Don't Float; Start Everything Over from Scratch
Having cut down on various chores recently, I have now honestly picked up my high-school textbooks again. English words I memorize one by one; the poems and verses required by the college entrance exam I memorize one by one; the foundational knowledge of high-school biology that must be memorized, I still memorize. I also listen online to high-school math, physics, chemistry, biology, and English courses. Returning to the high-school classroom and studying with a teacher is not realistic, but now online-course resources are abundant; as long as one is willing to learn, nothing is lacking.
Yao Xing Fu (Rhymed Sayings on Medicinal Properties), Tangtou Ge Jue (Verses on Decoction Formulas), and Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage) I am also memorizing passage by passage. Once memorization mode is on, everything that should be memorized gets memorized. One must put one's feet on the ground to walk; floating in midair only leads to a fall. Let go of all unrealistic fantasies; treat everything one has learned in the past as having returned to zero, lay a new foundation, and do not think too highly of oneself.
My former teachers and classmates all believe that for me to take the college entrance exam again and get into a junior college would be effortless; they even think that scoring over 500 would be no problem. An old classmate who teaches at a high school even thinks that if I work hard for a year, scoring 600-plus and getting into Beijing University of Chinese Medicine would be no problem. But I do not dare be so arrogant; after all, I have been out of high school for over twenty years, the textbooks have been updated considerably, and most of what I learned before has been forgotten. So no matter how highly old friends think of me, I still dare not let my guard down.
I told my wife: give me five years; let me in these five years "not attend to proper business," take little or no part in family affairs, and not put earning money to support the family first, but devote myself wholeheartedly to study. My wife strongly supports me; when she went to Tsinghua for graduate school, I supported her the same way, and now it is her turn to support me.
There are still over fourteen months until next year's college entrance exam. I want to make full use of these fourteen months; apart from necessary physical exercise (mainly cycling and gardening), I will not do anything else that scatters my energy. Considering that my daily work and research also take up half my time and energy, I effectively have only seven months of preparation time, so it is rather tight.
Although I no longer update the official account daily, I still keep up daily writing. Laziness is frightening; I dare not let myself grow idle. Good habits formed must not be abandoned at any cost. Once a middle-aged person relaxes his demands on himself, he is easily captured by laziness, and the second half of his life will be wasted.
My son has promised to tutor me at home after the college entrance exam. My boy has grown up, so I can save the cost of a tutor. But this depends on his scores being ideal this year; if they are not, he may have to repeat the year. He may be headstrong enough to fill in only one school and one major on his application form: if admitted, he goes; if not, he takes the exam again.
Life is a floor littered with chicken feathers; it is just that some people can tidy the feathers into neat order, while others can only live muddled amid a heap of tangled feathers. I want to tidy up my own floor of feathers a bit more cleanly.