时光荏苒
哎，又毕业了，算上考研二战整整求学20年（6+3+3+4+1+3）了，经历了 5 次毕业，时间过的是真快啊，我还能翻到 3 年前报道时写的博客呢，那已经是1000多天以前了。
https://w-gx.github.io/2020/09/11/2020-09/%E6%8A%A5%E9%81%93/
本科时期我是标准宅男，每天宅在宿舍打游戏，大学的培养方式和高中又不一样，同学们之间不需要每天朝夕相处了，性格上使我具有天然的交友劣势。
我一直比较喜欢高中时期的同学们，还记得毕业时也是通宵，先 KTV，再网吧。我只记得和我有关的细节，比如 “源” 同学带我唱日不落🤣。转眼间高中毕业快 10 年了，其实挺想念 “源” 同学 和 “昊” 同学等人的，但是我们之间不聊天至少得有个 3 5 年了。可怕啊，生活上没有交集，对同学们的印象和情感就停留在毕业的那一刻了，我的性格确实不擅长维系感情。
研究生的生活和高中一样，需要每天在一起假装学习。我比较喜欢这样的相处模式，可以有很多时间聊天。
转眼间同学们又要各奔东西了，这三年的时光历历在目，研一刚来在大水池和导师见面，导师在我们这一届招了7个男生，希望我们能够努力推进项目，奈何我们真不争气，让老师失望了😂。
研究生期间做的第一个选择是选组，小刘同学说感觉小红师姐不错，我相信小刘同学的感觉，跟着选了小红师姐，我这个人在做选择的时候其实是信命的，当时也觉得选组似乎没有那么重要。但回头看来，组存在的真正意义是选择朋友，同一小组的人总是更容易熟悉一些。
研一时期是最没有地位的，负责承担实验室的大部分任务和周会挨批工作。在这期间是我看文献最认真的时期，我熟悉的第一篇论文是一个做低照度图像增强的，我还翻译了全文还写了博客记录，看他的有些公式似乎也不是很复杂，我就尝试复现了一下，并且在组会上汇报了。我还给梁师兄展示了一下复现出来的代码的增强效果，有的图还行，有的图不行。这时候师兄说了句"可以挑"，简单的三个字其实已经说出了如今大部分学术论文的本质，只是当时的我还没有完全领会，可能是作者讲故事的能力太好了吧，我觉得他说的很有道理，并且公式很神奇。随着文献看的越来越多，代码写的越来越多，渐渐的我明白了这些论文到底在做什么——在做生意😏。于是我发现做一个真正有用、有意义的算法其实很难，做一些无用的算法很难让我有兴趣，不容易获得自我认同，还不如本科期间写一个小软件，起码知道自己做的东西能用来干什么，再加上我们这届不要求发表小论文，所以“水论文”的动力也渐渐丧失了。说到这里就得感谢师姐帮我在毕业论文的作者简历上加了两行字，避免空空的不好看😄。
没想到读研还能在自己实验室遇到本科校友，柳兄是实验室的传奇人物，只需要努力一个学期就顺利毕业，当时觉得他毕业论文的算法可真垃圾，就是疯狂缝合，取其精华，合成糟粕。可是轮到自己毕业了，才发现自己论文的算法还不如人家柳兄呢，太水了。从他身上还能深刻领会到一个道理，在时代、历史面前，个人的努力真是太微不足道了，明明大家都是差不多的研究生，2年前和2年后的就业差距就这么大。于是我更信命了。
研究生期间最直击灵魂的问题就是“这周干啥了？”，不过这问题的杀伤力可能对不同性格的人有所不同，像是我和文文姐似乎比较烦写周报。
得益于我们这届的同学们单身人士特别多，所以干饭很团结，三年来每天都是成群结队去吃饭，这个吃饭团队规模是实验室最大的了，以前没有，以后估计也不会有😂。
正如付老师在散伙饭上说的一样，这些人很难再聚齐了，人生就是这样，来了一批，走了一批。
一想到毕业之后大家就各奔东西了，总是有些不舍，于是我尝试挽留文文姐😉。恰巧女朋友的工作单位还在招人，工作强度不大，挺躺平的；又恰巧文文姐还没有工作；文文姐如果去了那里简直是满足了各方利益需求，我在这个城市挽留住了一个熟人，女朋友在工作单位也有了“熟人”，文文姐成功就业。奈何这里不是她“熟悉”的地方，如果是我，我应该也会走。
27号领了毕业证书，三年的研究生生涯彻底画上了句号。做着一些和平常差不多的事，帮竣博哥领了毕业证，和文文姐闲聊着普通的话题，不经意之间，这就是最后一次了。
最后，愿友谊地久天长，祝愿大家都有美好未来！
Time Flies
Sigh, I’ve graduated again. Counting the second attempt at the postgraduate entrance exam, I’ve spent a full 20 years studying (6+3+3+4+1+3) and experienced 5 graduations. Time really flies — I can still find the blog post I wrote about reporting to school 3 years ago, and that was already more than 1000 days ago.
https://w-gx.github.io/2020/09/11/2020-09/%E6%8A%A5%E9%81%93/
During my undergraduate years I was a typical otaku, staying in the dorm every day playing games. University education is also different from high school — classmates no longer need to spend every day together, and my personality put me at a natural disadvantage when it came to making friends.
