The First Semester Is Almost Over

Before I knew it, my first semester back on campus is almost over. Recently I have been busy reviewing for the final exams. Over the next twenty-plus days, final exams will be my priority, and I hope friends will not take up my time unless it is important.

This semester has been very rewarding; for me, these hundred-plus days have opened a new door. I have enjoyed studying at school very much. Although I miss home, because the knowledge I am learning is exactly what I love, the joy of acquiring new knowledge offsets most of the homesickness.

The one blemish is that, because of the exams, I sometimes have to step away from my favorite deep learning for a few days. But exams are not entirely useless: because of them, we consciously feel a need to consolidate what we have learned.

Fortunately the winter break is near. This semester I have raised some new medical questions and writing inspirations; during the break I can immerse myself in the National Library, thoroughly working through these questions and writing some professional articles that satisfy me.

I am grateful that throughout my life I have always maintained a strong thirst for knowledge, and have always had the abundant energy and steady psychological state that most people lack. At this age, I can still settle down to learn a new subject that gives many people a headache.

More than twenty years ago, I taught myself medicine because of my mother's illness. Thirteen years ago, three months after my mother passed away, I completed the traditional-medicine apprenticeship formalities and studied TCM through the master-apprentice system. A few years ago, out of interest, I spent some time studying psychiatry systematically.

Now I am again studying clinical medicine systematically at school. After completing this course of study, I also want to study traditional Chinese acupuncture technique in earnest. Once I have completed these learning goals, my knowledge base in medicine will be rich enough to more harmoniously integrate Chinese and Western medicine and carry out in-depth medical research. Given time, perhaps I can make some achievements that no one before has made. Because I have put in the effort that ordinary people are unlikely to, I am confident about this.

My older brother always says I am a blind optimist who keeps naive, romantic ideas about the future. This probably comes from heredity, because my mother and my uncle were also such people; modern brain science also shows that optimism is more a gift than an acquired trait.

Unlike many people who worry they will die young, what I often think about is: what if I live past a hundred, and at a hundred still have keen hearing and eyesight—how should I plan the rest of my life? After all, that is also possible.

I think if I really live to a ripe old age, the most meaningful thing would be to spend the rest of my life doing deep research in medicine, rather than continuing to crave fame and fortune. When a person's material needs exceed the body's basic needs, it is a psychological pathology; the burden that excessive pursuit of fame and fortune places on life is greater than the joy it brings.

In physics there is a phenomenon called self-excited oscillation, which actually also exists widely in the human spiritual world. If we continuously self-excite with anxiety-inducing fear of the future, we stay constantly in such a state of anxiety and fear. If we continuously motivate ourselves in a self-excited way that benefits physical and mental health, we can remain constantly in a healthy, beneficial state.

For human beings, love for life and work, together with the deep calm, peace, and joy from within, is the self-excitation best suited to keeping a person constantly healthy in body and mind. This kind of self-excitation lets a person be immersed in joy most of the time, thereby consciously shutting out all kinds of noise from outside. In this state, I have entered a new stage of my life after middle age.

This semester, I have gradually found the best state for me to study clinical medicine. Starting next semester, my study should be much more efficient than this semester. Learning clinical medicine requires both thorough understanding and firm memory; attending lectures, reading, and memorizing all require scientific methods. I had been away from school for more than twenty years; this year I spent about three months rediscovering the best state of studying at school. I have also again woven my long-standing "networked learning method" into my studies, and, combined with scientific memory methods, worked out a set of effective study methods suited to my current coursework. Recently my efficiency of learning and memory has grown higher and higher, and I study more and more happily; the pleasure of gaining new knowledge is beyond words.

I have always believed that study method is a highly personal thing. The study method of person A is not necessarily suited to person B, because a good study method is necessarily bound up with one's personality. My method requires great self-control and execution and demands far more effort than ordinary people.

In my life I have met many people smarter than me, but among those I have seen, not many surpass me in self-control, execution, and perseverance. Just on the two points of insisting on "a day without work is a day without food" and "finishing each day's tasks each day," very few people can persevere.

I like to pursue knowledge relentlessly, expanding from one point to another related point, even into a whole new field; I often lose myself in this chain-like, deep learning and forget my current exam-oriented study tasks. Such learning is a very efficient way to acquire knowledge and build a complete knowledge chain. But this kind of learning is demanding on teachers and also requires strong self-study ability—because too many questions beyond the syllabus are ones the teacher cannot answer and must be researched on one's own.

So my method may suit only me; just as the Feynman learning method invented by the great physicist Feynman is mastered by few besides Feynman himself, my method suits best only me. Other people's study methods likewise do not suit me. If a person reaches his forties and still cannot recognize the decisive role of individual personality in career and study, there may be some problem in his mental growth.

Most people in the world, for various reasons, will not and need not enter a state of deep learning. As one advances in scholarship, fellow travelers become fewer and fewer; if we choose the road of deep seeking, we need to adapt to the loneliness of lacking people who share our language. Of course, those who take pleasure in it can endure the solitude and will never feel weary.