Personal Autobiography
Born in Changshan, the small county town at the westernmost longitude of the Zhejiang map with a population merely 2.1% of Hangzhou’s, the childhood life in my memory was filled with green waters and green mountains and murmuring streams. That cheerful laughter, that free breeze filling the fields after school, traversing the time of over ten years, surges in my heart, never having departed.
But before primary school, I lived with Mom and Dad, in Hangzhou, in Lishui, at one courier station after another. Father’s broad and stalwart shoulders and Mother’s smiling face constructed an unbreakable line of defense against setbacks in childhood, escorting my—jewel-like, precious—childhood on the journey of rushing about. On a night before the summer vacation began, it was already deep into the night for me at that time. I sat on the bed, covered by the quilt, reading Souvenirs entomologiques, thinking of Father approaching me in his speeding van. Waiting, waiting, waiting, a sound of a horn tore through the silence of the night sky, coming from the doorway, startling Grandpa and Grandma and the flocks of birds suitable as imagery. What was I thinking? I hoped Mom and Dad would read books for me by my bed, but, they took me away that very night.
Examining it years later, this seemingly simple little matter simply contains the code running through my life and personality. Firstly: I was reading. I was reading popular science books like Souvenirs entomologiques, STEM works; it turns out God had long ago planted the seed of exploring the world in my heart, which also echoes my love for science fiction thereafter, and grafts onto my curiosity and exploration of the computer world. Secondly: One of my implicit purposes lay in making Mom and Dad think that I was studious, a good child. The vines of caring about others’ eyes that still entangle me today had also long sprouted in the heart of the young me. My concern for others’ gaze, firstly, should lie in the drastic change of environment after leaving my parents in the first grade, this being the external cause; secondly, it is the drastic change of character due to the onset of puberty, this being the internal cause. Listening to Mother and residual memories tell me, the smaller me was extroverted second to none.
Has the me of the past past really disappeared? Not necessarily. In the eyes of the past me, the inquiry made prior to that close companion in the shop “Yi Zhi Du Xiu” [Unique Show of Clothes], regarding the owner’s utilization based on Chinese characters for a primary school extracurricular practical research course, was the inner me, the me of the distant past, successfully controlling my throat, emitting the sound. Just as he can only shout silently in my heart now.
The silent shout will eventually break through the cage made of iron. In the sixth grade, I have a vivid impression of those three words I “shouted” at the teacher: “Forgot it!” Thereafter, she hurled abuse at me, endless verbal abuse, or whatever random words, her figure standing on the podium, her eyes implying loathing. Heavens, it still makes the current me want to slap her. She did not understand my kindness? She did not understand the cause and effect? She did not know what consequences an unjustified verbal abuse would bring to a primary school student? Even if an apology came later, how can you completely restore the wound? This was my desperate leap over the wall, a sixth-grade primary school student’s, and the loss of control of a teacher possessing majesty and power before students.
I have reason to infer that, from that time until now, I “fear all teachers.”
The fear of relatively strange elders seems to have a reluctant answer; where does the avoidance of peers start from? At least in primary school, I possessed absolutely normal social interactions.
Boarding is a challenge for any new junior high student, and even more difficult for me who received meticulous care from Grandpa and Grandma. My “shout” was the shower on the first night living in the dormitory. And the second shower inside the dormitory should be postponed to the night of September 11, 2023, about seven years later. Though a single stem bears two flowers, let us speak of each branch in turn. Living in the dormitory for five days in one breath, not bathing, not brushing teeth, not washing face, anyone would be incomparably foul-smelling; this seems normal? But casting aside words with symbolic meaning, that classmate’s vivid movements—approaching me, nose wings flapping, hurriedly retreating, left hand fanning the wind—“Eww, so smelly!”, was a heavy blow to me in the pre-symbolic linguistic sense. I read the pre-symbolic; he perhaps merely expressed the symbolic. This is perhaps the reason I refused to output pre-symbolic language. The me of the past was quite active on social platforms, but after being called inconsistent by classmates, I began to tend towards silence on social platforms, silence, silence in all places.
