I have always kept a diary, but I have never made it public.

I am a senior this year, so here is a simple look back at university life: reluctance, regret, and confusion…..

I am about to graduate. I have more or less found a job. But failing to get into graduate school has always been a regret.

Freshman year

First semester

At the start of my first semester, I was already thinking about getting a recommendation for graduate school. I studied steadily for that purpose and ultimately ranked first in my class. There is one episode from that semester I remember clearly. Two months after arriving at school, the student union held a lecture. I have forgotten the exact topic; it seemed to be about how to spend the four years of university. I invited a girl I liked to attend with me (looking back, that was very much a straight man’s move haha). She asked me, “Why are you going to listen to this? What use is it?” Only then did I understand that, in my mind, university meant joining activities I was interested in, taking classes I cared about (though some silly compulsory classes still had to be attended), making like-minded friends, and experiencing different things. Many students around me did not approve of these activities (or approved when they had just enrolled but gradually forgot about them). I vaguely remember attending classes and going out with several roommates when the semester began. Later they got up later and later, and spent weekends playing games in the dormitory. Looking back, perhaps that is what university really looks like.

I have long since lost the diligence I had as a freshman. I vaguely remember getting up at 6:30 then, but now even getting up at 8 feels early. Perhaps all I have left is curiosity about new things~

Second semester

We could change majors after the first semester, so I decided to try and transferred to computer science. There were several reasons. First, I could not say I liked my original major; I simply studied by routine, and ranking first was largely because my classmates made me look good. Second, everyone said computer science paid well. Third, I did not want to waste the opportunity to change majors (this reflected a phenomenon: because I was first in my class and therefore eligible to change, I subconsciously assumed changing majors must be a good choice. But in fact, what suits you is what is best). There was also one most important reason that few people knew: my roommate played games so loudly at night that I could not sleep.

After transferring, I did not even know for and while, and spent many miserable nights unable to sleep. Nearly failing physics and probability theory also reflected my inability to adapt to the new major, planting the seeds for my later failure to get a graduate-school recommendation.

I spent my entire freshman year in the school’s flag-guard team. During the summer, I attended its training camp (after completing training, members could lead freshman military training). But I disliked the arrogance and the way the instructors (who were sophomores) toyed with us, so I encouraged several good friends to leave the team with me. Then we spent several days traveling around Shanghai on a shoestring. After that, I returned to school for a cybersecurity training program jointly run by the school and a company.

Most of my roommates went to bed after midnight then, and I found it hard to adapt. Ironically, I often go to bed at midnight now.

A year in the flag-guard team gave me a strong physique. I was rarely ill throughout university and maintained a good figure. Even when I gained a little weight, a bit of exercise brought my abs and chest muscles back.

Sophomore year

First semester

During the computer-science major split in the first semester of sophomore year, I ended up by chance in the Software Engineering Excellence Class. Because the major included the word “Excellence,” I secretly celebrated for a long time. Coming from the gaokao system, I felt to some extent that the better the grades in a group, the rarer it was, and the more I wanted to enter. Put bluntly, the more competitive it was, the more I wanted in, without realizing whether it suited me. The class was geared toward employment, while I was preparing for graduate school; I never imagined that this major would fundamentally reverse my future plans.

There were many students who pushed themselves extremely hard in the class. Because I wanted to work on cybersecurity and was constantly competing in CTFs, I missed ACM during my second year’s first semester, which was another regret.

While looking for work, I found that the more rounds and complexity a department’s interview process had, the more impressive I thought it was and the more I wanted to join. That is certainly one factor, but now I think the work itself and the team’s atmosphere are more important, along with the compensation.

Because I had little contact with ACM, my algorithms became weak in later interviews, but it also led me into my LeetCode problem-solving career.

Second semester

The second semester of sophomore year was a period of indecision. Nobody was guiding my cybersecurity work, so it seemed pointless; in CTFs I was constantly crushed by students from less prestigious colleges, and gradually lost confidence. Since the entire major was so competitive, I realized it would be difficult to get a graduate-school recommendation. I slowly began considering employment, and started learning Java with Chen Xiao to prepare for job hunting.

The Java teacher was very experienced. Although he loved bragging, he explained Java’s memory structure and the underlying implementation of its features extremely thoroughly, and I am still grateful to him.

I became absorbed in learning Java. Every night I only returned to the dormitory at the last moment before the lights went out at 11; the rest of the time I was developing in the laboratory. People who merely memorized interview notes could not experience this, and I gained more from it than they did.

I stayed at school during the summer and built my second blog system with Vue and Spring Boot, successfully deploying it on an Alibaba Cloud server. I gained a lot: I had a project on my résumé, became familiar with the entire software life cycle, and began to touch on the importance of design and architecture, especially extensibility. I realized then that a program has no fixed good or bad design like the one taught in class. It can be implemented in many ways; developers must ensure that their choice is suitable, reasonable, and extensible.

The blog was originally meant only to record my study notes, but I did not expect anyone to read it. I met several very interesting friends and also discovered security and encryption problems in the blog login. After discovering them, I took the blog offline and did not use Hexo again until the Alibaba Cloud server expired.

One rather awful thing was that learning Java meant I rarely spent time with my girlfriend at the time, which helped trigger our breakup.

Junior year

First semester

I spent the first semester of junior year preparing for employment. One important thing I did was collect interview experiences from different fields on Nowcoder and organize them into Java, DB, and so on, including questions and answers. Each document contained tens of thousands of characters and laid a solid foundation for my future interviews.

While writing these documents, I missed something important: I did not properly review for CET-6, failed it, and indirectly failed to secure a graduate-school recommendation later. I also skipped many classes because I wanted to complete the documents as quickly as possible.

I may eventually organize these interview notes into a book. The planned modules include common interview questions in every area (Java, DB, algorithms, OS, networks, architecture design, reasoning, JavaEE, and so on), records of my more than 50 spring and autumn recruitment interviews, and interview techniques.

Second semester

Because of the pandemic, I stayed home and attended almost no classes. From mid-February, I prepared for spring-recruitment internships with Chen Xiao and others. I went through more than 20 interviews, including Alibaba, Ant, Xiaomi, and Tencent. At the beginning of April, I finally received internship offers from Alibaba and Tencent, and the stone hanging over my heart fell. The whole process was extremely exciting for me.

My GPA for the second semester was also 3.9/4.0.

I interned at Alibaba during the summer. The difficulty of adapting to internship life left me exhausted. I often asked myself what my purpose in Hangzhou was and why I wanted to make money. The first transition from campus to the workplace caught me completely unprepared, and I was nearly depressed.

Senior year

First semester

In the first semester of senior year, I interned at a company designated by the school. I also received offers from Alibaba, WeChat, Ctrip, Pinduoduo, and Meituan, but my earlier experience at Alibaba made me consider whether I should give them up. When the recommendation cutoff was announced, I found that I had entered the recommendation range, but I had never focused on preparing for it. I lost eligibility by 0.03 points. Looking back, if I had passed CET-6 then, perhaps I could have gone to graduate school.

Today I realized that many of my friends, classmates who had studied for final exams with me, received offers from many top-985 universities. I could not help feeling sad. We were together before, but afterward we would gradually drift farther apart.

That is all for now.

Afterword

When I wrote this article, I had just entered my senior year. I revised it again halfway through the first semester, and expect to add more after graduating from university.