Chapter Thirty-Seven: High School

  Military training might be the most interesting days for Lin Xiaoyu during her high school years.

  Wearing uniform camouflage uniforms in the military camp, Lin Xiaoyu felt the fun of collective life with a bit of military flavor.

  Although every day under the strict instructors' scolding, military training in the hot sun is a bit hard, and the food in the army camp can't compare to the delicious meals her mother makes at home, Lin Xiaoyu feels that military training is very happy.

  During breaks, instructors can easily get along with students, but when it comes to training, they often get a severe kick from the instructor for a small mistake in posture, and then go run a few laps on the playground.

  Lin Xiaoyu liked these straightforward instructors very much, Lin Xiaoyu even had a impulse to join the army for a while, but as the only child in the family, Lin Xiaoyu knew that her parents would definitely not agree.

  Lin Xiaoyu, who had just received an excellent marksmanship award in live ammunition shooting, ended a week of military training and bid farewell to the instructors who were all filled with a strong masculine aura. Lin Xiaoyu then began her truly true high school life.

  Lin Xiaoyu's originally pale face had become slightly tanned, but it also gained a few points of firmness and maturity.

  Lin Xiaoyu sat in the last seat of the classroom, watching her classmates chatting with each other during the break. She took out a CD player from her drawer and put on earplugs to enjoy her favorite music.

  Lin Xiaoyu is now a first-year student in high school. Lin Xiaoyu was admitted to Experimental Middle School. Originally, Lin Xiaoyu's grades were good enough to get into Feicui City's best school, Feicui First Middle School, but because Lin Xiaoyu was not feeling well during the exam period, her score was 2 points lower than the cutoff for that school. Lin's parents regretted this, but Experimental Middle School is also a key middle school, so they didn't blame Lin Xiaoyu for her exam results. Lin Xiaoyu wasn't too concerned about which school she attended, because to her, all middle schools were roughly the same.

  Junior high and high school are just different. The courses in high school seem to have doubled, and Lin Xiaoyu's desk is piled up with two thick textbooks. These textbooks are full of words and strange symbols that Lin Xiaoyu can't understand. This is the knowledge of high school, which has nothing to do with life.

  In junior high school, good friends all went to other schools. Yang Tianxiao and Li Jingru both entered the First Middle School. Lin Xiaoyu only had one familiar friend in this experimental middle school, that is Yan Nan.

  Yan Nan could have easily gone to Feicui City First Middle School due to her family connections, but after learning that Lin Xiaoyu had enrolled in Experimental Middle School, Yan Nan chose to stay at Experimental Middle School.

  It's been a month since Lin Xiaoyu started her high school life at Shiyan Middle School, and if you count the military training before the start of school, it's almost one and a half months. Lin Xiaoyu feels that she is very confused in school. Every day in class, she doesn't seem to want to listen to the lessons. As soon as the teachers on the podium start talking about those boring things, Lin Xiaoyu secretly takes out her own prepared book, which is basically a thick one that Lin Xiaoyu can finish reading carefully in two days of classes.

  The experimental middle school has a newly built library, which contains many books that Lin Xiaoyu likes. Lin Xiaoyu is fascinated by those literary classics. From the writers' words, she can experience this world from a completely new perspective that she has never tried before, which is why Lin Xiaoyu likes to read these books. The stories and characters described in those books, as well as the emotions they convey, always allow Lin Xiaoyu to feel a sense of comfort in her otherwise dull and mundane school life.

  Lin Xiaoyu has one subject that she never looks at outside of class, and that's English.

  The English teacher was a very young teacher, just graduated from university, named Blue Rainbow. This extremely good-looking young female teacher did not teach students to do the questions that would appear on the test paper over and over again like other teachers who claimed to have rich teaching experience. When this young female teacher taught in class, it seemed as if she was not lecturing but chatting with her friends. For most of the time in class, she let the textbooks she brought into the classroom quietly lie on the podium, then poured knowledge into each student at their desk in a tone that didn't sound like a teacher talking to students.

  She never says that certain grammar will appear in a certain exam question, nor will she say that if you write it this way, the teacher who checks the papers will deduct points. She just keeps talking about what we need to use and must learn in life.

  Lin Xiaoyu really likes the class taught by this teacher. In this young female teacher's class, Lin Xiaoyu can happily learn a lot of things. Lin Xiaoyu likes to look at this always youthful female teacher vividly teaching the class on her desk, and every time when this young teacher naturally raises her right hand to gently lift up her fringe, Lin Xiaoyu always feels that such a picture is extremely beautiful.

  Lin Xiaoyu didn't like listening to other teachers' classes not because Lin Xiaoyu wasn't thirsty for knowledge. But it was because Lin Xiaoyu felt that the things those teachers who only taught students how to fill in test papers were saying weren't what she wanted to learn, except during exam periods, the things those teachers said were basically useless in life. Lin Xiaoyu didn't want to study for the sake of those repetitive questions on the test paper. In Lin Xiaoyu's eyes, these things were like a pile of dog shit by the side of the road. Yes, just like a pile of dog shit.