If you can spin a cocoon around yourself, you can break the cocoon and become a butterfly. I have already spun a cocoon around myself, but have not yet broken the cocoon to become a butterfly.
My love for programs still began with that blue Yi Language tutorial in primary school. It was absolutely the thickest book I owned at the time. Although the content has faded from memory, the fact that the simple virus I wrote in Yi Language was taken as real by people makes me happy just thinking about it even now. Time dials forward to junior high; I heard about the programming competition and began self-study for it. I should still be able to find the code left from self-studying programming in January 2019; at that time oj.noi.cn was still accessible, and I must have brushed through dozens of problems on it, though far lower than the more than four hundred problems I brushed through during the summer vacation of Senior Three, but, after all, the Senior High School Entrance Examination was imminent at that time. The Algorithm Competition Entry (Dissuasion) Classic that I flipped through until tattered, truly tattered, with its Tsinghua-colored cover, was a treasure I could not bear to part with even during the summer camp. Even on the car ride home on Fridays, I was still calculating the code from the book in my mind. I really loved it too much.
The Master said: To learn alone without friends leads to ignorance and narrow-mindedness. The help pure self-study gave me was ultimately limited. Lacking a teacher’s guidance, before I participated in NOIp for the first time in Senior One, I didn’t even know there was a preliminary round that was purely written without using a computer. Thus, with a ranking of 1500/3000, I was weeded out without entering the re-examination of the Improvement Group. Thinking about it now, I should have signed up for the Popularization Group. However, the head teacher and the IT teacher obviously didn’t know the gap between my level and the competition requirement level either. Small towns, not only the test-takers, but even the teachers, are suffering from the information gap.
Shortly thereafter, I was hospitalized for two weeks due to depression. Then, suspension of schooling, for one year. I still feel that the head teacher during the class of 2019 Senior One was the best teacher I have encountered. Returning from suspension leaves even less to be said: self-harm, attempted suicide, going home, returning to school, self-harm, aborted suicide, going home, returning to school… cycled for a long time before stopping. During this period, it coincided with Father’s death; Mother was very sad, to the point of madness. It simply constituted a negative loop with me. Terrible. Speaking of which, a certain nurse regretfully considered the annual rings of dozens of cuts on my arm, perhaps objectively, as a manifestation of my firm will. I seem to have accepted her statement in the bottom of my heart. I consider myself strong-willed. But this should have nothing to do with me not crying at Father’s funeral.
The opening ceremony a few days ago should be the second large-scale occasion where I publicly wore arm sleeves; the first time should be wearing the class uniform, taking graduation photos. In the few years from then to this moment with scars on my arms, I have always been wearing long sleeves and long trousers. In summer, apart from being slightly hot, what is so strange about it? It’s cool as hell, okay.
Next, we look forward to the future. I am incomparably eager to transfer majors, to enter Computer Science; my entire summer vacation’s preparation was for this, my goal since childhood was for this. My lack of right to choose Physics and almost all Engineering disciplines was caused by the information gap between the teachers and me, and my attitude of indifference or trust. But this does not count as late. If possible, I am still willing to set my lifelong career in Computer Science and Calligraphy. Although the latter is currently limited to hard-pen. But for me to set goals now, it is hard to avoid the suspicion of being childish.
I fear not the challenge of knowledge of the world composed of electronic circuits, and am willing to respond with my consistent past efforts, aiming for a postgraduate recommendation to Zhejiang University. This answer is inevitably the style of my age, childish and unsettled.
As for career planning, no one can give a textbook-format answer before learning, and my simple answer is a developer. I love that wonderful world composed of lines of code. One night I thought that those programs running perfectly after compilation were simply my children making me proud; I loved her too much.
I am no longer willing to change myself, to cater to others. I seem to have understood that famous saying of Hemingway, but the expression I like more is, “A man can be destroyed, can be defeated, but cannot be changed.”
May my “comfort zone” expand increasingly.
2023/9/13 21:18