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After this summer vacation, my daughter will be a junior. She should have been enjoying a relaxing vacation, but she sighed from time to time during these days at home. When I asked her the reason, she said that the remaining vacation time was seriously insufficient and she was anxious about the start of school. After entering college, she felt that she had lived college life like high school, and she was still as tired as in high school. My daughter's words made me feel distressed and fell into deep thought.

From 2019 to 2022, my daughter spent three years of high school under high pressure. Whenever she was overwhelmed with stress and collapsed from studying, her teacher always kindly told them that "you will be liberated when you go to college." When she actually went to college, she found that this was the biggest lie, and college life was very different from what she had imagined.

In the summer of her 18th year, she was pushed into the exam that "determines one's life" along with thousands of other students. She thought she had sailed through thousands of mountains and rivers, but no one told them what kind of world they would face after the college entrance examination. At the age of 18, one should be full of vigor, high spirits, full of emotions, and dare to think and do. However, more and more college students, like my daughter, are confused after entering college. They are tired, tense, anxious, and hesitant...

College is their last stop before they enter society, and they should be developing their interests, exploring themselves, experiencing life, honing their minds, and making friends with people who share the same interests. However, on a college campus dominated by GPA, a group of people with equal test-taking abilities gather together, and the academic competition is unprecedentedly fierce. They are exhausted every day, which is simply an inertial continuation of the high school model.

In the past, the metaphor of "thousands of troops crossing a single-plank bridge" was only used in the college entrance examination. Now, with the intensification of competition, anxiety and internal competition have also spread to college campuses. In order to get a higher ranking in the rankings and obtain scholarships, postgraduate recommendation and other qualifications, they have no time to relax their tense nerves and have to put all their efforts into another round of competition. The focus of the competition revolves around GPA.

If you want to have a good GPA, it is far from enough to just invest time and energy in your studies. There is also a comprehensive assessment part. The results of every homework, every activity, and every game can find their place in the GPA calculation formula. Course selection is not for personal growth or hobbies, but to figure out which courses can get more GPA. The significance of the university stage has also been compressed into a "new academic arena". Every step into university must be tightly controlled, as if one wrong step will lead to eternal damnation.

As long as there are numbers and quantification, there will be competition, comparison and pressure. The idea of ​​"GPA is king" made my daughter, who always had excellent grades, live her college life like a high school life. She spent two years in college in Shanghai, and she was so busy that she had no time to participate in the colorful club activities, make like-minded friends, see the prosperity of the foreign land, and feel the heat of the city life...

In the words of an education expert, they have no leisure time, no self-exploration, no friends, and have missed out on everything that youth should have. They have entered adulthood physically, but they do not necessarily have the qualities and mentality that adults should have, the patience, humility, and resilience that come with growing up. They are like bamboo, growing fast but very brittle, lonely and fragile.

Although my daughter worked hard and gradually improved her GPA, surpassed other competitors, successfully won the first-class scholarship, and passed the CET-4 and CET-6 with high scores, she did not seem happy. Every time I went home during the holidays, I found that she was visibly tired and haggard.

For her, college life is not only not a "wilderness life", but rather a kind of mediocrity and exhaustion that depends on the external evaluation system, which is very different from the college life she once imagined. In addition, the severe employment situation in recent years, the headlines of "985 Master's degree delivery" on the Internet are so dazzling, and huge anxiety surges in her, making her dare not relax even a little. "After passing one level, there is another level, after climbing one hill, there is another hill. When can I relax and enjoy life?" My daughter, who came home for summer vacation, sighed and complained to me.

In fact, such thoughts often come to my mind: it will be fine when the child goes to kindergarten, it will be fine when the child is admitted to college, it will be fine when I finish this busy period, it will be fine when the mortgage is paid off, it will be fine when I retire... In fact, when the important time point that you are looking forward to arrives, it is not "finished".

I told my daughter that there is no "transition" in life. Whether you are preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination, busy writing a paper, or doing a busy job you don't like, if you always think of "getting through it", "getting through it", or "waiting for this period of time to end" as an attitude towards them, you will never start your real life. The "now" you are experiencing is not a transition between any stages, they are your life itself. In addition to solving problems such as academic pressure, you can eat well, chat with friends, feel happy right now, and do what you like. Right now, you can live a good life.

In addition, I think universities should cultivate mature, independent and lively individuals, rather than mass-produce numb learning machines. The fundamental question that education must answer is still the question of cultivating people. How to become an adult in college and when college will no longer be like high school are issues that the whole society needs to pay attention to and think about.

(The author is a teacher from Henan)

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Editor: Wen Cuiling