Just after the Spring Festival in 2019, actor Zhai Tianlin was widely questioned about the value of his doctorate because he did not know what a “know net” was when answering netizens’ questions in a live broadcast. The word “Doctor” has also quickly become a hot search on the Internet. According to statistics, China graduates more than 50,000 doctoral students every year, and the total number of doctoral students in various scientific research institutions is more than 350,000. But for this topic, netizens focus more on the “highly educated stars”, as for the vast majority of the country’s doctoral living state, but few people ask. The four doctoral students in this paper are all my classmates. These years, we have been under the double pressure of academic research and real life. There is no lack of genuine enthusiasm for academic pursuits, but there is more to them than academics, and their faith is constantly being consumed. This, I suppose, is the past and present of PhD students — and, I hope, it is no longer their future.
One night in late April, the sixth floor of a dormitory building on the campus near the Third Ring Road was suddenly filled with a wail of pounding breasts. On the fifth floor, students carrying thermos bottles to draw water went up several stairs and looked up to see four or five middle-aged men wearing only a pair of boxer briefs standing at the top of the stairs. Two of them were smoking cigarettes, and the elastic band formed two lotus roots from the proud flesh on their tummies. The student with the probe felt bored and went down the stairs.
The first to fifth floors of the dormitory are occupied by undergraduate and postgraduate students, and the top floor is reserved for the university’s male and female PHDS, supposedly to encourage PHDS to exercise. PhD students vary in age, and many are more like teachers or staff and maintenance workers hanging out in dormitories than the junior students downstairs.
At 10 o ‘clock in the evening, it is usually the time for doctoral students to go out for “exercise”. After reading the materials of half the evening, their attention has reached its limit, and they need to relax a little and smoke a cigarette to nourish their spirit, so as to welcome the study time from 11 o ‘clock to 2 o ‘clock in the morning.
The bawling brother, said a fat smoker, was “failing” in one of three feedback reports when his dissertation was submitted to an anonymous external review. According to the rules, he can appeal, but there is no guarantee that he will pass the review. If he fails, he will have to postpone his graduation for half a year or more — he has already received an offer from a key university in Beijing. I went out to drink some wine in the evening. I couldn’t control myself and cried when I came back to the dormitory.
People in the corridor sighed deeply and some expressed sympathy, saying that it was a pity to give up such a good job opportunity. Some also complained that the review mechanism had become stricter. “This year, when I caught up with Zhai Tianlin, I must be strict,” they said.
Their shadows were diluted by the orange light in the corridor, and they all discussed their respective situations and their common future with some pessimism. These topics have been talked about countless times, but the conversation continues with gusto — no one wants to go back to the computer and face the monitor screen and the pile of literature in front of the computer.
Xiao Chun, 29, fresh PhD
When Xiao Chun returned home in May, she found her day at home much longer than at school.
That day, he was watching “Discipline and Punishment” in the yard when his brother’s 5-year-old daughter ran to interrupt him. My little niece collects Xiao Chun’s head in her arms to pull up his white hair, because this is also what she and her grandmother often do. The little spring obediently lower his head, spread out his palm, the little niece can not live excited Shouting: “and found a!”
Under the sun, a white hair like a fishbone, lying flat in the palm of Xiaochun’s hand, Xiaochun sent a circle of friends: “the fate of the sand”.
In the past 29 years of His life, Xiao Chun has spent the longest time not with his parents and friends, but with his “school”. He has been on campus for 26 years since he entered kindergarten at the age of 3. Every time he went back to meet relatives and neighbors, he would greet them by repeating the question “Why are you still not at work?” No one in the village has ever read such a high degree. Villagers speak of this doctoral student with admiration and praise, “equivalent to our deputy county magistrate level”; Some, such as Xiao Chun’s fourth uncle, once asked rudely: “Why should the state train you to study until you are 30 and retire at 60?”
Xiao Chun felt very embarrassed, and unable to refute.
For the life outside the campus, Xiao Chun often harboured a kind of indescribable envy. Most of his undergraduate classmates had worked for six or seven years, enough to support a family. He has participated in several classmates’ parties, talked about office culture at work in enterprises, and talked about officialness and the difficulties of promotion as a civil servant. Xiaochun felt that he could not catch up with words and had no common language with anyone. Some students noticed that he was silent and looked at him with compassionate eyes, saying that he had not yet gone to work and should enjoy his carefree life for a few more years.
