Make a Fortune and Become Well-off [90] - Chapter 149

The principal said, “She doesn’t need to devote all her time to competition exams. I see that she’s very smart, and her grades in both her studies and the competition class are excellent. She can handle both.”

It sounded simple, but it was very difficult to actually do. High school was already stressful, and every student was working hard.

But Teacher Wang couldn’t argue, and the principal wasn’t wrong. He could only pay more attention to Jiang Ning and ensure her grades didn’t slip because of the competition class.

He also asked the other subject teachers to keep a close watch on Jiang Ning’s academic performance.

The Chinese teacher was finally in a better mood. Jiang Ning had good scores in Chinese, which meant she listened to what he said.

Who didn’t like students with good grades?

The teachers taught more than one class, and when they went to other classes to go over exam papers, they couldn’t help but ask their students, “Do you know what score Jiang Ning from Class 3 got?”

In monthly exams, rankings weren’t displayed, so students from other classes certainly didn’t know.

The teachers, holding the papers, would announce, “The total score is 750 points. She scored over 670 points on the exam. She’s also in the competition class. Why is it that I teach Class 3 the same way as you, but they score so high while you score so low?”

“Does this mean it’s not my teaching that’s the problem, but that you haven’t studied hard enough?”

The classmates thought to themselves, Teacher, you may teach the same, but Jiang Ning was the only one in Class 3 to score so high, not the whole class.

The teachers began to suspect that Jiang Ning had been a top student in middle school but didn’t do well on the high school entrance exam and ended up in the parallel class.

Some students were like this. They did very well on regular exams, but when it came to important ones, they didn’t perform as well due to psychological pressure.

With this in mind, they no longer envied Teacher Wang from Class 3. They feared Jiang Ning might fall into this category, usually scoring in the top ten of her grade but underperforming in the important exams.

The class teachers of Class 1 and Class 2 thought the same, so they weren’t jealous of Teacher Wang anymore.

Their classes were full of top students.

But the students didn’t know what the teachers were thinking. After the teachers once again used Jiang Ning to motivate them, they knew she was a top student, and the idea took root in their minds.

However, Teacher Xia, who taught high school mathematics that year, was in the same math group office. After hearing the first-grade math teachers mention Jiang Ning in the office, she smiled at the girls in her class. “It’s often said that girls don’t perform as well as boys in high school and that girls lack stamina. That’s all nonsense. There’s a girl in the first grade now whose high school entrance exam score was only a little over 500 points, just above the cut-off for No. 1 High School. This month, she scored over 670, all while being in the competition class.”

“They say girls don’t have stamina,” she repeated to the girls. “You have to prove them wrong.”

Teacher Xia was a very gentle teacher, speaking softly. Her husband always worried she couldn’t control the students, so he would come to her class daily to help. In managing her students and class, Teacher Xia was almost like a homeroom teacher.

That evening, it was time for self-study, and the students arrived at the competition class one by one. Teacher Ji was already there. Before class began, he handed out test papers to the students. Since it wasn’t a formal test, the test time was only forty-five minutes. Almost no one finished the paper, so most scores were low. Everyone glanced at each other’s scores when they got their papers. Their scores were so dismal that they began to doubt themselves. They simply couldn’t believe it and couldn’t help but sneak peeks at others’ scores, wondering if they were the only ones who had done so poorly.

But they felt relieved upon seeing that they weren’t the only ones who had struggled with the exam.

Except for Jiang Ning, the students in the competition class were all from the two key classes. The teacher in the key class hadn’t used Jiang Ning’s results to motivate them, mainly because they didn’t know Jiang Ning, and there wasn’t anything particularly exciting about it. As for the test results, Jiang Ning wasn’t overly curious about her score. She merely sighed when she received her paper.

“71 points.”

“I got 79.”

“I only got 65. I didn’t even finish writing. It was so hard.”

They were all ranked among the top students in their grade and had never done poorly in math before. Yet here, each of them was tormented by the Mathematical Olympiad.

The main issue was that they’d never encountered Olympiad problems before. They thought it would be similar to regular math, but it turned out to be much more difficult.

Jiang Ning didn’t join their conversation since she wasn’t familiar with them yet. However, the girls in the class noticed Jiang Ning sitting alone in the back. One poked her arm curiously and asked, “Jiang Ning, how many marks did you get?”

Others turned around, curious to hear her response. They assumed that, given how short her time in the competition class had been and how much content she hadn’t yet covered, she’d surely rank last.

Jiang Ning looked up and smiled, raising her paper. “I got 82.”

On a 100-mark paper, Jiang Ning could score 82, which was already very high.

Everyone was a little surprised. “So high.”

Several girls gathered around Jiang Ning to look at her paper, and some boys wanted to come over and take a look. However, No. 1 High School was very strict. Male and female students were seated in groups, and they were not allowed to be together at ordinary times, so they all hesitated.

But they were really curious, so the boys stayed a little away from the girls but leaned in to take a look.

Then they were surprised to find that Jiang Ning actually scored more than they did. The paper was lengthy and really difficult. However, as long as Jiang Ning did something, she basically did it right.

In other words, if Jiang Ning was given more time, she could have finished the paper, and her score would definitely be higher.

That made them look at the classmate from the parallel class in a new light for the first time, and they had a new understanding of Jiang Ning.

After being in the competition class for a month, everyone was no longer as unfamiliar as before. Seeing everyone looking at Jiang Ning’s paper, several boys from Class 2 also came over curiously.

There were few girls in the competition class, and there were no separate groups for boys and girls. Teacher Ji was more open-minded and did not stop these students from discussing their grades. However, he was afraid that the director of the Political and Education Department would see them, so he went to the door of the classroom and looked at the corridor outside. The elusive director of the Political and Education Department might suddenly appear at the door of the competition class.

After a while, the evening self-study bell rang. The students returned to their seats. Teacher Ji walked to the podium and looked at them with a smile on his face.