2020 psychedelic graduation season
China News Weekly reporter/Xu Tian
Published on 2020.6.29 total issue 953 "China News Weekly"
Wu Chen was a little trance to send off his good classmates.
On the third day after the thesis defense, some students had asked the counselor to sign a note, and soon left the closed management school, which was considered a graduation. There is no deliberately created sense of the graduation season ceremonies, nor a magnified parting. Unlike previous years when the seniors and seniors were sent away, there was no crying or alcohol in the dormitory building, and there was no sleepless night talk.
In early May, their batch of graduates was allowed to return to school in batches. Because the other grades did not return to school, the bustling campus of the past was empty and weirdly quiet. The school is very tightly controlled, the campus is closed and management, and it is not necessary to think about the common dinner and drinking in the graduation season. When entering or leaving any building in the school, you must show your health code and measure your body temperature. The dining table in the cafeteria and the shower head in the public bathroom are all separated by partitions or cotton cloth.
The school did not organize a group graduation photo, nor was it going to hold a graduation ceremony. After the defense, the graduates each take their degree certificate and graduation certificate, even if they graduate. Wu Chen thinks that for him, the graduation season in 2020 is a bit regretful, just like a tune has not reached its climax, it will come to an end, the emotion of graduation has not yet brewed, and the students have dispersed into the crowd.
The 2020 graduation season when the pause button was pressed by the epidemic, and the fast-forward button was suddenly pressed, which has just begun to affect every graduate and every university.
Tossing graduation season
Wu Chen thought about how to pass the last semester of the senior year when Wu Chen was in the hardest part of the postgraduate entrance examination.
In March, the postgraduate re-examination, if the postgraduate entrance examination is successful, give a lecture on experience introduction for the younger students. Write a thesis in April and reply in May. From then on until graduation, it is indispensable to drink in a row and cry with a headache. In June, wearing a bachelor's uniform to take graduation photos in every familiar corner of the campus, at the graduation ceremony to accept the principal's ears, receive a degree certificate and graduation certificate. Then make good friends with each other and say goodbye to the next journey of life.
But the turbulent new coronary pneumonia epidemic disrupted the step-by-step graduation steps from scratch.
The first to be affected is the postgraduate re-examination and thesis writing. Postgraduate examination results are announced later than in the past, and the retest time is postponed to mid-May. Wu Chen was fully prepared for the postgraduate re-examination and dragged on the writing of his graduation thesis. When the psychological pressure is high, he asked the counselor, what if the thesis cannot be answered?
This is probably the common concern of the 2020 graduates. Tsinghua University's fresh graduate Ph.D. student Zhang Li received the notice of delayed start of school on January 26. A few days later, the school collected the opinions of graduates. Most of the students in the department made the same request, hoping to delay the deadline for submission of papers.
According to the school calendar arrangement, the submission of postgraduate graduation thesis starts on February 24 and ends on March 30. Tsinghua University made a modification to this, extending the deadline for submission to the next two weeks, and the time limit for review was reduced from three to two weeks. On the one hand, students are given more time to write papers, on the one hand, they try not to delay everyone's graduation time.
Considering that some students will not be able to complete their degree thesis on time due to the impact of the epidemic, the school will graduate from the original graduate students in July, instead of two batches, and added a graduation and degree review in August. Many domestic universities, including Peking University and Fudan University, have added new graduate graduate batches in August.
Although it is necessary to complete the thesis writing at home, Zhang Li has done the experiment before the winter vacation, which is no big deal. Others do not. One of his classmates still needs to use the school’s mainframe computer for calculations, so he has to ask the teacher in the department to help him and calculate it remotely for three months.
Such "tossing" is not uncommon in this graduation season. An architecture graduate did not bring his computer home when he left school during the winter vacation. As the time for returning to school continued to be postponed, his graduation design was finally hand-painted. A Chinese teacher who has just joined the profession and brought the graduates for the first time. All the revision opinions of the thesis are handwritten and photographed and sent to the students. A graduate of the water supply and drainage profession has no progress at home because of the lack of reference books, and the graduation design progress is slow.
