completing them is the most basic requirement. The main difference between successful people and the majority of mediocre individuals lies, on one hand, in whether they have time to utilize, and on the other hand, in the utilization rate of that time. We must always maintain a sense of urgency to ensure that time is not wasted. As long as you can correctly utilize your time during your studies, there is no need for extraordinary talent—indeed, not even particularly hard work, and you can expect to excel in your field.

From this moment, we must start reflecting: every minute and every hour must have its purpose; we should try to use every minute of our time effectively!

Here’s the translation of your text into English:

There’s Always Something More Worthwhile to Do

When we are forced to take some seemingly useless courses due to the school’s curriculum, we often hear well-meaning reassurances: “Learning a bit more knowledge isn’t a bad thing; you never know when it might come in handy!” At first glance, this seems reasonable, but in reality, it is an outright lie.

Even high school education has separated arts and sciences; as university students, we should have at least a basic plan for our future. Unfortunately, the academic administration often whimsically pushes irrelevant courses onto us, believing that allowing students from the School of Mechanics to master both psychology and chemistry will create so-called versatile talents. We refuse to learn knowledge that is not particularly useful to us because its value is too low.

All tasks impact us, and their value must be quantitatively assessed rather than qualitatively discussed. Volunteering to clean the streets can cultivate your character and also improve your physical fitness. Sitting at home memorizing vocabulary for a day can help you learn hundreds of new words and improve your English proficiency. According to the “well-meaning logic” mentioned above, both have their benefits and seem difficult to choose between. However, in practical terms, no one would think the former is more beneficial.

While we all understand the reasoning, we often see leaders from various organizations sending students to stand at the cafeteria entrance handing out flyers to “enhance everyone’s social practice ability.” We also see many students haphazardly taking unrelated courses under the guise of “expanding their knowledge base.”

In the face of these various tempting slogans, we must stay clear-headed and constantly remind ourselves:

There’s always something more worthwhile to do.

So, Why Go to University?

My answer is: to cultivate abilities that have never existed in the world before!

As long as we are alive, we cannot do without these three things:

Take the CET-4 and CET-6 exams, search on Zhihu for “quick strategies to pass CET-4 and CET-6 in one month” (search) »»

First memorize vocabulary, tackle reading comprehension, improve listening skills, study essay writing, and practice with past exam papers (process) »»

Maintain a good mindset in the exam room, fully immerse yourself, and unleash your potential (showcase) »»

We are all familiar with this process. Life throws many chaotic pieces of information at us; they are like parasites sneaking into our brains, nesting in our “subconscious zone.” If we do not actively and consciously process this information, it will not manifest easily.

It’s similar to memorizing a long passage—our first reaction is to identify the “logical connections between sentences, which ones can be grouped together for easier memorization, and which ones need to be emphasized and repeated.”

Everyone possesses this ability; it is a human, innate gift, simply put, it is “curiosity.”

But why is there such a huge gap between us and the experts?

“Laziness, carelessness, and an overly relaxed attitude” versus “high efficiency, extreme precision, and optimal quality”—the difference is evident at a glance.