What Started It
Today, while the site owner was working out at the gym, he happened to overhear two students from his year chatting nearby
They were talking about many things that he normally wouldn’t pay attention to: GPA, comprehensive evaluations, class committees, competitions, part-time jobs, social circles, other people’s workout results…
The more he listened, the more he suddenly felt a strange sense of “the multitude of lives” (fog)
It turned out that, in places I normally barely noticed, the people around me were also living, striving, comparing themselves, and accumulating experience in their own ways
On the way back from the gym, I thought about it more carefully and suddenly realized that there had always been people like this around me. I had simply rarely taken the time to really observe or understand them
So, while the inspiration was still fresh, I wrote this article to try to sort out the question:
What kinds of paths are Chinese university students actually taking, in my eyes?
My Former Prejudices
Before I went to university, the paths available to students, at least according to the mainstream narrative, seemed to boil down to two options:
Further education, or employment.
Take the postgraduate entrance exam, secure a place in graduate school, or go abroad and continue pursuing higher degrees; alternatively, do internships, attend campus recruitment fairs, join a company, and enter the job market as soon as possible
At the time, somewhat aloof and self-important as I was, I didn’t particularly want either path
I’d rather spend my time on things I was interested in. So I learned technology, worked on projects, made games, built websites, experimented with servers, tinkered with AI, and turned all of it into work that I could actually show people
To be honest, I even had a little sense of superiority hidden away in my heart—one that I felt somewhat embarrassed to admit:
I seemed not to be following either of the two paths everyone else was taking
I was doing something more “special”
Naturally, I also simplified many people at university into a few vague labels:
The diligent students, those preparing to find jobs, those who played video games every day…
As for what exactly they were doing, why they were doing it, and what they were accumulating along the way, I rarely had any real understanding
The Moment the Worlds Connected
Until tonight
Two extremely typical “muscular social butterflies” happened to show up at the gym (figuratively speaking)
As they trained, they began—completely unconcerned about anyone else—to engage in what was essentially a large-scale mutual bragging session:
“Weren’t you ranked twentieth in the comprehensive evaluation for your major?”
“You scored over 90 on your makeup exams.”
“You even have a part-time job.”
“Doesn’t your roommate also serve on the class committee and compete in competitions?”
“So-and-so can bench-press this much.”
“The comprehensive evaluation scores in such-and-such major are especially high this year…”
When they talked about their own grades, they would even casually add:
“I didn’t really study that hard either. I mostly worked out, glanced over the material a bit before finals, and that was enough.”
The site owner stood nearby, utterly stunned
A lot of what they were discussing consisted of things I would never normally take the initiative to learn about
How comprehensive evaluations were calculated, who was competing in what, which majors were more competitive, who served on which class committee, who knew whom, who was doing well at a part-time job…
To them, these seemed to be completely natural parts of university life
To me, however, it felt like someone had suddenly opened a door I would normally never even try to push open
Things I didn’t care about at all might matter enormously to someone else
At that moment, I suddenly realized:
I thought the people around me were ordinary, but perhaps that was only because I couldn’t see the system they were playing by
Then I started thinking about my roommates
One of them is the class president and participates in algorithm competitions. His GPA and comprehensive evaluation scores are both good, and he has a fairly clear goal: he plans to pursue algorithm-related work. At the same time, he also plays video games until very late
Another takes part in a lot of social and class activities. His grades may not be as outstanding, but his university life clearly focuses more on “experiences” and “relationships.” He also often plays online games with other people
Another plays gacha games and takes on part-time jobs during the winter and summer holidays. He also has a few regular friends in his class whom he hangs out with
And what about me?
I spend most of my time immersed in development, technology, and creative work
I’m not very interested in coursework itself, and at one point I nearly wanted to give it up altogether. As for employment, my attitude has always been fairly casual: as long as I can support myself in the future, I’ll consider it a fallback option and leave it at that
I tinker with websites, servers, AI, and game development, and I work out too. But I’m not very interested in campus socializing, and I’m not particularly into many large-scale online games
I also don’t play many games, and the ones I do play are almost all single-player and indie games—a pure indie-game Brahmin, you could say (lol)
As for in-person socializing, that’s an outright disaster in some respects (sad)
In my entire major, there are probably only two or three people I can genuinely talk to about game development, and our relationships are basically the sort of “friendship between gentlemen, as pure as water” that stays fairly distant
I don’t seek people out for conversation without a reason, and when I attend group activities, I often just quietly stay in a corner and act like a transparent nobody
If we look only at the “public interface” of campus life, I may actually be the ordinary one—or even the one who seems a little “misguided.”
