Chapter 12 Memories of college life

introduction This short article was written at the request of Wang Zhaohui, editor of the "University Student" magazine. Initially, I just wanted to write some interesting stories about myself and my college life, so that I could publish them and share them with you when the students start term in September.But after the article was written, I found that it not only talked about many memorable university events, but also talked about some experiences and even lessons that contemporary college students can think about and learn from.For example, how addicted to gaming is dangerous academically, why discovering and pursuing interests is the most important thing, why social activities and friendships formed in college are so important, why it is easy to form lifelong friendships with friends during college, how to do it while working Learn, blah, blah, blah.Not only have these experiences benefited me long after I left college, but I think they are invaluable even to the vast majority of students today.

The shattered dreams of Harvard, law, and mathematics Before going to college, my dream was to be a Harvard man.I have such a dream, partly because of the aura that hangs over Harvard University, and because I have always regarded studying law as my goal and studying mathematics as my "backup". the best. In April 1979, a rejection letter shattered my dream.As for the reason, I guess it was because my SAT English score was too bad, only 550 points (if there was New Oriental at that time, it might not have ended like this). When applying for universities, I clearly knew that my own conditions were insufficient and I could not guarantee that I would be able to go to any university, so I applied to a total of 12 schools. Only in this way, I felt that I could take the initiative in my own hands.Looking back at that time, my teachers probably hated me to death, because the college application materials required teachers to write recommendation letters for students, but for me, they had to write so many copies at once (there was no computer at the time, and every recommendation All letters need to be written by the teacher himself).

In the end, I got into Columbia University, which is a very good school with a famous law department and mathematics department.Columbia University gives students a lot of room for development, allowing students to study a wide range of courses.When I was a freshman, I spent most of my time studying art, history, music, philosophy and other professional courses. I was exposed to many things. I think this is an opportunity to find my own interests.To this day, I still remember what an old professor in the Department of Philosophy said: "Do you know what to make a difference? Imagine two worlds, one with you and one without you, and let the difference between the two be the largest. It is the meaning of your life."

Let me talk about my legal dream at Columbia University.At that time, I mainly studied "political science", which belonged to a "pre-law" major.However, after taking a few "political science" classes, I found that I had no interest in it, and I couldn't get up to class every day, which was very distressing.One of the classes was so boring that I basically slept through every class and the only choice was whether to sleep in the classroom or in the dorm.After sleeping until halfway through the semester, my grade point average was barely enough for a C. I rushed to withdraw this course the day before the deadline, and avoided the disaster of being canceled because the average grade was less than 3.0.

When I mentioned the distress of studying law to my family, they all encouraged me to switch departments.My sister said: "Didn't you finish your sophomore math in high school and win the state math championship? Why didn't you transfer to the math department?" However, this brought me to my second trouble.After entering the university, the school arranged for me to join a "mathematical genius class", which gathered all the top mathematics talents of Columbia University, and there were only seven students in one class.But soon, I found that my math suddenly changed from "best" to "worst".At this time, I realized that although I was a "state champion", the state I was in was Tennessee, which is called "country country", and when I met these real "mathematical geniuses" from California or New York ", I am not only inferior in skills, but also timid when asking questions, for fear that my classmates will see that the real level of my "national champion" is not very good.As a result, I fell further and further behind, and to this day I still "half understand" this course (this is another proof that "silence is not golden").After I finished this course, I deeply realized that those "mathematical geniuses" are obsessed with it because of the "beauty of mathematics", but I am not.On the one hand, I am envious that they have found a favorite; on the other hand, I regret to find that I am neither a mathematical genius nor obsessed with its "beauty", because I don't want the meaning of my life to be to understand The beauty of mathematics.

In this way, I bid farewell to Harvard, the law I chose, and the mathematics I was proud of. Because he knows computers, he became a master on campus Without Harvard, law, mathematics, where is my future going?Luckily there are computers. In fact, I had a strong interest in computers when I was in high school.I was lucky in high school, the school had an antique IBM machine, it was 1977, and the computer still needs to be used by punching cards (that is, punching holes in each card first, and then punching the stack holed card into the computer).One weekend, I wrote a program to solve a complex math equation and print the result.Because the machine was running very slowly, I went home after writing the program.When I returned to school on Monday, I was suddenly called by the teacher to scold me and said: "Do you know that you have printed all our paper!" It turns out that this mathematical equation has countless solutions, and the program has been running since I left on Friday. It is running, and it has been printing the results continuously.At that time, the printing paper was connected together in a thick stack, and such a box of paper might cost the school tens of dollars, but I printed all of them with one program, and the teacher was of course very angry.

