The Study Grind

Hair tied to a clothes dryer so you jerk awake if you start nodding off during study hours. Dirty gym shoes to sniff and stay alert. Rope. These are study techniques that Chinese students use, because passing the exam matters more than your physical safety. I read about how they prepare and some of it is properly deranged.

The thing is, you don’t resort to this stuff unless you’re desperate. And you’re desperate because everyone else is desperate too. Your classmates are tying their hair down, sniffing shoes, destroying their bodies. So you do it or you do something worse. Because if you’re not willing to suffer enough to hurt yourself, you’re not trying.

There’s something darkly honest about it. Most education systems torture you just fine—they just do it quietly. You stress yourself sick. You medicate. You kill yourself slowly and call it ambition. But you don’t usually put it in such literal, visceral terms. You don’t tie your hair to the dryer. You just suffer and pretend it’s for a good reason.

I doubt the extreme methods make you smarter. Probably they don’t. But once you’re in the system, that’s not the point anymore. The point is just that you’re suffering hard enough to deserve success.