Gradually, I came to the important realization that carelessness is never an excuse for my low scores, as carelessness is essentially incompetence, and it can only be relieved through practice. As such, I finally realized the inherent reason of my lackluster grades—the lack of proficiency—and the solution to this problem. This event is referred to as my “great awakening” in my middle school life. Over the course of the winter vacation, I became determined that I must finish exhaustive practices in MPC subjects, especially Maths, after the Add Test.

On 2/16, the registration day, I restarted my diary in my Diary Book 4. I was driven to preserve the precious memory of Zhongkao preparation, while enhancing my Chinese writing skills in the process [D4P1]. Based on what I learned from a English 5•3 reading passage about diary writings [D4F79], I decided to put more emphasis on recording my emotions rather than facts. By the end of February, I had stopped writing, partly because I was constantly making up for my previous diaries. Later, starting 3/3, I would go on to write journals in electronic devices.

School started on 2/17. In the first two weeks we were mainly preparing for the Add Test, and I largely dismissed the schoolwork for MPC.
We took the Add Test on 3/2 afternoon. My mental state was awful in the test; when the test started, I was in intense nervousness. What’s worse, I chose to first finish the rather difficult questions (fill in the sentence given the initials of chosen words), and because of the stress, I failed to work out the solution to even some simple questions; when I came back to these questions later, I was still too anxious to conjure up any ideas. Then, when seeing that the Cloze test was a passage I’ve already done before, I felt so excited that I could hardly concentrate. This terrible mental condition on Add Test later became a major topic of introspection throughout GR2 [D2F127].

On 3/7, our class teacher, May, gave a long speech to encourage us before she handed our grades of Add Test to us one by one after school [D2F18]. I scored 93.5 out of 100, lower than what I should have achieved. Despite the setback, I reassured myself that I should look the future and carry on.
4.3.3 The difficult start

On the night of 3/3, the mental hinting that I accumulated in the past month rendered me a strong power. After finishing the homework independently and diligently at 11 PM, I finished two practices on Maths 5•3 before restarting my diary on my phone and going to sleep. I had seldom been as hardworking and conscientious as that. Of course, because I lagged behind too much in science subjects, the homework, which consisted mainly of MPC practices, proved to be difficult to complete, and my speed and accuracy in solving problems was very low compared to others [D2F3].

Apart from the pain of doing MPC exercises caused by my weak academic foundation, I was facing the distrust from my teachers and parents as well. After all, I didn't leave a favorable impression on them in the previous semester, and they tended to overlook my resolve to make a change. For example, on 3/14, MG found that I didn't finish part of the homework, which I wasn't aware was required to complete. She texted my parents, stating that my attitude towards study was flawed. I felt I had been wronged and let out my intense dissatisfaction in my diary—even when I was working very hard, my teacher did not believe me—and my momentum in learning Maths declined somewhat [D2F23]. Yet another problem was the inertia of playing games; after all, I was still playing Ballance on the day of Add Test. Fortunately, my addiction to Ballance waned rapidly in my reversal process. I also refrained from playing badminton with my classmates (but I kept playing badminton with Uncle Li to exercise myself). Later I would find that after overcoming this relatively hard time, my progress would be made at a faster rate.

On 3/12, I discovered Zhongkao bar [D2P20]. In the following weekend, I downloaded inspiring photos and set them as my phone's wallpapers, and forwarded some encouraging sentences to my diary. At first, this method was quite efficacious in stimulating myself. On 3/17, my study efficiency at school reached an unprecedented level [D2F22]. I also read on Zhongkao and Gaokao bar for predecessors’ stories. In addition, I invited my bar-mate Burning Red Cloud to motivate me whenever my determination ebbed away [D2F9]. I also downloaded apps like "I wanna be xueba" to restrict my use of phones. Typically, my momentum was strongest on Mondays and would gradually be weakened in the weekdays that followed, and at weekends I would re-acquire a sense of urgency in the process of doing non-academic activities.

On 3/24 and 3/25, we took the 0-5 Test. My ranking was about 370 in the grade. On 3/27, I carefully examined my performance in the past three weeks and in the monthly test, and determined the strategical adjustments for each subject for the next month [D2F38,39]. This was the first time that I conduct such activity on my own initiative. It's clear that after the fiasco in the 0-4 Test, I had truly recognized the necessity of such self-reflection, and was motivated to carry it out [D2F37]. Since its inception in the 0-5 Test, this habit of introspection has continued throughout my later academic life and diary writings (see 4.3.6).

4.3.4 The progress proceeded
Entering this stage, the driving force of my shuati stemmed less from a faith that I must keep shuati-ing; rather, I gradually became internally immersed in the world of Math 5•3 [D2F42]. My momentum could stay at a high level for only several days, and sometimes I would find that I was more motivated to study one discipline over another [D2F49,106]. Later in June, I summarized this cycle of momentum—“high efficiency in 5 days, lose driving force in 10 days”—and tried to apply this conclusion so that on Zhongkao test days I could stay in the “highly driven” period [D2F127].

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