When I was a freshman, I was amazed that you can use a computer without punching cards, and I was even more surprised that such a fun thing can also be used as a "professional".So I took a computer course and got my first "A+" in college.In addition to winning praise from teachers and classmates, I also felt a kind of shock: Can this kind of technology think in the future?Could it make humans more efficient?Could computers one day replace the human brain?Solving such problems is the meaning of life! At the end of my freshman year, I found a job working in a computer center. They would pay me some money by the hour as remuneration. Although it was not much, it was also an encouragement.Students would come to me to solve any computer problems, and "knowledge of computers" was a very fashionable thing in school at that time, and everyone thought this person was too cool.Even at that time, my ID was different from others: most people’s IDs were "department name + name", for example, "cs.kaifulee" for computer students, "ps.kaifulee" for political students, and mine was "cu.kaifulee", cu stands for Columbia University, Columbia + Kai-Fu Lee, just like the principal, what an awesome one!

Of course, I also did a lot of boring things, such as making programs to guess other people's passwords.At that time, people didn't know that passwords could be deciphered. When I "hacked" someone's account, I sent some prank letters in his name.Once, I used the account of a male classmate to post a "Single Girl Seeking Friends" notice on the BBS, causing him to receive a bunch of love letters for no apparent reason.This classmate is also working in Beijing now, and he probably doesn't know about it until today. Next time I see him, I must remember to tell him that I sent the notice.

At that time, the law department of Columbia University ranked third in the United States, and the computer department was just a newly established major. If I chose computer, which is not a very solid major, the future does not look very clear.If I choose the law department, I can probably predict my future: being a judge, a lawyer, running for parliament, and so on.Because there are many templates in front of me, I can follow the plan.And when I chose to major in computer science, I couldn't even think of what I would do in the future. There was no such profession as a software engineer at that time.However, I was thinking more about "meaning of life" and "my interests" (how boring and frustrating it is to work in a job I don't like!), and I didn't let these practical employment issues affect me.So in my sophomore year, I switched from "Political Science" to "Computer Science".At that time, a classmate in the physics department joked: "Any subject that has 'science' as a suffix must not be real science. Look at you, jumping from one 'fake science' to another 'fake science', jump to You can’t become a scientist if you jump.”

Twenty-five cents a day, the game hits 9999 I also have a "speciality" that most people don't know: playing video games is No. 1 in school-no one can beat me. Video games used to be much simpler than they are now.A game I often play is called Space Invader. There are four fortresses at the bottom of the screen that can shoot bullets, and there are many monsters above the screen, which need to be hit one by one.Game consoles at that time were very "stupid", monsters were not flying around very quickly, they were just moving slowly.This kind of game can only be played with coins, 25 cents each time, and I don’t have much money, 25 cents a day is not a small amount for me, so I only bring 25 cents to play every day, and go there after class Hit it once or twice.

