The Fading Away of Our Youth (So Young)

To the Fading Away of Our Youth: Chapter 7

At the college campus, differentiating freshman from older students was not difficult. Those who liked many boys or girls, and happily went in a line, were all freshmen. Those who strolled hand in hand along the path were all older students. When there was only five minutes left until class started, the freshmen ran towards their classrooms as if their lives depended on it. Even after the bell had rung for a while, the upperclassmen were still rubbing their eyes and slowly walking towards their classrooms. The freshmen’s’ eyes were filled with warm and longing hope of their future, while the older students’ eyes were glazed over and had ambiguous smiles on their faces… Of course some people preferred such a distinction. In the cafeteria, a freshman who ate a bug screamed. The upperclassmen who did not see bugs in their bowls felt surprised and were scared to swallow.

Nonetheless, with respect to the college’s three years of torture, college life was virtually the same as paradise. Facing a free and unsupervised learning environment, many people felt like birds freed from their cages, excitedly extending their wings, but in the instant, not knowing where to fly. According to He Lu Ya, when the first semester of freshman year seemed to be up, it almost felt like she was still in a dream, repeatedly returning to that glorious time of the days before the college testing, which would scare her into cold sweat.

Zheng Wei’s enlightenment on skipping class was made possible by the wandering, independent leader who had often went outside to sort his thoughts. After she had joined the Go Social Club, she had also gone to the Activity Room of the club many times. Sometimes it would be after school ended, sometimes it would be when she had no class. No matter how many times she went to the Activity Center, she could always see the leader’s shadow. Finally, there came a time when she could no longer hold this knowledge in, and thus shouted, “Leader, what is your problem, hanging around all the time? Do you not need to go to class?”

The leader laughed disapprovingly, “Silly girl. Did you think everyone is like you guys, who attend class all the time? Instead of learning this boring curriculum that will waste my precious youth, I might as well do some of my favorite things.”

Zheng Wei thought to herself, No wonder everyone says that Go Club is a grade retention club. I cannot be this way.

Even for freshmen, the engineering classes were all scheduled very tightly. Besides four professional courses with Ma Zhe,  there were also foreign languages and philosophy classes. Basically every day was packed full, the times of no class were used to cope with the endless calculus homework.

On a rainy morning, Zheng Wei indulged her sleepy headache as an excuse to skip class, she was ill at ease for a moment, and found that the aftermath was not as serious as she had thought it would be–thus after realizing that one could say there were basically no after effects she began to skip class recklessly. Besides the professional courses which she was afraid to skip for fear of not being able to keep up, she skipped the other public courses whenever she could.

In the beginning, she would ask Ruan Ruan to help her fabricate a false doctor’s note for the classes, but after all the different kinds of diseases were used up, it was decided that doctor’s notes were no longer needed.

These circumstances increased after her parents gave her half of the money needed to purchase a computer, after which her skipping intensified. She was the king of skipping classes within her dormitory along with Zhuo Mei who was known for being indolent. Sometimes another person who had the same attitude towards the universal “headache”, Zhu Xiao Bei would also join. The two people would idle in front of the computer and watch the elementary school’s small rental movie shop’s soap operas, Korean dramas, Japanese dramas, Hong Kong dramas, American dramas, national productions, and Taiwan idol dramas, sometimes they would forget the time and place so that even for eating, they would rely on Ruan Ruan who would come after class and help them get the food back.