【备用楼】
Back-up Floor

4.3是我整个工程的第一个成品，一共约4000词，花了不少工夫。里面的很多经历都相当值得一说，所以先发啦~
4.3 Great Reversal 2
【Part of a series on Chapter 4: Middle School】
Time: Mar 3 2014~ Jun 15 2014
Major Achievement: Grade Rank improved from 400+ to 100- within 100 days
Axioms explored:
★ Everything is difficult in the beginning, and growth can become exponential after that. The essence of exponential growth is virtuous cycles and good habits.
★ Don’t ask for too much; just work hard step-by-step, and let nature take its course. The essence of “follow the course of nature” is the balance between ambitions and actions.
★ The best impetus for studying is internal driving force and immersion; when momentum is weak, some form of adjustment period or external stimulation is needed.

4.3.1 Background: G9T1
In the final exam in G8T2, I made tremendous improvements in Maths and maintained my good marks in English. My 4-total score was one point away from grade Top 200 [D3P93]. As a result, I spent the following summer playing for most of the time, taking only a Chinese composition class.
That state of relaxation continued in the first month of Grade 9. I paid little attention to my studies—at school, I was absent-minded in classes; after school, I played badminton with my classmates, made new Ballance maps, and read on Baidu-pedia about cosmology. To cater to my addiction to these activities, I gradually stopped updating my D3P (Diary Book 3) and copied others’ homework by a rapidly increasing proportion. What I once deemed as “what only bad students will do” had already become my habit by the end of Sept 2013.

I soon got what I deserved in the monthly test (0-1 Test) after the national holiday, as I did terribly in all subjects except English. My 7-total score was 21 points below the Line* and 44 points below the class middle line; my grade rank plummeted to No. 447, my class rank No. 54, reaching the nadir of my academic life.
{*Note: In NFLS middle school, there are 12 classes, with about 700 students in total, in each grade. Because NFLS high school admits 340 students from the middle school in the normal round, the score of the student ranked 340th in big tests is called the “Line”. In our class, Class 9, usually 50 out of the 60 students could “go above the Line” (shangxian), and 7~8 students could even hold a steady position in grade Top 50.}

In the first few days after the test, I was extremely upset, and I had to cope with the pressure from the outside, such as the blame from my parents. My class teacher, MV (May Lv), had a talk with me, saying that I was actually lucky because I had shown my problem at an early time, and that it was still not late for me if I would work hard. She confirmed my potential and encouraged me a lot.
A week after 0-1 Test, when I and my parents had all calmed down, I began to reflect on my attitude towards studies. After that, I started to treat my homework a lot more seriously, although I still often spent time on playing various things. I did better and better in the following two exams, ranking No. 304 in the mid-term exam (0-2 Test, 11/12~14) and No. 252 in the second monthly exam (0-3 Test, 12/16,17)
[Based on my Reversal thread Project, http://tieba.baidu.com/p/2654021491 ].

In 0-3 Test, my English score declined somewhat. Considering the fact that the Add Test* was only 2.5 months away, I decided to put the accent on Add Test-prep, emphasizing English learning. So at this stage, I began to pay much less attention to my schoolwork yet again, which would eventually lead to the Black 19th Week Incident and my failure in the end-term exam (0-4 Test). The following is the detailed analysis of this event.
{*Note: the Additional Foreign Language Test (jiashi), comprised of a 100-point paper test (on 3/2/14) and a 20-point oral test (on 4/19/14), was designed to test the contents we NFLSers learned in our curriculum (for the Class of English, we used the Cambridge textbooks). Our Add Test results were added to our Zhongkao scores for NFLS high school admissions consideration. Generally, the Add Test refers to the paper test.}

My reluctance to finish the homework was a primary reason for my downfall. In Dec 2013, our MPC coursework was concerned with the most difficult parts in middle school—quadratic functions, electricity, the compounds of carbon...

My reluctance to finish the homework was a primary reason for my downfall. In Dec 2013, our MPC (Maths, Physics, Chemistry) coursework was concerned with the most difficult parts in middle school—quadratic functions, electricity, the compounds of carbon... Meanwhile, the teachers weren’t strict in checking our homework. As a consequence, I was rather disinclined to deal with these contents because I was not comfortable with them; on the contrary, I was better at English and doing English practices could offer me a greater sense of satisfaction, and that explains why I tended to work on English. The upshot to this is obvious: I fell behind more and more in my normal schoolwork, resulting in a vicious circle. This was especially prejudicial since I failed to establish a solid foundation in these difficult areas in MPC, which would cause a lot more pain in my future Reversal process.

In late G9T1, my engagement in activities was also an immediate contributor to my grade decline, as I was increasingly involved in miscellaneous activities and games at school and on the Internet. This situation was partially an outcome of the conflict between my desire for others’ attention and my unsuccessful social life; for more discussions on my failure in social life in G9T1 and its influence, see 4.2: the Year of Darkness—2/28/2013 ~ 3/2/2014.

Fundamentally speaking, the reason for the blunder in my “study plans” was my immaturity. Essentially I had not yet understood the importance of keeping up with the school's academic progress, and I was especially blinded by my progress in 0-2~3 Tests. I was mislead by the experience that even though I hardly studied at all before 0-1 Test, my scores still went back to normal within weeks; hence, I considered it reasonable to leave those coursework to G9T2 and to focus on Add Test right then. Unfortunately, because of my casual attitude, my efficiency in doing additional English exercises was also quite low. So basically, I totally wasted my time in the last month of G9T1.

4.3.2 The great awakening & storing energy
My increased laxity and failure to complete the homework lead to the Black 19th Week Incident (the 1/7). On the morning of 1/7/2014, in the Maths class, our maths teacher, MG, asked me to answer one question in our homework. Because I didn’t finish it, I could not answer it and thus stood at my seat for some time until MG let me sit down [D-140107], which was of course embarrassing and disgraceful for me. Further investigation revealed that I didn’t fully complete my assignments in multiple subjects. I was criticized by our teachers, and my parents were called to school.

The unpleasant experience of the 1/7 played a role in motivating my studies in the following few months; the 1/7 also increased my sense of inferiority and impacted my social life (for details, see 4.2). As an immediate outcome of the 1/7, I began to make up for my homework and stopped using my phone and engaging in some other activities. However, I was still under the delusion that no emphasis should be put on non-English subjects as of then, and so my makeup work and my preparations for the final exam were rather superficial.

On 1/14~15, we took the 0-4 Test, i.e. final exam for G9T1. In the Physics test, my stomach ached and I felt extremely sleepy, and I scored terribly in Physics. My scores in Maths and Chinese tests also placed me at the bottom of Class 9. Although my English score increased somewhat, it was insufficient to compensate for the dire deficiency in other main subjects. My 7-total ranking dropped below Grade top 400 again (the exact ranking figure is lost).

For the winter vacation, because there weren’t much homework apart from some English exercises for the Add Test, I was granted with the space for introspection on my studies in G9T1. In analyzing my mistakes in 0-4 Test, I found that I made many of those mistakes not because I didn’t understand the concepts, but rather because I was plain careless, like I was in previous exams. For example, a simple calculation error in Maths test directly resulted in a loss of 5 points. But why was I always so careless throughout 0-1~4 Tests?
上面基本上是复述 https://tieba.baidu.com/p/2654021491。。。