  The rebellious heart of youth had slowly grown in Lin Xiaoyu's mind. Reality is just that helpless, China's education system has always been such a rigid test-oriented education. In those test scores, countless young people with flexible minds became bookworms one by one. Young Lin Xiaoyu still didn't realize how important the scores on the test papers were to them, who came to school for test-oriented education. Even if you are Einstein or Newton, even if you can create an atomic bomb, but if your exam results are not qualified, the gates of a key university will still reject you. Society is like this, when you have no ability to resist, you can only conform.

  Lin Xiaoyu did not force herself to follow the good students who buried their heads in study materials all day to deal with the dull exams, which also made Lin Xiaoyu's life test paper appear unqualified scores for the first time.

  After the monthly test, Lin Xiaoyu's results were as expected. Of the six subjects, except for English which was excellent, all the others ranked at the bottom of the class.

  Lin Xiaoyu's English score was just seven points away from full marks, which is the second best in the class.

  Chinese, mathematics, history and geography barely passed with a mid-range score thanks to Lin Xiaoyu's decent foundation in junior high school. Chemistry and physics relied on good luck to barely pass.

  But politics was the one subject that Lin Xiaoyu didn't pass. This was the first time in nine years of school that Lin Xiaoyu hadn't passed a subject. Lin Xiaoyu was fed up with the political textbooks, which were full of sycophantic language that sounded like hymns. To get a good grade in politics, all you had to do was memorize some key phrases and principles, but Lin Xiaoyu really didn't want to look at those annoying sentences in the textbook. Lin Xiaoyu had a great memory, and usually after reading something once, she could recall the well-written passages with ease. However, Lin Xiaoyu just couldn't bear to have those political ideologies stuck in her head - they were even more detestable than the school rules for junior high students. So it was no surprise that politics ended up being a big red flag for Lin Xiaoyu.

  Lin Xiaoyu's scores in this exam were all around 70 points on average, but among the large number of bookworms in this school, Lin Xiaoyu's score could only rank outside the top 300 in the whole grade. This made the head teacher of Lin Xiaoyu's class, High School Year Three Class One, quite perplexed about Lin Xiaoyu.

  Lin Xiaoyu's entrance exam results were second in the class and top 20 in the whole grade. This time, the test scores plummeted to 300th place, almost as fast as a slide. The class teacher with many years of teaching experience quickly found Lin Xiaoyu to talk.

  This stout middle-aged class teacher surnamed Xia, named Xia Chunqiu. This name contains three seasons of the teacher is notorious for being strict in this experimental middle school. Some students gave him a nickname called "Big Storm" according to his name. This is because Xia Chunqiu always spits when scolding students, just like the stormy rain in spring and summer. It seems that every school has naughty students, such nicknames are not what those bookworms can think of.

  Lin Xiaoyu stood in front of her class teacher, listening to the emotional and reasonable teachings of "Da Baoyu". The teacher's words were nothing more than saying "Students are not making an effort, parents work hard to support their children's education, it's not easy. You must study hard, can't waste your studies, you have to take responsibility for your own future..." Lin Xiaoyu had been hearing these words since elementary school until now, she could recite them by heart, and naturally, she would let these words go in one ear and out the other, occasionally lowering her head to show the teacher that she was taking the lesson.

  Lin Xiaoyu finally understood how apt the nickname "Big Storm" was. Fortunately, Lin Xiaoyu was 1.8 meters tall, and Xia Chunqiu's height of 1.6 meters barely reached Lin Xiaoyu's shoulder, so Xia Chunqiu's flying saliva didn't land on Lin Xiaoyu's face. However, Lin Xiaoyu's lowered hands were not so lucky. After Xia Chunqiu finished speaking, she told Lin Xiaoyu to go back and reflect on herself. As soon as Lin Xiaoyu left the teacher's office, she ran to the bathroom to wash her hands repeatedly with water. Lin Xiaoyu couldn't help but admire the classmate who gave their head teacher the nickname "Big Storm", guessing that this classmate must have also suffered from such a "big storm" before.

  After being educated by the "big storm", Lin Xiaoyu also reflected and knew that she couldn't go on like this. Lin Xiaoyu seriously took out her textbook and started learning for the first time since entering high school.

  But after a day, Lin Xiaoyu started holding it again during class. Not having studied for a month, Lin Xiaoyu's studies were somewhat disjointed, and the content in the books was not as easy to understand as it was in junior high school. The more Lin Xiaoyu looked at those textbooks, the more uncomfortable she felt, so she didn't take it seriously for even a day before throwing the textbook aside again...