Chapter 107: Winner Takes All
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Time pa.s.sed by quickly, and soon, it was already mid-December. Various subjects’ final exams flocked toward students. Even the lazy students started to study under the pressure of the exams. They borrowed notes and downloaded Powerpoint slides while they prayed to do well.
Both the dumb students and geniuses were the busiest during this period.
Especially those in the mathematics majors, they even started to dream of mathematics.
This was why they said…
“If you chose a good major, your exams will put you in endangerment.”
The exams came at last.
The first was the ordinary differential equation exam like the cla.s.s taught by Liu Xiangping.
Judging from the topics in the last few lectures, everyone guessed that this exam was not going to be easy.
However, Lu Zhou did not worry too much.
He studied throughout the semester, and he was confident in his own mathematics abilities. He walked into the exam room and did the exam in just half an hour.
Originally, Lu Zhou thought that Professor Liu Xiangping would deliberately give him a difficult problem to solve. However, he was surprised to see that the exam only consisted of basic questions. Anyone that paid attention in cla.s.s could have done well on the exam.
He studied the entire textbook, so it was extra easy for him.
Maybe…
The professor wanted us to have a pleasant new year?
After Lu Zhou left the exam room, he was about to go to the library. However, he had not walked far from the exam room when he b.u.mped into Professor Liu.
Lu Zhou looked at the badges of the two master’s students behind the professor and knew that the two students were exam room inspectors. Why was the professor here? Usually, master’s students were responsible for exam room inspection.
It was not like Professor Liu to be this responsible.
“Oh, you already finished? Don’t you want to double-check?” asked Professor Liu as he smiled and looked at Lu Zhou.
Lu Zhou was embarra.s.sed and he answered, “Those were all basic questions, nothing to double-check.”
“Oh, basic?” asked Professor Liu. He smiled and said, “Okay, I’ll personally mark your paper. If you don’t get full marks, I’ll deduct the 20% cla.s.s attendance marks.”
Lu Zhou was hysterical and he thought, “How do you still remember this? This was from the start of the semester.”
However, he was not too worried about it. He was able to solve a world-cla.s.s conjecture, there was no way he could make a mistake on such an easy exam.
“Okay, okay. I can’t talk for long, I still have some stuff to do for the head of the department. He asked for you to go to the lab,” said Professor Liu. He then paused for a second before saying, “Not bad, young man. You’re already doing scientific research projects.”
“I’m just helping,” said Lu Zhou as he smiled modestly.
“Fine, fine. Stop acting humble. I knew that you were fit for scientific research from the performance of your mathematical modeling compet.i.tion. I read your recent thesis, and it’s interesting. Using mathematical tools to solve scientific problems is one of the criteria I have for my master’s students. Not many people meet this criterion.”
Professor Liu smiled and continued, “How about you just graduate in advance and come to study under my wing? Your level is high enough for PhD. How about you think about it?”
“This… Sorry, Professor Liu, I can’t give you an answer. I still haven’t thought about which field I want to get into,” said Lu Zhou as he coughed and smiled embarra.s.singly.
The master’s student standing behind the professor had a blank expression on his face. However, deep inside, he was raging.
Why does this professor like you so much? Why can’t you just give an answer, a.s.shole!
You know how lucky you are…
He wanted to curse at Lu Zhou.
…
Coincidentally, hundreds of kilometers away in the University of Zhi, a lot of people also wanted to swear.
Yesterday, the research project on carbon nanotube modified cement-based composite materials, conducted by the Inst.i.tute of Materials Research from Jin Ling University was pa.s.sed.
20 minutes ago, the project leader Yu Hongkang announced the news. Their research team also studied carbon nanotube modified cement-based composite materials, so it was undoubtedly bad news for them.
This meant that nearly half a year’s worth of research was wasted.
Their mechanical tests for the sample was completed. However, now, no one wanted to a.n.a.lyze the Fourier infrared spectral data.
It was because they no longer needed to.
In order to reduce losses, they had to use existing research to find some conclusions.
Professor Yu Hongkang gave everyone on the project team a vacation, but not a single person left the lab.
The guys held their head low, and a guy said, “I’m sorry…”
His name was w.a.n.g Che. He was a graduate student from the materials science and engineering school. He had a double bachelor’s degrees in applied mathematics and materials chemistry, and he was considered a super genius.
For his master’s studies, he chose the more advanced computational material science as his main direction. After entering Yu Hongkang’s research team, he quickly obtained the respect of the research group with his mathematical talents.
However, at this crucial moment, he dropped the ball.
Although he also used mathematical tools to a.n.a.lyze the Fourier infrared data, he was blinded by some results. Therefore, he missed the clues that should not be missed… No one blamed him, but he blamed himself.
Professor Yu shook his head and said, “No, this isn’t your fault. The University of Jin Ling was ahead of us in this research. Last time, China Advanced Materials Society held an academic exchange meeting in Hangzhou. I met Professor Li Rongen at the meeting and exchanged a few words with him. I had had a bad feeling about this back then.”
Now it seemed that his feeling was correct.
Perhaps he should not have competed against the University of Jin Ling. He was not strong in this field.
Did they lose solely because of w.a.n.g Che?
Impossible.
All of the good universities had research teams led by top professors, and no one in the team was talentless. This included w.a.n.g Che.
If Professor Yu was shown the thesis two months ago, maybe the situation would be different right now?
After all, they got similar data as well. The University of Jin Ling was stronger than them, but not by much. Maybe it could have been them that succeeded…
Yu Hongkang sighed in his heart.
The University of Jin Ling has a genius!
If only this genius was at Zhi University…