If grades are the only thing you people care about—
fine.
Starting today,
I'll use grades to slap every one of you in the face.
Every morning at three a.m.,
my alarm went off.
And every time,
I forced myself out of bed,
rubbed my burning eyes,
and opened my textbooks.
The faint yellow light of the desk lamp spilled across the pages,
illuminating rows of formulas and vocabulary words.
Sleepiness washed over me like a tide,
my eyelids growing heavier and heavier.
But I gritted my teeth
and repeated the dry, lifeless content again and again—
math, physics, chemistry…
Every question felt like a mountain
pressing down on my chest.
But what truly broke me
was that classroom quiz.
When the paper was handed out,
I stared at the first multiple-choice question and froze.
Such a simple math formula—
and I couldn't remember how to write it.
My pen hovered in the air.
Cold sweat trickled down my forehead.
I could hear pages flipping around me,
and the teacher's footsteps as he patrolled the room.
In the end, I scribbled down a random answer.
My heart was ice-cold when I handed it in.
And just as expected—
my score stayed around four hundred and fifty.
Almost no improvement.
Homeroom teacher Jianguo Zhang stood at the podium,
glanced at my paper,
and a sneer curled at the corner of his mouth.
"What's the point of pretending to work hard? Just a waste of time."
Some classmates chimed in:
"Yeah, pointless effort."
"He'll show his true colors sooner or later."
Those words cut into me like sharp blades.
But I didn't argue.
I quietly stuffed the test paper into my bag
and told myself through clenched teeth:
Don't give up.
That night,
I tossed and turned in bed.
My mind replayed the day over and over—
the mockery,
the snickering,
the teacher's cold smile.
Was I really hopeless?
Was I truly born stupid?
Just when those thoughts were crushing me—
I found an old reference book.
Inside, it mentioned a study method:
Improve memory by understanding the logic behind knowledge.
My eyes lit up.
I tried applying the method.
For example, in geometry—
I linked math with physics.
The formula for a triangle's area was no longer dull.
It became a tool for analyzing torque.
History too.
I stopped memorizing dates and names.
Instead, I mapped events into cause-and-effect chains:
Why did the First Industrial Revolution happen?
The enclosure movement forced farmers off their land;
the flood of workers moved into cities;
the invention of the steam engine provided power…
Knowledge suddenly became alive.
It wasn't that I couldn't learn—
I had just never found the method that fit me.
One night,
I finally solved a physics problem that had been haunting me for days.
I nearly jumped out of my chair in excitement.
And at that moment, I understood—
I was one step closer to turning everything around.
No matter what anyone said,
no matter how they looked at me,
I would persevere.
I would make them choke on their words.
I would slap every one of their faces with my grades.