At the end of February, Tsinghua University opened a webinar for graduate students on how to submit papers for review and how to apply for the defense during the epidemic. It also proposed with four other 985 colleges and universities to respond to online video defense of graduates who graduated in the spring. This approach soon spread throughout the country and continued into the summer graduation season.
As the first batch of graduate students who graduated from Tsinghua University in the summer, Zhang Li was asked to respond online by May 27. In the middle of May, while submitting the final paper, he and his classmates began to ask several teachers of the defense committee. Tsinghua University’s requirement for online defense is that if there are no special circumstances, teachers should be in the conference room of Tsinghua University, and students can be at home. Therefore, in addition to coordinating the time of the teachers, Yun Ping also needs to pray that the school conference room, which is very tight during the plea, can also make an appointment.
In addition, Zhang Li has to coordinate many trivial matters that have never been thought of before. For example, if two foreign teachers are going to Tsinghua University in closed management to participate in his defense, he needs to collect their ID number, health status, license plate number and other information in advance, and the college will hand it over to the Security Department for release on that day; The teacher had to go on a business trip before participating in the defense. After returning to Beijing, was there any need for isolation and whether he could enter Tsinghua to participate in the defense? Zhang Li called again to consult.
On the day of the reply, he got up very early, deliberately put on a suit, lifted the desk to the middle of the living room, almost all the paintings and pendants on the background wall were removed, hoping to leave a neat and generous impression to the respondent teacher. According to the usual practice, a banner will be hung in the school's defense venue, and the "Tsinghua University Doctoral Dissertation Defense Conference" will be written. Some students will hang the same banner at home to increase the sense of ceremony. He didn't hang up, but his family brought him a bouquet of flowers to celebrate after the defense ended successfully.
Prepared a feast, the guests did not come
In early May, many colleges and universities nationwide allowed graduates to return to school. Tsinghua University has informed that graduates can return to school in batches from June 6th. They need to apply for the exact time to return to school in advance, and submit three materials one week before returning to school, including health code, proof of itinerary within 14 days and nucleic acid test results . Zhang Li applied to return to school on June 15 and eventually returned to a familiar campus, wearing a academic uniform and bid farewell to the familiar one.
However, some of his classmates are not so lucky. Due to the emergence of newly confirmed local cases in Beijing, the city’s emergency response level was adjusted to level two. From June 17, all graduates of Beijing universities have stopped returning to school. The school will arrange for the graduates to leave the school through online management and remote service.
A graduate of China University of Geosciences lemon only received a notice of returning to school a few days ago. As the epidemic spreads, she thought, can she always go back before graduation? The six girls in the dormitory were busy replying, while discussing what clothes to buy, what makeup to wear, and where to take graduation photos in the WeChat group. They also appointed an instructor in advance to have a farewell meal in the cafeteria. This is the spiritual pillar of the busiest time.
After receiving the notice of returning to school, Lemon immediately bought the train ticket to Beijing at the end of June. Unexpectedly, in the early morning of June 17, the class leader issued a notice in WeChat group, everyone stopped returning to school. There are so many regrets: I failed to go to the laboratory and say goodbye to my instructors; I failed to meet again with the sisters in the dormitory; the school uniformly packed everyone’s items, will it be damaged and lost?
Many colleges and universities in Beijing, which have been vacant for half a year, were fully prepared for graduates to return to school. Peking University put up a slogan at the entrance of the East Gate: "Welcome home!" Beijing University of Chemical Technology set up a graduate signature wall, and a line of words stood on the campus: "The return is still a teenager." Beijing Jiaotong University laid a decorative painting shaped like a railroad track on the ground. From 1896 to 2020 when the school was established, a G2020 high-speed train was printed on the train ticket from Beijing Jiaotong University to the beautiful future. A graduate sighed on Weibo: "The school has already set up the campus, just wait for us to go back to the final graduation ceremony, but the only campus is empty." Beijing Second Foreign Studies University originally prepared the graduation ceremony carefully, However, the "resurgence" of the Beijing epidemic could only be temporarily changed to "cloud farewell", the principal Ji Jinbiao said with emotion: "It feels like, originally prepared a feast, and finally the guests did not come."
