Three years, and then another three. It feels like what's ending now isn't just the college entrance exam, but my youth itself. Looking back deeply on these years of study and life, I realize that for nearly six years, I've been endlessly hoping for a bright and beautiful future—one that isn't just about impressive scores, but also includes a more aspirational life, stronger friendships, and a romance like those in TV anime. The reality, however, is that none of these three things have come true, even though I don't think the problem is entirely on my side.

Growing up in Shenzhen, students have been used to scrolling through web novels and short videos since childhood. This has instilled in them some misguided views on life, love, and even values. Girls, rather than using their hearts to feel the real world, are more inclined to trust content on that app with a red background and white text. Boys prefer gaming, talking about game-related topics, or repeating stale internet memes—problems I thought only appeared in elementary school kids who got online too early.

This leads to an obvious issue: their sense of authenticity has been deceived by online content. All the fake maturity, fake cross-individual-connection, and fake understanding of the true nature of the world have twisted the hearts of young people in this era. I won't deny that this can be one way for people to engage with the world, but it also builds a gap between their online interactions and real-life communication. The chasm between different groups deepens further—outsiders simply can't get in, and insiders are unwilling to let anyone in, voluntarily trapping themselves in an information—no, more accurately, a cognitive cocoon—an information cocoon is built externally, but a cognitive cocoon is more man-made, a new kind of cocoon formed by the unwillingness to change one's perception of the outside world.

Simultaneously, this gap is more likely to occur among girls—they often have a hierarchy of status that's hard for us to understand. To put it bluntly, using the girls in our class as an example, the complexity of their factional divisions is no less than the dynastic changes during the Three Kingdoms, Two Jins, and Southern and Northern Dynasties. At least the latter has patterns and reasons to follow; the former has almost none, and can change due to sudden events—like someone's wish not being fulfilled in the moment, a friendship suddenly breaking, or even a slip of the tongue. Any of these can intermittently or completely shatter this fragile peace (balance)... I still can't fully understand it to this day, but I know that I might not fully understand them, but I do know that this year is 2026 (if you don't get it, go download Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu, set your age under 18, and choose female as your gender—you'll understand). Also, their level of information access is incredible, and here, "information" is a derogatory term. Maybe it has a lot to do with our class being in the humanities track. Anyway, I'll stop here—probably no one will read my article anyway. If you're willing to listen, feel free to leave a comment below... Remember to set it to private.

From the boys' perspective, the boys in our class are unusually united (compared to other classes, there's no factionalism among the boys; even if one or two think differently from the majority, we tolerate them well). Still, I can't fully establish deep connections with them, even though I crave their recognition and hope for opportunities to help them. But they don't seem to like that. This makes me feel like an independent, special existence they can't understand. I think this is my own problem again—because it's hard to find common topics with them, and because of some strange rumors at the start of the semester, the girls in our class formed a mistaken impression of me for no apparent reason (probably because some mischievous troublemakers in my previous class deliberately dragged my reputation down, and some of them were close friends with a girl who later transferred to our class—they were regulars on that app with a red background and blue text. The girl who spread the rumors about me happened to share a dorm with her. Rmmm, this weird combination, after some strange alchemical reaction like spaghetti with No. 72 concrete, created an interpersonal Berlin Wall with extremely complex principles). As a result, I couldn't maintain a balanced position in interactions with classmates until graduation, so I had to lower my posture to get along with them and maintain good relationships with the teachers...

If you think that's the end, sorry, it's not.

Because many people in our class didn't approve of our homeroom teacher's management—even though she later did a poor job (she was always late for class due to administrative duties and taught at a snail's pace)—I became someone they called "Love*TV" (I still don't know what that means to this day), which further widened the distance between me and the rest of the class.

Speaking of this, I find some students really strange. In their words, our school's food is bad, the teachers are bad, and the campus environment is bad. But I've never felt that way. Because I think a cafeteria is a cafeteria, not a restaurant, and besides, the food isn't bad. Some say the cafeteria doesn't listen to suggestions, but once I suggested that green vegetables should never have chili, and since then, I've never seen chili on them again. As for the teachers and environment being bad, that's even more nonsense. Most of our teachers are among the best in the school, and since it's a new school, the greenery is nice, and the dormitories are four-person rooms with beds and desks. It's hard to imagine how many other schools are better than ours. I don't understand—can't people in 2026 even be content with what they have? Once, I posted our senior year's last-week class schedule on Bilibili, and many people said our schedule was like heaven. I can clearly feel that most schools in mainland China haven't achieved this; many still have hellish schedules like two days off a month or one day off every thirteen days. So I'm quite appreciative of schools in Guangdong.

So, it seems that between others and me, there's a barrier that makes it hard to understand each other. Even though I long to connect with them, I rarely get good results. I'm very dissatisfied with my interpersonal relationships over these three years. I hope things can improve in the future.

I'll stop here for now. This article wasn't written in one sitting, so it's barely coherent. Still, thank you for reading this far.

Thank you.

Best wishes.