But Chun never felt like she was “enjoying life.” No work, no income. In his second year of graduate school, he won a 20,000 yuan national scholarship and happily called his parents to tell them that he would never spend any money from them again.
Since then, his quality of life has plummeted.
While studying for his PhD, He received a monthly state subsidy of 1,250 yuan from the university, which was only enough for his living expenses in the canteen and other expenses only earned through part-time work. He once applied for a university-level scientific research project. According to the requirements, he had to publish a paper as the result of the project. The fund was only 3,000 yuan, and he could only get it from the finance department by purchasing the invoices of books and electronic products.
Helpless, Xiaochun had to resume the old business, do tutor, write advertessays, then translation, every day on the way to make a living, there is a period of time even feel, listen to lectures and see papers became a sideline.
For some big and urgent expenses, such as tuition fees of more than 10,000 yuan a year and accommodation fees, Xiao chun has to turn to a few close friends for help. In recent years, Xiaochun has accumulated rich experience in borrowing money, which friends can open their mouths, how much can be borrowed, whose money needs to be repaid first, he has a complicated and thorough table in mind. Sometimes scholarships and part-time pay did not arrive, and he often dug up the wall to pay for it.
Of all his friends, the one he borrows the most is a friend from high school. Two people usually do not have much contact, but they do not take each other as outsiders, borrow money when the conversation is concise and tacit, usually is Xiaochun asked “are you there?” “And the friend replies,” How much?” – Whenever this time, xiaochun heart will give birth to a helpless and moved to the complex emotions.
In addition to the financial pressure, the pressure of scientific research always hangs over him.
According to the university’s regulations, each doctoral student must publish two papers in CSSCI journals before he can graduate. However, only six journals in Xiaochun’s major are classified as “Journal C”, and two of them are quarterly. Moreover, besides the doctoral student who is reading, sends “C journal” also is the necessary index that the university teacher evaluates professional title, accordingly, this only these a few journals back, do not know how many pairs of boil red eyes closely stare at.
Xiao Chun began to deliver papers from bo 2. The review time for each magazine is usually four to six months, and more than one article is prohibited. After the paper was submitted, Xiao Chun spent most of his time waiting. After half a year, if there is no news from this side, he can transfer the paper to another. Until Bo Si, his second draft still like dandelion seeds, flying aimlessly in the sky.
When bo 4 open school, the tutor writes a letter to Xiaochun, let him solve the problem that publishes a thesis at once, lest affect graduation. Xiaochun himself also panicked, in addition to everywhere, also began to follow the advice of the sister, contact the online “journal agent.
Before this, doing that as long as seriously to write their own papers, always have the opportunity to be published, but the strength of the “agent” gesture to let he finally understand, originally that few papers published opportunity, would have been to their half – for example, an issue of “C” agent with his plain code marks a price: send an article, “page charges” 20000 yuan; If someone write to add published, each 30,000 yuan; If it’s urgent, you’ll need more money.
Xiaochun listened to the quotation, the head has meng, he asked the agent: “What do you guarantee to pay the money can be published?”
The other side replied: “Our leader is the editor’s brother-in-law, this relationship is not hard? Besides, their chief editor is not a free agent himself. He gets a cut of it.”
But at such a high price, who would want to pay a lot of money?
Xiaochun in the dining room table pain criticism of this phenomenon, there are students interrupt him: “we can not afford to study, others are willing to spend money teachers ah! Just think, if you need such an article to evaluate professors, your salary will be doubled, are you willing to pay a blood?”
Xiao Chun could only heave a sigh.
In the end, Her second “C journal” was published with the help of her tutor — an important journal happened to open a new section, and the editor solicited contributions from her tutor, who recommended her.
received magazine sent to the paper magazine, Xiao Chun finally breathed a sigh of relief.
He is very clear about the rules of the school. Last year, one of his classmates in the dormitory next to them had his degree certificate revoked when he graduated because he was not given enough copies of “C magazine”. That classmate cannot look for a job, afterwards do not know to use what method to send again, just finally got degree certificate.
Some students said that the university was doing this purely for its own benefit, because doctoral students were contributing to the total amount of scientific research in the university. Without the forced squeezing of C papers, the “scientific research strength” of the whole university would be greatly reduced.
But no matter how, solve this henchmen big trouble, Xiaochun felt that his graduation is finally around the corner, after all, the doctoral thesis of 150,000 words has had a basic framework, complete it is only a matter of time, he even began to imagine the second half of the year to apply for and defend the scene.
