Doing It Over Again [Rebirth]

5: Trying your luck 2.0

After the school year began, life fell into a routine. In Shen Shao's previous life, whenever he had free time at home he used to read books and take self-tests. Relearning junior high school-level knowledge wasn't difficult. On the contrary, he actually thought the questions on the admissions exam were easier than they would be in future years. At least they didn't give children problems from the Mathematical Olympiad as ordinary homework.

As an adult with experience in social interaction, he didn't have much trouble making friends with a group of half-grown kids. Everyone knew he'd taken first place in the grade, but he usually played basketball with the other boys to get exercise.

The school's playing field was a simple concrete pad. There was no so-called rubber runway for track and field, just an ordinary dirt track. In the middle of the playing field was a basketball hoop, and in another corner was a platform made of bricks for table tennis. This was the experimental junior high's physical education field. As for the football field, tennis court, and swimming pool that many schools would have in the future, they didn't exist.

However, most of the students were satisfied with the equipment. They could play table tennis on the table made of sand and brick. In this period, almost all students could play table tennis with varying degrees of skill. If anyone wanted to play badminton, there wasn't a specific field, but they could buy a pair of badminton rackets for under ten yuan, draw a dividing line down the middle, and enjoy a lively game.

The world of these junior high school children was uncomplicated. Whenever it was time for physical education or music class, they were all smiles, but when it came to the three main courses of Chinese, math, and English, the joyful atmosphere disappeared.

After nearly two months of school, people thought of Shen Shao as serious and studious without being detached from the group. This image was deeply ingrained in the minds of his teachers and classmates in Class 1. When curious people from other classes asked what he was like, most students talked about him with admiration and rarely felt jealous. When people are young, they openly say what they think instead of weighing each word according to their self-interest. Whether they liked or disliked someone, they made it clear. It was only over time, as they became adults, that this heartfelt insistence on speaking plainly would gradually wear smooth, and they grew skilled at dancing with long sleeves.

Regardless of what would happen in the future, the students of experimental Class 1 would soon face one of their biggest challenges—the midterm exam. It was the most significant exam they would face since entering school. More importantly, the exam would rank everyone in the grade, and the results would be posted on the school bulletin board, which added invisible pressure. So the students went out to play less, and after class, aside from going to the restroom, they sat at their desks and read. As the saying goes, they were sharpening their spears just before going into battle, doing last-minute cramming so they wouldn't lose face for the experimental class.

The students who'd entered the class through the back door were even more nervous than everyone else, because if their grades were in the bottom ten of the class this semester, they might be reassigned to one of the general classes. They didn't want the humiliation of getting into the experimental class only to be sent to an ordinary class.

It wasn't clear who was the first student to ask Shen Shao for help with a question, but they got a detailed answer. Soon other classmates also began to go to Shen Shao when they had trouble. There were other students in the class with good grades who obviously could have helped too, but they sometimes pretended not to know. Wasn't everyone worried about competition on the exam? Why didn't Shen Shao seem to care?

Shen Shao was surprised. After class, more and more classmates were coming to him for help. By the end of the day he felt like a junior teacher.

"Hey, did you hear?" Yang HongQiang came up to Shen Shao with an air of mystery. "One of the ordinary classes is saying we have an empty reputation and our grades aren't much better than theirs."