The resumption of the college entrance examination 40 years ago gave me the opportunity to enter a university campus. But it was actually a bit of a coincidence that I was able to take this path.
I was a high school student in the class of ’68. I studied in high school for nearly a year, went to the countryside for nearly two years, and was recruited into a large third-tier state-owned enterprises as a worker. When the college entrance examination was resumed, I had already married and had children, and was a seven or eight years of service as a second-grade plier. Youth is no longer, there is not much vitality seems to have been day after day monotonous Time eroded away, a lifetime seems to be in order, uneventful according to the road went on.
It was my sister who broke the tranquility and mediocrity of my Life.
My sister is four years older than me and was the last Chinese language student at Peking University before the Cultural Revolution. She always believed that the country would one day value Education and respect knowledge, and always encouraged me to maintain my enthusiasm and efforts for learning, and always had confidence in my learning ability. From 1970, when she had just been assigned to be a middle school teacher in a remote town in Daxian County in eastern Sichuan, she kept writing letters to encourage me to persevere in my studies and wait for my chance. As soon as the college entrance exams resumed, she immediately tried to get review materials and sent them to me, asking me to apply for the exams.
My daughter was about to be born when I registered for the Class of ’77, and she wasn’t even 100 days old when I took the exam.
But my sister did not give up. Six months later, when the 78th grade examinations began, she sent me information to motivate me to apply for the examinations. At this time, I also had an encourager around me: a friend from the same factory, who was one year below me, ambitiously wanted to take the exam, so he came to talk to me several times and encouraged me to study for the exam with him. This kid’s vigorous, confident energy really infected me, and think of my sister’s high expectations all along, I finally held the mindset of trying to also be okay to apply.
So, for about 3 months, I started to chew on the review materials sent by my sister and found by myself to prepare for the exam, in between commuting to work and taking my daughter.
Since I had only been in high school for less than a year, I didn’t have a complete understanding of mathematics and science, and since liberal arts was my passion and strength, I took it for granted.
I was in a hurry, so I focused my revision on consolidating and remembering knowledge points. The specific arrangement is: language to eat the old book, read the review material once and then basically do not care. The first thing I did was to take a look at the history, geography and politics. The first thing you need to do is to give up on foreign languages and wait for the exams. The main focus of the review is on mathematics: the content that has been learned, and strive to return to the level of the year, the points to get, did not learn the content (such as analytic geometry, calculus, etc.), is not to learn it, to save time for other subjects.
This operation down, eat the old capital plus “the gun, not fast also light”, the effect is really good. The results of the college entrance examination, the total score of more than 370 points (out of 500 points), it is said to be the first factory candidates, the county’s third place in arts. Among them, geography 88 points, history 82 points, adding up to a total of 170 points, is the best effect of the sudden memory. Language 74 points, poorly, and it is fair to say. Math 63 points, which does not look good, is already the highest score among dozens of candidates in the whole factory. Only politics is unexpected, only more than 60 points, the original plan to catch at least 80 points. Foreign language 16 points, as expected, all multiple choice questions, and then only for reference, not the total score, according to the factory education team at the time of registration, at least prove that I have studied foreign languages.
After the scores came out, I started to fill out the volunteer application. I didn’t know the sky was high, I still had the idea that it was a pie in the sky to go to university, and there was nothing to lose if I couldn’t, plus I had a Family and a job, so I didn’t have to worry about anything, so I filled in the first volunteer of the key university, the journalism department of Renmin University of China, and the second volunteer filled in the Chinese department of Sichuan University. The first volunteer of the general university filled in the Department of Economics of Sichuan Finance and Economics College. Perhaps reading the NPC scores or worse, I finally received a letter of acceptance from the Department of Philosophy of Sichuan University, which is the second volunteer school to deploy professional admissions.
At that time, there were very few university majors, and I remember that Sichuan University had five departments in literature and science. The arts were Chinese, foreign languages, economics, history, and philosophy. It seems that except for the Department of Foreign Languages and the Department of History, there was a division of majors, and the other three departments had one major each, and the major of our department was the same throughout the country, called Marxist Philosophy, which included nearly 100 people. The age of students varies, the oldest was born in 1948 and the youngest in 1961, a difference of 13 years.
There are not many students in the school. When we joined the school, there were about 5,000 students in four classes (including the 77th and 78th classes after the resumption of the college entrance examination and the two classes of workers, peasants and soldiers who had not yet graduated). I remember that at the first student conference after joining the university, President Kang Naier said that we would strive to build Sichuan University into a university of 10,000 students in X years. That sounded like a lot of ambition and vigor. How could we imagine that the university now has many faculties and departments, occupies a vast area, has a lot of tall buildings, and has different academic systems, and can easily have tens of thousands or tens of thousands of people?
Four years of university life is over, according to the policy at that time, I have the original work unit and paid study students, after graduation, it is logical to go back to the factory. The biggest change I could feel after I came back was that my daughter had grown from a baby of less than one year old to a lively and lovely little girl.
My original Ziyang is a small county, the factory is the county’s largest and best units, unlike the stage in Chengdu, many students back to the original unit have the opportunity to choose a second career. I have been working in the factory as a teacher engaged in staff and cadre education until I retired.
Back then, I accidentally enrolled in college and did not have a strong desire to change my fate by going to college. Subsequent experiences really seem to prove this. But I know that the influence and change brought by university study is actually fundamental: it changed my knowledge base and way of thinking, improved my overall intellectual quality and personality taste, and gave me the desire and ability to keep learning, not to believe in books, not to easily believe in any kind of preaching, and all from the objective reality of the ideological guidelines, and dialectical analysis of objective thinking. This kind of spiritual gain is far beyond the mere material gain.
I am glad that by chance I have not let this once-in-a-lifetime historical opportunity slip by. I am grateful for the college entrance examination that changed my life 40 years ago and the four years of college study, and I am also grateful to my sister and the cheerful friend who encouraged me to finally take the path of college entrance examination.
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