Even if there were no exams, college life could still be tolerable. This isn’t just my personal thought. Many people around me agree with this point of view.
College students are born test animals as well as the biggest beneficiaries of the "brutally inhuman" test system. Although we often secretly gnash our teeth and bemoan the various types of test methods and the perverted, ruthless instructors who administer them, in the bottom of our hearts we’re grateful to the inventors of the examination system – it was the fifth great human invention after the first four.
If the college entrance examinations had been cancelled, at least one of the six people in our dorm room would’ve spent his life tending sheep on the loess slopes; another would’ve been planting soybeans in the black soil; one would’ve herded horses on the grasslands in Inner Mongolia; one would’ve strained his voice chanting work tunes along the Yangtze River; and the city dude might have sat on a bus all day long, laughing open-mouthed while he collected fares. As for me, maybe I could’ve come up with a business to run, like raising chickens.
Things in this world are tough to figure out. Good things are often the same as bad things. When you have cars, you start having car accidents. When you have airplanes, some people want to hijack them. Cops and thieves provide each other with guaranteed jobs, but thieves are more easygoing: if it weren’t for cops, everyone would be a thief, and then what would happen to our businesses? The same is true for exams. Cheating and exams are simply two sides of the same coin.
Before going to college, those guys in our dorm room never had such a shameful thought. Absolutely none of them had a record of cheating. It was only after coming through the gates of the university that they somehow acquired a criminal motive.
First I'll talk about girls. Surprisingly, they'll write answers on their milky thighs and cover them with their skirts. During the test they'll look down like they're lost in thought and get help from their skirts. Boys don't have the privilege of wearing skirts, so they rely on the small area in the palms of their hands to get an advantage. It's quite risky.
Such methods show a lack of self-respect, and to be honest, the vast majority of students, whether boy or girl, don't have to use them to pass their tests. Bottom line, the cheating is motivated by profit. Everyone wants to get a college scholarship, but without high test scores, you can only gaze at the money and lament your inadequacy. In addition, when you graduate and are looking for a job, people will want to see your scores. Thus begins the natural desire to do whatever possible to gain an advantage.
The school began to "come down hard". Multiple ghastly-looking slogans about cleaning up discipline in the exam rooms were pasted on the fronts of the classroom buildings. The teachers stared fiercely at the students and shouted, "Cheating is stealing! Cheating is a crime!" The teachers who normally gave the most putrid lectures posed harder exam questions and were more irate than ever. In fact, law students said that this type of testing, using people's ignorance intentionally to harm them, would be considered in the nature of fraud.
Three in our dormitory were "put down" in this "come down hard" struggle. In the exam for the elective "Music Appreciation" course, "Shepherd Boy", who normally "never sang a tune", was beside himself with smugness as he hummed a few lines of "Orchid Flowers" like a mosquito. The exam proctor tore his test paper up on the spot.
When "Little Black Bean" encountered a difficult test question, he kept rubbing his ears and scratching his head, accompanied by incessant hiccoughing. This aroused the attention of the other students and the teacher. He was later judged to have been cheating because he "demonstrated a string of abnormal behaviors in the examination room, obviously passing some kind of information related to the content of the exam."
The greatest injustice was "Spicy Chick". This guy was born wall-eyed. No one wanted to sit next to him at family style meals because he'd gobble up all the food from the platter in front of you, but leave the food right in front of his own place alone. During the exam the proctor insisted that that he'd been sneaking looks at other people's papers.
All three of these dear friends were punished by a "note in the file". Under the school's rules, those who had received such a "notation" could not receive scholarships, would not get a high ranking upon graduating, and were not permitted to apply for the graduate school admissions test. The students had no right to defend themselves. Those without the proper attitude (that is, those who did not “admit their guilt”) would be forced to quit school.
When it came time to graduate, everyone evaluated “Military Policeman” as the one they felt was the most vicious exam proctor. They said this "Gestapo Lieutenant" would catch around ten cheaters during each exam, and that the school gave him no small honor for it, awarding him bonuses and merit certificates.
We left the campus very depressed and embarked on our careers. A year later that proctor, “Military Policeman”, was disqualified from promotion for a year for cheating on a foreign language test. It’s said that, later, he was diverted to Teaching Assistant duties because his lecturing was so deficient.
The files of my three roommates still include the "note in the file" decision. The wall-eyed "Spicy Chick" had to start his own company because he couldn’t find a suitable job. After he made a fortune he went for corrective eye surgery.
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Lao Ma 劳马
Note in the File (记过)
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