Only this “time”, but later let him often fall into a kind of nameless panic. Probably because of the “fire into the devil” reading the literature, When Xiaochun opened the book, there would always be some unrestrained imagination in his mind, sleep at night will always be inexplicable wake up. He suspected that he was mildly depressed, which was not uncommon among his classmates.
Sometimes he would think of the words of Sibo and feel that “time” was pushing him behind his back. The closer he was to the age of 30, he became more and more anxious — people around him worried about houses, cars, careers, love, old people and children every day, but he could not touch them in a specific way. After his PhD, he took no care of his clothes. Whenever he did not go out, he would inevitably wear his grey pajamas. He pays little attention to current events, rarely watches popular TV programs, and feels disconnected from the current culture. Even for his greatest love, reading, he was always guilty, for professional research had so bound him that he was no longer free to read the books that interested him.
Xiao Chun said that he was fighting with an invisible force every day, but what was the meaning of this struggle? The only things he could hold in his hand seemed to be his white fish-bone hair.
Lao Wei, 38, is married and a PhD student at work
Throughout the building, the contrast between Wei’s identity and that of a “student” is the greatest. Apart from being 1.85 metres tall and plump, he has one of the most striking features: years of teaching have left him with severe pharyngitis, and every morning he clears his throat in the public water room. The noise was very big, like coughing for a while, like vomiting for a while, and many people could not bear the disturbance, and everyone got up in anger and started the study life of the new day.
Other people have opinions about him, and Lao Wei often expresses his own opinions about the school.
For example, he couldn’t make sense of the fact that three PhD students shared a 12-square-meter dorm room, which he described as “unreasonable” and “ridiculous” to someone who had devoted himself to research. It has been 15 years since he graduated from university at the age of 22, and his two PhD students, 10 years younger than him, are living in groups. Their habits are a generation gap. His roommates joke that Wei is a real old man’s rhythm, and he goes to bed after 11am — a time when inspiration just knocks on his door.
At first, Lao Wei wanted to be good, too. Every time I would take the initiative to clean the messy dormitory and help my roommates to sort out the socks and underwear hanging everywhere. Later, I found that I was not familiar with the relationship with my roommates, so I became disheartened.
Xiao He, the roommate, was very happy. He said that Old Wei had figured it out and “kept the good ecology of the doctor’s dormitory”.
A few years ago, Lao Wei never expected to return to Beijing as a student — in fact, several of his former students have already graduated with PHDS.
Lao Wei studied in a university in a third-tier city for his undergraduate study. After graduation, he became a teacher due to his excellent academic performance. Two years later, he got married and studied for a master’s degree in his own college. After more than ten years of hard work, he has been admitted as an associate professor. He is also the dean of the English Department of the school. He has a car and a house, a harmonious family and a good job.
Lao Wei’s wife is a doctor who graduated from a key university with a master’s degree. Once on the dining table, Lao Wei accidentally read to his wife a famous university to introduce an associate professor or above talent announcement, the school gave the conditions to let the wife is eating dishes quietly put down the chopsticks — 400,000 yuan “talent introduction fee”, an 80 square meter housing, the child into the school affiliated school reading… For the couple, it was a stairway to the provincial capital.
His wife made a prompt decision and urged The old Wei to contact this school. She was forced by her parents to go back to work in her hometown. She was not willing to accept the opportunity to go back, but she did not want to let it go anyway.
After receiving Lao Wei’s resume, the other institution quickly replied that although Lao Wei had made many scientific achievements in recent years, he could not be treated according to the standard of “introducing talents” because he was not a doctor. Old Wei long shu tone, oneself in the unit handy, originally to change a city some fear, just stop heart at this point.
However, this unrealized dream was like an open Pandora’s box, constantly pestering old Wei’s wife’s heart. Once, she woke up suddenly in the middle of the night and shook old Wei awake and said: “Why don’t you get a doctor’s degree?”
His wife’s reasoning was simple: They had basically “seen eye to eye” all their lives, but their son was young and needed a better education. As a Chinese saying goes, “The son who is loved by his parents will have a profound effect on him.” If his son can stand in a higher place, he will be a step closer to success.
If there is an opportunity after graduation, we will stay in Beijing. Even if I apply for a job as a community doctor, I will do that. As long as my child can have a registered permanent residence in Beijing, will it still be a problem for him to study in a good university? We’ve had it so hard that there’s nothing we can do to make him go the same way again…”
“Beijing, is that where we can go? The old Wei was nervous and crept into bed bundled with the quilt. His wife grabbed him and told him to get up now to prepare for the exam. She also calculated that if they sold both of their houses, plus savings, they could buy a big house in Beijing.