Such a mentally handicapped game, is there any challenge?Have!The score setting in the machine is only four digits, the highest score is 9999 points, and the score will automatically return to 0 after that.Moreover, the score of each fairy is different, some are one point, some are three points, and some are ten points, so when the score is close to 9999, you have to calculate carefully, because if you make a mistake and exceed 9999, you will be returned. 0, you have to start over.In order to keep my record as the highest score every day, I will not play blindly like other people, but calculate my own score while playing, and kill myself when I hit 9999 points, and stop playing.In this way, the game is very difficult.And I couldn't play well at the beginning, and I needed to practice again and again, which is also a big "investment". In the end, the results of my twenty-five cents a day are almost always 9999, and I have already practiced to the point of proficiency.Every time I write the abbreviation of my name KFL, so that people who come to play later will see this record and know who has the highest score. This is still very fulfilling.At that time, there were a lot of students playing games, and they even had to queue up. If I went, everyone would say: "Look, the master KFL is here!" When I was in high school, I was very disciplined and never played this kind of game. When I arrived in college, I suddenly lost the constraints of my parents and felt more free, so I started playing games.Think back.I was very lucky at that time, because these games were not exciting enough, and I didn't really get addicted to them. I just spent twenty-five cents a day to relax for 20 minutes.If there were "World of Warcraft" and "CS" at that time, maybe I would be addicted to Internet cafes and ruin my life. In this way, I played games for a semester, and what made me escape from the "clutch" of video games?It's bridge.I learned to play bridge in high school while having lunch with my friends, and when I got to college, I joined the bridge club and found out that the game was different: everyone took the same deck so they could compete to see who played the best .At that time, perhaps because of the "queuing mentality" of the Chinese people, I especially liked to participate in bridge competitions, and the purpose was to be the first.When I first entered college, in order to win the first place, I very childishly found a "bridge club" where old men and women gathered to play. In addition, the card skills are getting worse and worse.At that time, there were bridge competitions in many areas, so we took a ride to a relatively distant place to compete, and we also went to Ivy League schools such as Yale and Harvard to compete, or to participate in national competitions. Since then, we have won many medals and trophies.One of my bridge partners later participated in the "Bermuda Cup" (a bridge competition similar to the football World Cup) and won the third place in the world.He went on to become a professional bridge player and lived comfortably.I sometimes jokingly say to people, "If I had just kept playing, I might have done something in bridge!" Some people may think that there is no difference between playing bridge and playing video games. In fact, the difference is very big: bridge can cultivate logical thinking ability and interpersonal communication ability.However, I was too addicted to bridge in my freshman year, playing 30 hours a week, which seriously affected my studies. My freshman grade was only 3.26 because of playing video games and bridge.But since I found my favorite - computer, I suddenly feel very interested in learning.Every time the teacher sends out programming exercises, I have to finish it without going to sleep at night (although the teacher gave me a week).At that time, I no longer wanted to be number one in bridge, but more in computers.Driven by such interests, I got a perfect score of 4.0 in my sophomore, junior, and senior years. Only in this way did I make up for the playfulness of my freshman year, and finally I was able to graduate from the Department of Computer Science with the first place. Discovering other worlds while working part-time When I was in college, I relied on financial support from my family for almost two years. Afterwards, I didn’t ask my family for money and completed my studies by working part-time.Although my family is well-off in Taiwan, by American standards, I still cannot afford college tuition.At that time, the school would provide part-time job opportunities for students from such families. The usual practice was as follows: one-third of the tuition fee was the stipend that the school "gives" you, and the other third was the loan that the school "lent" to you. One-third of them need to work to earn by themselves (this kind of model of raising tuition fees, but everyone can afford university is very good, and it is worth learning from Chinese universities at this stage). Part-time job is a good opportunity for college students to study.I am lucky and have a lot of part-time job experience. When I first started working, I couldn't do anything, so I could only do tutoring.The school assigned me to the black district to teach some Mexican or black teenagers. The teaching place was in "Harlem", one of the most dangerous areas in the United States, very close to Columbia University. I was studying art history at the time, and I used to go to the museum to see some paintings, and after I saw the paintings, I would take the bus and go to tutoring.Once, I inadvertently took two more stops. When I arrived in the center of Harlem, I was hesitant to pay an extra ticket to go back to school. Later, I chose to walk back to save some money, but I made a mistake. Big mistake: I suddenly saw a completely different world - a row of homeless people, people taking drugs, people with weapons... Although I was not physically hurt, my heart was shocked and I was a little scared .When I passed among them, although they didn't do anything to me, I was always very disturbed, not knowing what might happen at any time.The people there may have never seen an oriental face in their entire lives, and when they saw me, they yelled at me "wow wow" in Chinese words they made up.I finally walked to the teaching center step by step, taught the last class, and never wanted to go again. I had just started applying for an internship at a computer center.The part-time job here has changed a lot. I can get a lot of authority and do many things.During the summer vacation, I also made some plans with some companies and wrote some programs. The most interesting thing was to write a program to weigh diamonds.It was 1980, the summer vacation of my freshman year. The university has three summer vacations in total. In the summer vacation between freshman and sophomore year, I worked part-time in the computer center. In the summer vacation between sophomore and junior year, I did two jobs. One was mentioned in "Be the Best Me" The story of working part-time