There are many colleges and universities in Beijing, and after the epidemic reoccurs again and again, graduates from various colleges and universities in Beijing may become the only graduates in China who cannot return to school. On June 21, Li Yi, deputy secretary of the Beijing Municipal Education Commission and spokesperson of the Municipal Education Commission, revealed that "before the start of school in September, there is a small possibility that college graduates will return to school again." ? This is a difficult problem. Li Yi said that university work should avoid simplification and one-size-fits-all, and communicate with each graduate one by one, one by one, and do one job per person. Some schools have already used live webcasts to help graduates pack their bags.
Due to the need for epidemic prevention and control, many domestic schools have canceled offline graduation ceremonies and collectively taken graduation photos, making the graduation process simple. In Wuhan, the epidemic storm center, Huazhong University of Science and Technology requires graduates to return to school in two batches. Students arrive at the school on June 8 or June 13 to receive a degree certificate and pack their luggage. They must leave the school on June 10 or June 15 two days later. Moreover, each dormitory can only return 2 people per batch.
It would be a pity in life to be unable to put on a degree uniform and experience graduation. Some people say: No matter how many cloud videos are, it can not replace the sense of ceremony brought by the personal experience of the graduation ceremony. Many colleges and universities are exploring how to make up for this regret in the hearts of graduates. Tsinghua University stated that graduates of the 2020 class can choose to return to school in any future year to participate in a degree awarding ceremony. The School of Education of Shanghai Normal University has always paid attention to the graduation ceremony and regarded it as the last lesson between teachers and students. It is also a formal farewell. Deputy Secretary Sun Lin said that the college has made plans for different forms of graduation ceremonies, and has prepared short graduation videos and ordered graduation commemorative ceremonies to send off this special graduate. There is a saying in the Northeast, get dumplings on the train and get off the noodles, and when you say goodbye, eat a dumpling. Harbin University of Science and Technology is preparing to give each graduate a dumpling voucher indefinitely. At any time, the alma mater welcomes graduates to come back and eat this late farewell dumpling.
No graduation photo is another regret. Wang Qian, a graduate of the School of Economics and Management at Fuzhou University, will experience "graduation when she returns to school." According to the school's regulations for returning graduates from different schools, she needs to complete all graduation procedures and pack up her luggage on the day of the application's return to school. . I don’t have to think about taking a graduation photo. “It’s just a good time, only once in a lifetime. This regret will continue to ferment over time.”
"No graduation photo" became a hot topic on Weibo in June. Shandong Linyi University, a girl who graduated from the class because she didn't have a graduation photo, she burst into tears at the roadside. Someone left a message: No graduation dinner, no graduation photo, the real sad thing is that I can't say goodbye face to face and say goodbye.
"The four-year undergraduate course is very special for one person, and very memorable. If you don't even have a graduation photo, I feel that this period is drawn too scribble." Someone posted a discussion on Zhihu, for those who pay attention to the sense of ceremony , Is there any way to make up and relieve? Only one girl returned to school in the graduating class of the School of Foreign Languages, Anqing Normal University. Although she tried to raise her lips, she said frankly that she was full of melancholy and sad. The students of the Department of Visual Communication of the School of Communication Science and Art of Chengdu University of Technology, who took the 2016 graduation photo of the cloud, the characters in the graduation photo are self-portraits created by each classmate in the class, and finally a complete graduation photo is synthesized. Various creative "cloud graduation photos" are popular on the Internet, but many people leave a message: "It's funny and sad".