Lao Wei ao however, had to sign up on the net, contacted the tutor that should enter oneself for an examination. Watching my wife paste a yellow note saying “Go for It” on her bedroom wall, I think she is really possessed.
When he was a student, wei’s wife used to encourage him in WeChat, saying that he had “come to Beijing with the hope of the whole family for a PhD”. Because Lao Wei is already a deputy senior title, after receiving the admission notice, the company did not allow him to transfer his personnel files for fear of job-changing. Instead, they signed a contract of “directional training” with him: During his doctoral study, the school was responsible for tuition fees and paid him a basic salary, but he had to return to the school to work for five years after graduation. Lao Wei was an honest man. When he came home with the contract, his head was down in the dumps, he said that it was probably hopeless to turn over.
Lao Wei’s wife looked over the contract and slapped the table down: “Since there is a contract, there is a breach of contract clause, isn’t it 150,000 yuan? When the time comes to find the right job, I will take a year’s salary to compensate them!”
His wife’s manly attitude loosened his heart. After arriving in Beijing, he talked with his classmates on the same floor and found that many of his peers had the same purpose in pursuing their doctoral studies: most of the children were about 4 years old, and all of them were looking forward to getting a Beijing hukou after graduation, so that they could come to Beijing for primary school.
Mr. Chen, who lives in the next dorm, was already a young talent in the field of American literature in China before he started his PhD. Lao Wei had read his paper before. Chen came to Beijing from Changsha because of the capital’s high quality educational resources. Lao Wei often met Mr. Chen in the foreign language journal department of the library. He was basically flipping through a magazine with one under his arm. Listen to Mr. Chen, he plans to publish 4 “C magazine” during his doctoral study, in order to increase his bargaining power in Beijing.
Lao Wei himself is also quietly working hard to publish articles and accumulate research materials. After coming to Beijing, he also listened to a lot of lectures by famous experts. He really felt that his vision was too narrow and his paper was not standardized enough. He would blush when he received his tutor’s revision suggestions — after all, his tutor was only five years older than him.
Lao Wei really felt that he had entered a higher stage, and the people he contacted were much better than his former colleagues. When introducing himself to others, Lao Wei only said that he was an English teacher, and never mentioned the names of “associate professor” and “dean”. Listening to the lecture, old wei also don’t like those young people holding the laptop, or like a pen in his notebook to take notes, confused, is on the side to play on the big question mark, but he never hands will own these questions at the lecture said, “think of stage fright, afraid to ask no level was joke”.
When he is not in class, Lao Wei and several doctoral students of his age make an appointment to see exhibitions in the National Museum of China and cherry blossoms in Yuyuantan Park. Once, Mr. Chen bought several tickets for Zhongshan Music Hall on the Internet, and several old men met to go to a symphony concert. It was the first time wei had ever heard a symphony, and he was struck by the atmosphere. When Elgar’s cello Concerto, which he had played to his students in an earlier survey of British and American culture, played around him, he was in a daze.
When leaving, several people sigh “big city is not the same” one after another, want to enjoy the spirit, can be satisfied at any time. Excited, Lao Wei once again discussed with them the question of staying in Beijing. Someone sang a pessimistic tone: “At our age, we are a little too ignorant to choose to drift north. I’d rather go back and stay, there aren’t as many cars and there isn’t as much smog.”
It wasn’t the cars and the smog that worried Old Wei. He felt that it was not unreasonable for some universities to introduce talents at the age of 35, when he felt that he was not able to make a valiant effort in such a large city. Even if he could stay and take over his wife and children, rent and expenses would be a big expense, not to mention whether there would be a suitable job. This does not include the cost of children’s interest classes and cram schools; Besides, his wife likes to buy clothes, cosmetics and designer bags so much that he can’t even think about it — as one doctoral student put it, it would be difficult to “translate” their quality of life in third-tier or fourth-tier cities to Beijing by only earning about 10,000 yuan a month as a university teacher.
In the evening, when he was tired of reading and watching books, he would take a horse and sit on the balcony of the dormitory corridor to air his clothes with his wife. When his wife beckoned to his son to greet him from the other end of the screen, Mr. Wei would giggle and ask what they were doing. She would say a few words and then press him to tell an anecdote about Beijing, saying it was also a kind of education for her son.
