Oriental Guardian, June 24, 2010

Starting this afternoon, students in Nanjing can check out how they did on the recent National Matriculation Exam. Today's Oriental Guardian ruminates on the anxieties involved in getting up the nerve to call the score hotline.

The appointed time has come.

Even though the official hotline opens at 8pm,

Test-takers can check their scores as early as five or six this afternoon.

In Nanjing, 37,000 hearts,

Or perhaps three to five times that many, will dial the same telephone number.

16887799 — dialing that number sends tremors through emotions already hanging on the brink.

16887799 — a number like a compass, a nervous finger indicating the direction of flight.

You are here; the scores are there.

The numbers represent the future, and they are the roads lying ahead of you, none broader than the rest, and each of them with its own wonders.

Regardless of what the three digit number turns out to be, remember to be calm;

The truly strong do not agonize over a phone call.

1,547 tertiary institutions in our province plan on recruiting 410,857 students, so perhaps there really is no need to be nervous.

Our best wishes go out to all children checking their scores, and we add one last thought:

This number is not all that you are struggling for, and does not represent the entirety of your life.

I remember that year in my own life, with so much time devoted to worrying.

Facing that three-digit total at the age of eighteen, there seemed to be no way I would be satisfied.

My mother checked it, and then my father worriedly checked it again, and then finally it was my turn.

At dawn I dreamed of checking scores.

I don't remember the outcome, which I took pains to forget.

"Your language score is...." The road has just begun.