Disrupted life planning
In February, Wang Qian, a graduate of the School of Economics and Management of Fuzhou University, had a serious family meeting with his elders.
In her life plan, half a year later, she should have gone to the University of New South Wales in Australia to continue her master's degree in finance. Going abroad to study has always been a step that the elders at home hoped her to take. This is a regret in their life, and hope is placed in Wang Qian. So, during the entire year of her junior year, she chose a school and the TOEFL test. The pre-admission notice of the ideal college arrived at the end of the first semester of the senior year. She only needs to score higher language scores to enter school.
The epidemic disrupted the plan. TOEFL IELTS and other exams have been postponed or cancelled repeatedly. My mother is a medical worker, and she is also worried about her risk of going abroad at this time. At the family meeting, Wang Qian discussed with his family and decided to give up the offer and immediately find a job.
She entered the Spring Recruitment market early, brushed a lot of vlogs about cloud interview experience, and slowly groped for interview skills. For example, before the cloud interview, build an online meeting room by yourself, let your friends help you see the camera angle and light the effect. If you are more particular about it, you can buy a beauty lamp. The light will make the interviewer look energetic and leave a good impression on the interviewer.
Wang Qian was lucky and finally received an offer from a favorite game company. And her original life plan was to go to Australia to study finance, seek different opportunities in the new environment, and maybe enter a financial institution to work. Now it has completely changed.
According to 2019 data, in addition to 30% of Peking University graduates who choose to study abroad, only about 20 major colleges and universities graduates study abroad ratio exceeds 10%, the group of students studying abroad is relatively niche. But this group of people with dreams of studying abroad, but almost everyone is caught in the dilemma of waiting and watching and turning to the spring market. It is not too much to turn around decisively like Wang Qian. Many graduates who are about to study abroad are still waiting, hoping to postpone enrollment for a year.
Every year, some graduates from the School of Petrochemical Engineering of Fuzhou University go to overseas partner institutions for further study, including the National University of Singapore and the University of Magdeburg, Germany. College Deputy Secretary Yue Zhiqiang told China News Weekly that after the outbreak, the college came forward to communicate with several colleges and universities, hoping to postpone the enrollment of students until next spring. However, some overseas colleges and universities sent emails to reply: If there are many new students who defer enrollment for one year, they will have to compete with the next applicants, and the school cannot guarantee that they will be offered in the coming year.
In the past few months, the TOEFL IELTS test has been postponed as well as various qualification exams, such as teacher qualifications. Liang Zixuan, a graduate of Chinese language and literature majors, is preparing to participate in the Spring Recruitment after failing the postgraduate entrance examination. Parents hope that she can work in a stable job, such as going to a government office or school. After thinking about it, she felt that her character was more suitable for being a teacher, so she waited for the teacher qualification exam.
In 2019, the written test of the teacher qualification certificate is in March, and the interview is in May, which is enough to ensure that graduates can determine their employment destination before graduation. However, affected by the epidemic, this year's teacher qualification examination has been delayed until the second half of the year. To this end, the state has issued regulations that implement the qualifications of teachers in elementary and middle schools, kindergartens, and secondary vocational schools to "take the job first, and then examine the certificate." However, Zhang Zixuan still couldn't apply for primary and middle schools in his home province and capital city because he didn't have a Putonghua level certificate. He had to retreat and go to offline education and training institutions to accumulate experience or go to township primary schools as substitute teachers. Six months later, if she successfully obtained the teacher qualification certificate, her original plan can be put on the agenda.
Trial and error along the way, corrections along the way, the law of survival of the fittest, this season is practiced to the extreme. Some people describe this year's graduates, "The sword is not properly equipped and it is already a river and lake to go out."
Schools are more anxious than students
"The 17 counselors of all grades currently serve graduates. The first thing to get up every morning is to go to various recruitment websites to collect employment information and send them to the graduates' class." Hunan University of Science and Technology Business School Chen Pan, the director of the office, said that the teachers responsible for student work can solve the employment problems in previous years. This year, all 139 teachers in the college searched for recruitment information.