Lao Wei read books in the library all day long, most of the time with nothing new to learn, sitting under rows of drying clothes and quietly listening to his wife’s nagging. From behind his wife, Mr. Wei could see the familiar wall lamp on the wall of his home, part of a milky white sofa, and the toy car on the sofa.
It was the most reassuring moment of the day for Old Wei, as if he were still sitting in that house, and nothing had changed.
Li Yu, 29, Doctor, young mother
Before her PhD, Li worked in an institution responsible for business administration. After a period of fretting over the daily grind of juggling mundane tasks and dealing with office faces, she often had the illusion of early retirement. She quit her job and applied online for her Ph.D. entrance exam in March.
Li thinks she’s suited for scientific research — she loves reading, whether it’s her major in communication or other humanities and social sciences. She can sit in front of the TV and stare at dozens of pages of a book, even on the subway. When she was in graduate school, she worked the hardest among all her classmates. While others were doing internships, she was still collecting materials to revise her master’s thesis. After the defense, a defense committee teacher from Peking University said: “You have such a good foundation, it is a pity not to study for a PhD.”
During the interview, her supervisor looked at her with a half-smile and asked, “Can you guarantee that your personal life will not interfere with your studies?” Li Yu nodded her head decisively without thinking — she was a perfectionist and hated the way she talked about conditions and found a way back for herself. She felt that the so-called “small things” could not crush her strong self.
However, towards the end of the first semester of Boyi, Li suddenly understood what her tutor’s eyes meant: one day, while eating in the school cafeteria, she felt sick to her stomach, went to the hospital for a check-up, and was pregnant. Panicked, she called her husband and was thrilled to hear the news, but she was angry and angry, and her fear of how to tell her mentor she was pregnant crossed her mind.
How many trials and tribulations a doctor must go through before graduation
First-year distinguished himself at the party, a mentor in the table half jokingly said, Dr For girls is “minefield” : one of his peers once had a girl, Dr Read for six years to hand in a random piece of paper, the teacher does not allow this female disciple graduation, no ChengXiang female disciple bite, said teachers want to have sex with her, do not harass a grudge, the whole she intentionally. Instead, the tutor became a “celebrity” in the post bar and was often pointed at on campus.
Li’s tutor had never had such an affair with a female student. He always cared about keeping a distance with female students and would deliberately leave the door open when they came to talk to him in the office. But he is stepping into another female doctoral minefield: he has already recruited two previous cases of female doctoral students who had difficulty delivering a thesis due to the birth of a child during their doctoral studies. One female student also gave up her PhD because of postpartum depression.
Li Thought that the “good student” image he had painstakingly built for his tutor would soon collapse.
After a quarrel with her husband, calm down for two days, Li Yu decided to give birth to the child. Want to think oneself just got married those two years, had made careful plan for preparing to be pregnant, did not expect always to be pregnant. Then the husband could only bitterly say: “Let nature take its course, the child is a gift from Heaven to us.”
Now the “gift” came unexpectedly, both parents think it is a good thing, and Li Yu is not young, the old people told every possible way, do not have an abortion. Sitting in the dormitory, Li Yu listed her schedule on a piece of paper: writing course papers, pregnancy tests, collecting paper materials, childbirth, opening topics… As she plotted them on a timeline, she suddenly realized that she could have given birth without the knowledge of her mentors and classmates.
No sooner had the first semester ended than Li Yu booked a ticket home. In the first few months of pregnancy, she was afraid of exposing herself at the same party, and found an excuse to avoid it.
At that time, she needed only two more credits to complete her PhD. Li decided not to go back to school for the second semester and wait for Her PhD to take classes to get her credits — by then she would have been nearly three months after giving birth. Her husband joked with her: “under the eyes of the mentor to give birth to a child, like the plot in the movie, do you feel very exciting?”
But real life isn’t as “exciting” as you imagine. After returning home, Li Yu’s body became heavy day by day, and her appetite increased greatly. After eating, she just wanted to lie down on the sofa. When she went to the hospital for various examinations, she would often fall asleep while sitting in the corridor. After two months of muddling along like this, she couldn’t stand her “depravity”. She sat down by the computer and decided to make some reading notes. However, a morning had passed and she hadn’t even written out 500 words.
During the six months she was in labor, she was so afraid of receiving “sudden attention” from her tutor that she felt she needed to make up a lot of lies to explain why she had not come back to school.