I’ve always been fond of my high school classmates. I remember that at graduation we also stayed up all night — KTV first, then an internet café. I only remember the details that involve me, like classmate “Yuan” leading me in singing "Sun Never Sets"🤣. In the blink of an eye, high school graduation was nearly 10 years ago. I genuinely miss “Yuan”, “Hao” and the others, but we haven’t even chatted for at least 3 to 5 years. It’s scary — with no overlap in our lives, my impressions of and feelings for my classmates froze at the moment of graduation. My personality really isn’t good at maintaining relationships.
Graduate life was like high school — we needed to be together every day, pretending to study. I quite like this way of getting along, because it leaves plenty of time to chat.
In the blink of an eye, my classmates were about to go their separate ways again. The past three years are still vivid in my memory. In the first year of my master’s, I had just arrived and met my advisor at the big pool; he had recruited 7 boys in our cohort and hoped we could push the projects forward, but we really let him down😂.
The first choice I made during grad school was picking a research group. Classmate Xiao Liu said Senior Sister Xiaohong seemed nice, and I trusted Xiao Liu’s judgment, so I followed and chose Senior Sister Xiaohong. When it comes to making choices, I’m actually a believer in fate, and at the time I didn’t think picking a group mattered that much. But looking back, the real meaning of a group is choosing your friends — people in the same group always get familiar with each other more easily.
My first year of grad school was the period of least status — I was responsible for most of the lab’s tasks and for getting criticized at weekly meetings. It was also the period when I read papers most seriously. The first paper I became familiar with was about low-light image enhancement; I translated the whole paper and even wrote a blog post about it. Its formulas didn’t seem all that complicated, so I tried to reproduce it and presented the results at the group meeting. I also showed Senior Brother Liang the enhancement results of the reproduced code — some images looked decent, some didn’t. That’s when he said “you can pick and choose”. Those simple three words actually revealed the essence of most academic papers today, but I didn’t fully grasp it at the time — maybe because the authors were just too good at telling stories. I thought what he said made a lot of sense, and the formulas seemed magical. As I read more papers and wrote more code, I gradually understood what these papers are really doing — doing business😏. I then realized that making a truly useful and meaningful algorithm is really hard, while useless algorithms don’t interest me and don’t give me a sense of self-worth. I’d rather write a small software program like I did in my undergraduate years, at least knowing what my work can be used for. Besides, our cohort wasn’t required to publish short papers, so my motivation to “churn out water papers” gradually faded. Speaking of which, I should thank my senior sister for adding two lines to the author biography of my graduation thesis, so it wouldn’t look empty and plain😄.
I never expected to meet an undergraduate schoolmate in my own lab during grad school. Brother Liu is a legend in the lab — he only needed one semester of effort to graduate smoothly. At the time I thought his thesis algorithm was really garbage, just crazy stitching — taking the essence and combining it into dross. But when it was my turn to graduate, I found that my own thesis algorithm wasn’t even as good as Brother Liu’s — too weak. I also learned a profound lesson from him: in the face of the times and history, individual effort is truly insignificant. We were all similar grad students, yet the employment gap between 2 years earlier and 2 years later is this big. So I became even more of a believer in fate.
The most soul-striking question during grad school was “What did you do this week?”, though its destructive power may vary for people of different personalities — for example, Sister Wenwen and I seemed to particularly hate writing weekly reports.
Thanks to the fact that our cohort had particularly many singles, we were very united when it came to eating. For three years we went to meals in groups every day — this dining group was the largest the lab had ever seen. There wasn’t one before, and I doubt there will be one in the future😂.
Just as Teacher Fu said at the farewell dinner, it’s hard to gather these people together again. Life is like this — a batch comes, a batch goes.
Whenever I thought about everyone going their separate ways after graduation, I felt reluctant to let go, so I tried to keep Sister Wenwen around😉. It happened that my girlfriend’s workplace was still hiring, with a light workload and a pretty laid-back atmosphere; and it also happened that Sister Wenwen didn’t have a job yet. If she went there, it would satisfy everyone’s interests: I would keep an acquaintance in this city, my girlfriend would have a “familiar face” at work, and Sister Wenwen would find a job. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a place she was “familiar” with — if I were her, I would probably leave too.
On the 27th I received my diploma, drawing a complete end to my three years of grad school. I did things much like usual — picked up the diploma for Brother Junbo, chatted with Sister Wenwen about ordinary topics — and without realizing it, this was the last time.
Finally, may our friendship last forever, and may everyone have a bright future!