at law school, and another part-time job at Goldman Sachs, and the person who introduced me to the job was someone I met from playing bridge.After the bridge game, we chatted speculatively, and they said, since you are studying computer, why don't you come here and try it?The interview was very interesting, because the company has some very sensitive information, and they will use the polygraph machine to test the interviewees. I have never seen a polygraph machine before. Although I have not done anything bad, I am still a little nervous. At first, the interviewer asked, "Have you ever been drinking?" "No." "Have you taken drugs?" "No." "Have you ever embezzled public funds?" "No." "Did you gamble?" "No." "Are you sure? Why did your heartbeat suddenly speed up?" I was wondering: Is bridge a gamble?I did, on several occasions, play bridge with schoolmates for a small wager.Then he continued to ask: "Why is your heart beating so fast? How much do you lose a week? One thousand? Five hundred?" I quickly explained: "I just played bridge with my classmates." He asked again: "Really? ? Please tell the truth!" - very stern tone.I sighed secretly in my heart: What a pity!Am I ruining such a good job playing bridge?Unexpectedly, the interviewer told me at the end: "Your character is very good, you are ready to come to work!" It turns out that because this job can touch a lot of sensitive data (such as those stocks that Goldman Sachs will recommend), they are afraid of summer jobs. To get rich off of this data, so they have to frighten and scare every applicant so they can spot bad candidates. Goldman Sachs is a very good company with excellent employees, where stock analysts wear suits and meet customers every day.But they don't know much about computers, and many data still need to be calculated by hand.In order to free themselves from heavy computing work, they asked me to help with some work.People who, in their experience, thought it would take me a whole day to do it, actually took me about an hour to do it with a computer program.In the rest of the time, I learned a lot of investment and management knowledge there. In addition to part-time jobs, college student club activities are also very helpful for growth.I regret today that I didn't participate in any club activities (except bridge club) when I was in college.Although I participated in many clubs when I was in high school, I was very active and had a good record of participating in social work: the vice chairman of the student union, starting my own business three times... I have a lot of experience.But back then, I forced myself to do these things just to add a line to my resume when applying to college.Looking back now, the most valuable thing I got out of it was the ability to get along with people, not the line on the college application form. Good friends who make cakes and eat cakes together When I got to college, I suddenly found myself "stressed dealing with people".At that time, there were not many Chinese students, and there was no special Chinese circle (of course, thinking about it now, it may not be good to have such a circle).Sometimes, when I walk into a party and see everyone chatting, drinking, joking, and communicating in such a divergent way, I always feel that it is difficult to open my mouth when I walk over to someone I don’t know.So after going to freshman parties a few times, I asked myself why I became like this, I couldn’t even open my mouth?I tried so hard to talk to people, but worried that no one would listen to me.And every time everyone is scattered and communicates together in twos and threes, I always feel bored and lonely standing there, and I don’t know how to integrate into such a loose communication.So, I slowly withdrew and closed myself off, no longer going to parties or making friends.At the time, the only friends I could have were bridge players, video game friends, and my roommates (about this, now that I think about it, I shouldn’t have held myself back. Later, when I was doing my Ph.D., At work, I slowly discovered that social skills are still very important, but unfortunately I didn’t exercise well when I was in college, so I had to make up this class later). When we were in college, we had 4 people in a dormitory, and every two people shared a bedroom.I have a very good relationship with my roommate. He was born in a worker's family. He often told me about his growth process, and I would also tell some things about me.We have always been good friends, until now he often calls me.A while ago, when I was in a lawsuit, he called me and said, "Do you need someone to guarantee your personality?" Although I am very grateful to him, I told him that I have no problem with my personality. No need for his guarantee.He added: "Actually, I know this too, I just want you to know that there is a friend who will always stand by your side." At that time, I was working in the computer center, and I would help him advise on how to do the homework; while he was working in the kitchen, so he could bring me some delicious food to share.Once the school was on spring break, he said: "We have 25 kilograms of cream cheese left in the kitchen, and we have to throw it away anyway. How about we use it to make cakes?" I said: "Good idea!".Both of our families are not very wealthy, and we didn't go home for vacation to save money, after all, air tickets are very expensive.So, we plan to use these cheeses to make 20 cakes, so that we can eat cakes every day and save money for meals during the holidays. Making up our minds, the two of us got to work, but it didn't take long for me to regret the decision.Because 25 kg of cheese couldn’t be stirred with an ordinary blender, we had to pour the ingredients into a big bucket, and each person took a stick to stir vigorously. After stirring for more than four hours, our arms were tired and sore.What makes me regret it even more is that when we start eating the same cheesecake every day, it feels like there is always an endless supply of cakes waiting for you.By the end of the meal, we had reached the point where we didn't even want to see the cake or even mention the word "cake".Until one day seven or eight days later, he suddenly said to me: "Kaifu, great news!" I asked him what it was, and he said, "The rest of the cake is moldy!" That day, the two of us took the subway to Chinatown The cheapest Cantonese restaurant with the largest servings ordered six dishes to celebrate the moldy cake. We didn't eat cheesecake again for several years afterwards.But many years later, whenever we met, we always joked, let's go eat together.what to eatEat cheesecake!Ha ha! In this way, the cake will get moldy, but the friendship that stems from the cake is unusually long-lasting. 1 VisiCalc was the hottest computer application at the time, but it was eliminated two decades ago (another proof of how fast technology can evolve).Moreover, the use of VisiCalc is not something that computer students should learn. 2 Note: This is the situation at the time of writing.