In mid-June, Li and her husband finally welcomed the birth of their daughter.
Li Had imagined the birth to be particularly perfect, as if at the moment the child was born, all her previous SINS came to an end, and she would be free after giving the child to her mother-in-law for another two months. Before the birth of the child, she could indeed divide the time clearly and finish things neatly one by one.
But the child was born, she realized what is “muddy.” She instinctively developed a strong attachment to this new life and was reluctant to give her child into anyone’s hands. “Motherhood” was a ray of light in her life, starting with the realization that she was a mother and running through her life 24 hours a day.
On the last day of school in September, li’s husband snatched the child from her arms at the entrance to the train station. The child cried in her husband’s arms, and Li yu cried in the waiting room, just like parting for the dead. It was not until the train had gone two stops that Li Yu stopped crying.
When she came back to school and picked up the book, Li Yu felt overwhelmed. However, in the academic salon in the first week of school, her tutor asked her to tell everyone what she had learned from reading the book.
Li yu is constantly torn by academic pressure and missing her children. When she was in class and reading literature, her mind would wander from time to time, worrying about whether the baby would cry at home and whether the broad-brush mother-in-law would forget to make milk powder for the baby. Ms. Lu, her roommate, was the first to know that she had given birth and gave her a thumbs up for her toughness. He also talked on and on about his son’s grade decline in primary school because he had come out to study for a doctoral degree and was not so friendly to her on the phone.
After listening to her bitter words, Li yu could not help exclaiming: “What stage do you think a female doctor should give birth to a child? I don’t know any woman with a PhD who has married and is able to do well both academically and domestically.”
Lu said with a wry smile: “When a man and a woman study for a PhD, the weight on their shoulders is totally different. Some time ago, I read an article on the Internet, saying that one child for a female doctoral student is equivalent to giving up three ‘C’ papers.”
After a pause, she shook her head again and said, “Besides, you and your child are separated from each other, and at best you miss them; When I get home to work on my thesis, It will be even harder than it is now.”
Mr. Lu’s words turned out to be a prophecy.
Waiting for the end of the semester, she came home with high expectations, holding her daughter how close also not close enough. Two days later, however, her maternal happiness was sapped by her baby’s incessant crying.
Her mother-in-law will go back to her hometown to take care of the elderly, when she left, she explained to Li Yu a lot of tricks to coax children, but Li Yu soon understood that these experiences are her mother-in-law’s exclusive, but their own operation is not effective. It was impossible to write during the day, and she was not allowed to do anything, even if she did not need to be nursed. Crying without any reason was the key to her success.
Li can’t help getting angry sometimes, but it doesn’t do anything for her daughter, who is only half a year old. Li had to endure it until 3am, when her daughter was asleep, to get up and sit on the toilet to write her paper.
In college, Li often stayed up all night watching Korean dramas. When she was young, she would go to class the next day without sleeping, but now she obviously feels less energetic than before. She read the paper by the light of the shower, squinting to catch the text that was ready to skip, leaning one arm against the wall so that her back wouldn’t ache from sitting too long.
This situation lasted for more than a month, one night when she got up, Li Yu wore less clothes and caught a cold. Soon the daughter was infected, and mother and daughter were admitted to the hospital together.
The husband loves Li Yu dearly, in the hospital escort suggested that simply ask a nanny to take care of the child, so that she can devote all her energy to writing the paper. Li Yu strongly disagreed — her mother-in-law didn’t trust her to take care of her, let alone outsiders.
Her husband and she argued for a long time, and finally said angrily: “And want children, and want a doctor, you want too much.” Then he went out for a smoke.
These days in hospital, Li Yu’s mother came to help look after the baby, she can finally lay in the hospital bed to relax the tight nerves. She plans to spend four years studying for her doctorate, by which time her daughter will be three. On graduation day, she was sure to bring her daughter along and let her tutor know that she was taking care of the child and writing the paper with the other hand. Even so, she did a good job.
Li can’t help laughing as she imagines the surprise on her supervisor’s face three years from now — but her imagination is still far from the present situation. She hasn’t even finished the opening report of her doctoral thesis, and she still has to write at least 100,000 words after the thesis proposal is passed, while her daughter’s cries outside the ward have been heard again.
Wen Zhao, 27, spends his days in the lab
When the incident of a graduate student falling from a building in wuhan university of technology spread widely on the Internet, a heated discussion also broke out among wen zhaotongmen’s WeChat group. The content of the exchange was the same as ever, denouncing their “boss”.