But if someone entered my world and saw me making games, building websites, tinkering with technology, writing, and making videos, they would probably come away with a completely different impression
At this point, I suddenly felt that judging “who was more impressive” was not as simple as it used to seem
The Map in My Mind
If we look only at people’s eventual destinations, university students’ paths can of course still be roughly compressed into a few categories:
Further education, employment, civil-service or public-institution exams, entrepreneurship, freelancing, or simply not having figured things out yet
But if what we look at is:
“How are they actually planning to live during these university years?”
then things become much more complicated:
Some people devote a great deal of time to studying, maintaining their GPAs, securing postgraduate recommendations, and preparing for exams;
Some settle on a career direction early, then begin building projects, entering competitions, and looking for internships;
Some treat university as a place to expand their social networks, joining student organizations, clubs, and all kinds of activities, and meeting all kinds of people;
Some care more about life itself—dating, playing games, traveling, working out, and taking part in activities—and feel that simply enjoying these years is already enough;
Some immerse themselves in a small technical community. They may not have much of a presence at school, but in private they may already have gone extremely deep into their interests;
Others start thinking about making money very early
And “making money” itself can lead down completely different paths
Some are more technically inclined, trying to make money through development, AI, quantitative research, software services, and similar work;
Others are better at interpersonal relationships and integrating resources, so they engage in campus commerce, purchasing services, information services, and partnerships with nearby businesses, or even organize people to work on small projects
Of course, some approaches skirt the boundaries of school rules or even clearly violate them. That’s another matter entirely
If we expand our view from campus to the internet, this map becomes even more astonishing
Some university students may already be running accounts with tens or even hundreds of thousands of followers;
Some are working on indie development;
Some contribute to open source;
Some have already started businesses;
Some use their skills to take on freelance projects;
Some may even have accumulated far more experience and resources in a particular field than their peers before entering university
But the truly interesting thing is this:
These types are not mutually exclusive
A person can simultaneously be a high-GPA student, a fitness enthusiast, a part-time worker, a club member, and a gamer
A tech geek may also be very good at socializing
Someone who plays video games every day may also spend every winter and summer holiday working part-time
Someone who appears to do nothing but study may secretly run their own account, work on projects, and be in a relationship
So rather than asking how many “types” of university students there are, it may be better to say:
Everyone is assigning points to themselves along several different axes.
Study, employment, technology, money, socializing, creativity, exercise, entertainment, romance, interests…
In the end, these combine into a unique character sheet for each person
We’re Actually Invisible to One Another
When the site owner encounters other people working out at the gym, the first thing he can usually see is just one dimension: “we both work out”
He might secretly feel that he’s “pretty impressive” because he doesn’t just work out—he also makes games, creates things, tinkers with technology, and knows some relatively niche information
The other person might also think:
They work out better, have stronger social skills, know more about what’s happening at school, and have good grades, so they too are “pretty impressive”
That’s the interesting part
We may each see only one attribute of the other person, yet compare it against our own complete character sheet
As a result, two people can independently arrive at the same conclusion without knowing anything about each other:
“I guess I’m still a little more impressive.”
In reality, though, we’re simply living within two different systems of evaluation
He doesn’t know how late I stayed up last night debugging a game mechanic;
I don’t know how much time he has invested in competitions, grades, part-time work, or interpersonal relationships
I see only one cross-section of him
He sees only one cross-section of me
Perhaps a great deal of the inexplicable superiority people feel toward one another comes from this:
We always compare our whole selves with only the small part of someone else that they have revealed
Finally
I suddenly realized that perhaps this is also a miniature version of society as a whole
No wonder people always say that university is a small society (fog)
This little society really is quite complicated
Countless systems are intertwined, and everyone is placed in this place called university, carrying different starting traits and resources, and carving out their own path within the same instance
There has never been one universally “correct way to play” university
Everyone starts with different attributes, then spends their limited number of years investing in completely different skill trees on the same map
The reason we occasionally find others ordinary, strange, or even “misguided” may simply be that we can’t understand the system they’re playing by
Thinking about this, I felt that the campus I walked through every day had become a little more unfamiliar—and a little more fascinating
The next time I pass by an unfamiliar classmate, I’ll probably wonder:
What else is hidden in this person’s character sheet?
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