Hunan University of Science and Technology is a comprehensive university located in Xiangtan. Jiang Liping, director of the school’s Admissions and Employment Division, told China News Weekly that, according to the original plan, they will hold one or two large-scale offline job fairs of more than 500 companies this spring. After the invitation for registration was issued in January, nearly 300 companies had already registered before the epidemic. After the school decided to postpone the start of school, the Admissions and Employment Office immediately changed the offline recruitment fair to online.
In recent years, more and more graduates have chosen "World War II" postgraduate. Fuzhou University made a preliminary survey of 5,700 graduates this year, and 300 people decided to "World War II." The "slow employment" phenomenon that has existed in previous years is more common this year.
A class counselor said that he had held 9 seminars within 7 days. "I haven't figured it out yet." "It's WWII if I can't see it." The graduates' inattentive attitude made him feel stressed. In the matter of finding a job, colleges and schools seem to be more anxious than students. Almost every graduate counselor has persuaded this year's graduates and even their parents that they should first find employment before choosing a career.
Fu Xinchao, director of the Enrollment and Employment Division of Henan Finance and Finance College, told China News Weekly with a little helplessness. For graduate employment, there is a feeling of "the emperor is not in a hurry", "The school is in a hurry, but the students are not in a hurry. The slow employment psychology of students further exacerbates the difficulty of recruiting in the spring."
Zhang Chenggang, director of the China Center for New Employment Patterns at the Capital University of Economics and Business, mentioned in an interview that the proportion of "slow employment" is gradually increasing. This proportion is about 10% among Beijing college students, and may be higher in other regions.
"This phenomenon may not have been formed in the past few months, but gradually formed in the past two years, but the epidemic has made it stand out." Liu Kuo, a teacher at the Employment Department of Civil Aviation University of China, also noticed this problem. He understands the mentality of these students, the family conditions in which they grew up are more favorable, the ideas are diverse, and they need to be guided by the concept of employment.
Under such circumstances, the school had to exert all its efforts to ensure the employment rate. In the composition of the employment rate, the proportion of students entering a higher education accounted for a certain proportion. Both Fuzhou University and Hunan University of Science and Technology have provided interview guidance for students who want to participate in the graduate “cloud re-examination”, and have prepared special classrooms and hardware equipment. The School of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering of Fuzhou University deliberately provided five in-service postgraduate places, hoping to admit graduates who passed the national line in the postgraduate examination this year but eventually fell out of the list. They can study on the job while working. The five places seem to be few, but they can increase the college’s employment rate by 2%.
The epidemic has caused great uncertainty in the employment of colleges and universities. In the past years, the teachers responsible for employment are very clear about how many employers will release the demand for the spring recruitment, and what the final signing rate will be. In the final period of the graduation season, several recruitment fairs should be arranged to further help students find employment.
Now, this determination is gone. Jiang Liping said that it is difficult for him to judge whether the current status of the employer is full, or whether it reduces or cancels the needs of the employer; how effective an online recruitment event will eventually be, and how many online recruitment events need to be held. It is difficult to grasp the employment rate of previous years.
During this time in previous years, the employment work is entering the final stage, and the focus is shifting to graduate dispatch programs. Obviously, this year's progress has fallen behind. Jiang Liping estimated that the employment service for the 2020 graduates may continue until the end of this year.
Zhao Yansong, director of the Fuzhou University Student Employment and Entrepreneurship Guidance Center, also admitted that there is no summer vacation this year for employment. What worries him even more is that when these batches of graduates leave school, there must still be a lot of people whose jobs have not been settled. A few months later, the autumn recruitment of 2021 graduates is about to begin. Two graduates are intertwined, and the next year's employment may be more difficult.
(Wang Qian and Zhang Li changed their names as requested by the interviewee)
"China News Weekly" No. 23, 2020
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