In the field of natural science, “boss” is the general name for students’ master and doctoral supervisors. In addition to the monthly state subsidy, the “boss” gives students some extra money to do experiments in the lab and complete millions of scientific projects — a common “lab politics” in science and technology universities.
Under the provocation of “falling building incident”, this intra-group communication was more like a meeting of criticism, exposing the most criticized work style of Professor Ye, Wen Zhao’s supervisor: forcing students to work, taking students as laborers, taking students’ achievements as their own, interfering students’ personal life… The most annoying thing is that teachers are the best at sarcasm, and they have character problems.
In the group you one I one, Wen Zhao is doing the plan, for a while did not see, there are more than 200 messages on the phone. One of his younger brothers was so excited that he said he wanted to post the story to his circle of friends to show it to his mentor. “Several other people advised him to calm down, Wen Zhao also replied:” The most important thing is to graduate smoothly, you made no effect, the gain outweighs the loss.
Each time such a disclosure is met with a conciliatory voice, and those who complain will listen, knowing that they will have to endure it as long as they have not yet graduated. In fact, even if you graduate how can? Wen zhao knows a senior fellow student who is now teaching at another university. Every time he posts an article, he signs the corresponding author as his tutor and only takes the position of “first author”.
In addition to the chat group, which is called “My Father Asks you not to mess around”, the Wenchians have another large group, named “Ye Men one Family”, which includes former students of their tutor and the tutor himself. Compared with a small group, the chatting content of this group is more “official”. It is usually when people send their blessings to their tutor on festivals or holidays, or when the tutor sends a media report on them, countless roses, fireworks and applause will follow.
Wen Zhao know that everyone in the group of the mentor have dissatisfaction with the mood, but everyone is afraid of him, just as the graduate of a few years said to him: “Do not add the name of the boss on the article, I do not sleep steadfast, always think he will in the dream inserted me a knife.
Just out of this fear, Wen Zhao accepted the tutor’s advice when he was a sophomore, applied for a direct doctoral program, and continued to follow him to do research. “Shunmin” is not without rebels. During the master’s period, one of my roommates quietly applied for a doctor’s degree in a foreign university. Applying for a PhD requires two recommendations from experts in the same field, and he skipped his own mentor and found someone else.
There is no doubt that this student trampled on the tutor’s fragile self-esteem. At Monday’s regular meeting, the instructor made several indirect remarks about the incident, calling the student “human scum” and “the dog who finished eating shit would wag its tail at the person who took the shit. He is simply worse than a pig or a dog.” The tutor also threatened to ban this “traitor” in the domestic academic circle, and warned the students present not to associate with this “Foreign doctor”, once he found out, the consequences only one – “expelled from the division”.
Wen zhao and the other students bowed their heads, ashamed that their tutor had uttered those words. Everyone agrees that “boss” in Jin Yong drama is absolutely poison blind apprentice eyes ding Chunqiu, the best at intolerance.
Wen Zhao sometimes wondered why his tutor, a graduate of famous universities, or a visiting scholar of many foreign universities, with the titles of “National Candidate for the National Talent Project” and “Yangtze River Scholar”, would often make some paranoid and absurd remarks in front of students.
“Southerners eat rice while northerners eat noodles, so southerners are smarter than northerners.”
“You won’t be my equal for another 30 years. Talent is different.”
“If you don’t export economic benefits, don’t talk about feelings. Literary philosophy and other things will die sooner or later.”
…
The group often posts a Word document called “Bones Are Unique to my Boss,” which is dedicated to recording the opinions of the mentor, and people update the content voluntarily at regular intervals. They spend their days in a 100-square-meter lab, waiting for data for a long, boring time, and these bizarre comments become the most popular topics for discussion.
When he first started reading with his tutor, Wen was driven by curiosity and looked up his tutor’s entry online. There is a line on the “learning for people” introduction: “for a long time to the teaching quality as their responsibility, and strive to use wonderful classroom teaching to influence students; His personality inspires and inspires group after group of students.”
Later, Wen Zhao thought the introduction was funny every time he recalled it.
Bo, a first-year teacher took several new entrance to grind a pool to fumiaki, fumiaki responsible for give them a lecture, teach them how to sample, collecting the experimental data, and how to write thesis, sometimes even when they have emotional problems – the rules of the lab always has been, upper primary students is responsible for the freshmen, and only at the moment to grasp the direction of teacher, the rest of the time are in my office busy his project.
Wen Zhao was surrounded by people. The excitement of “stars supporting the moon” soon passed. He wanted to spare some time to write his paper, but he was always disturbed. In desperation, he set WeChat to mute, and often hid himself in a herbarium next to his lab to read English literature.
One day in the first semester of the second semester, Wen Zhao was cleaning test tubes when he was suddenly called to his office by his tutor. He thought he would listen to his tutor as usual, but the tutor smiled and said that he was “a small and careful person, who works seriously and has a first-class English level, just like the teacher in those days”. So, in order to “continue to tap into your academic potential,” wen zhao was given two papers to write.
Wen Zhao closed the door and silently swore.
Wenzhao’s girlfriend works in a publishing house and likes to draw cartoons. She had never met Wen Zhao’s “boss,” but drew a caricature of him based on his description. Wen Zhao with a mobile phone to send to the group, everyone said like, have praised Wen Zhao girlfriend huigen.
“Knowledge of the enemy must penetrate to its essence!” The girlfriend laughed. She sometimes referred to his supervisor as her “rival in love,” because he was unable to leave the lab even on weekends — it has a strict leave policy, and doctoral students in science and engineering use the lab as their home unless there are special circumstances. Supervisors often use the words “no reason” and “unconditional” to emphasize their relationship with research projects, as if they want to firmly “weld” students to experiments. But Wen zhao often asks himself: isn’t “boss” the only one who is really tied to the results of experiments and project funds?
A teacher younger sister once complained to Wen Zhao: the time that doctoral student works in the laboratory and spread on the Internet “996” are compared, have more than as good as nothing, but the tutor only gives everyone a subsidy of 1800 yuan every month, “JM’s facial mask still needs 10 yuan a piece!” She said this with deep bitterness.
But in fact, the longer they spent in the lab, the less interested they were in shopping and dressing themselves, and many of them went into the lab and changed into white work clothes and really lived a life of low desire.
Bo two that year, Wen Zhao and his girlfriend was urged by their parents again, do a simple marriage ceremony, and discuss New Year’s Day to get married. Choose this time point, basically be to consider cummer to have holiday, and oneself of an important paper also can assure to finish. He announced the wedding ahead of time in his lab, and the crowd cheered him on — he knocked on the door of his tutor’s office, hoping he would approve a week-long vacation so he could take wedding photos with his girlfriend in Wuzhen.
The tutor sat down at his desk to listen to Wenzhao, and motioned for him to sit opposite. Then he asked with some disdain: “So anxious to get married, not pregnant?”
Wen Zhao’s face turned red and said, “No, no…”
“Then why must it be this year? Have you forgotten that September is the crucial month for project closure?”
The teacher’s cold words left Wen Zhao speechless. He had accumulated a wealth of opinions, but when he reached the tutor, he swallowed them up. When the tutor saw him lowering his head, his tone softened a little, and he began to talk to him again about such a big problem as life choices. He added in a very personal way, “You northerners are impulsive in doing things, never thinking of the bigger picture…”
Then the tutor took himself as an example, and talked about how he stayed up late in the lab to do research when his marriage with his teacher’s mother was approaching. Finally, his father-in-law forced him to buy a suit for his wedding with a stick.
“Always put your energy where it’s most useful. Can great things be achieved without such sacrifice? Huh?” the teacher’s cold eyes through the lens toward Wen Zhao swept over, like in the size of a repeat offender.
Wen Zhao staggered from the tutor’s office to the laboratory, other students see his face pale expression, has guessed a few points, to comfort Wen Zhao, scolded “boss” is not human, “natural reason, destroy the desire”.
Wen Zhao listened to everyone’s comments without saying a word, his head full of his mentor’s idealistic and passionate office lectures. Then he walked out of the lab and up a walking ladder to the top of the lab building. He wanted to call his girlfriend and tell her about his tutor’s suggestion of postponing the wedding, but he couldn’t bear to dial the familiar number considering that she was still in high spirits discussing the writing of the wedding invitation with him the night before.
The experimental building is next to a main road off the campus. You can see the signs of fruit shops and donkey soup restaurants along the street. Two old ladies come out of the supermarket pushing a cart. A thought suddenly came to Wen zhao: Which is the real life, the quiet and noisy street corner in the laboratory building?
During his years on campus, Wen Zhao seemed to pay little attention to these issues, which made him a little confused.
(The characters are not real names.)
Recent Comments