Top Student at Their Peak-Chapter 136 - 87: No Comparison, No Hurt

Xiao Zhou, Yujiang University.

Xue Song really closed his eyes, sat in his seat, took three deep breaths to calm his emotions before downloading Qiao Yu’s paper from the email.

If Qiao Yu saw this scene, he would probably understand just how angry Old Xue was just now.

But what can he do? The mentor and student relationship is a mutual choice, and no matter how poorly a recruited student’s paper is written, he still has to read it, and maybe even help revise it.

There’s one thing Qiao Yu got right: Xue Song indeed didn’t have high expectations for the first paper submitted by Qiao Yu. His standards had unconsciously lowered a bit, as long as the logic was coherent and there weren’t too many obvious errors.

After fully calming himself, Xue Song opened Qiao Yu’s paper.

...

The title was already determined by him for Qiao Yu, so nothing much to say about it. The abstract and introduction were written decently, without any glaring mistakes, which made Xue Song unconsciously relax his furrowed brows.

Considering that Qiao Yu was just in his first year of high school, he even wanted to give the abstract and introduction an excellent rating.

Although the abstract and introduction don’t take up much of the paper, in fact, for many students, these parts are rather tricky.

After all, these two sections need to concisely summarize the core content and main conclusions of the entire paper, while also showing how this paper differs from other similar ones, to attract other researchers to read it.

So it’s quite particular. Being able to write it decently, in Xue Song’s view, is at least at a PhD level.

For example, his graduate student just wrote an abstract and introduction that were completely irrelevant. The structure and methods in the paper were barely highlighted. Qiao Yu, on the other hand, had already provided a highly concise summary of the whole paper’s structure in the introduction.

This is actually very important, because it provides readers with a general impression and expectation of the following content.

Feeling that Qiao Yu’s paper was not bad, Xue Song didn’t continue reading it all at once. Instead, he stood up, casually stretched his body, refilled his empty teacup, and then sat back down in front of the computer to continue reading Qiao Yu’s paper.

Qiao Yu directly sent him the document, so if there were any issues, he could annotate them directly on the side. It was more efficient than printing it out and marking it manually.

Some professors still prefer and insist on reading printed papers, where all papers are printed before being read. Xue Song often did this too, but generally when he didn’t need to make special treatments or give reading comments.

Evidently, he didn’t think Qiao Yu’s first submitted paper didn’t require any of his comments.

Then he began to quietly read the paper.

With one hand lightly moving the mouse subconsciously, occasionally pausing on a screen for a moment to think seriously, then continuing to slowly slide the mouse, he unknowingly became engrossed in it. Thus, Xue Song sat in the office from two o’clock in the afternoon until after five o’clock, until the paper concluded with conclusions and outlook, and the list of cited references.

Yes, spending over three hours, Xue Song read through the entire paper Qiao Yu sent in one go, and his hands didn’t even touch the keyboard.

Then he sat there dumbfounded.

In his memory, he didn’t even seem to see any grammatical errors? Okay, maybe in the first half he was picking out problems with a mentor’s mindset, and in the second half, he was already reading it normally, so he didn’t notice?

But a paper written by a high school student, after reading it through once, he couldn’t find any place where he should offer opinions? And he even felt he gained a lot? Some content might even be referenced in his next paper?

Was this sophisticated paper-writing technique really self-taught?

Xue Song still remembered that while studying at Princeton as an undergraduate, he didn’t start writing his first paper until sophomore year, and the teacher picked out a bunch of mistakes.

After taking a deep breath, Xue Song stood up, stretched his body, and then picked up his phone to call Qiao Yu again.

After ringing about a dozen times, the call was connected.

"Huff huff... Professor Xue, huff... hello."

"What are you doing?"

"Got tired from looking at papers this afternoon, huff... just went to the track to play basketball with classmates during the big sports break."

Big sports break? Playing basketball? Such unfamiliar terms.

High school life that’s so nostalgic! No, that’s not the point.

"Let me ask you, did someone help you edit and polish your paper?"

"No way!"

"You also didn’t consult any paper counseling teachers?"

"Really didn’t! Mr. Xue, the document summarizing paper points you sent me is already written clearly enough, why would I waste money on that? Besides, can’t you directly help me revise? Do you think my paper is pretty good?"

This made Xue Song speechless.

It’s more than just good!

If not for fearing that the kid on the other end of the phone would get cocky, he planned to overwhelmingly praise this paper!

For the first time writing, to produce a textbook-level paper, this ability is quite extraordinary.

Some people are already graduate students, and the papers they write make him want to scream! Meanwhile, some people are still high schoolers, yet they already produce papers so well written that no revisions from a mentor are needed, and they could be submitted directly.

The gap here is big enough to compare a human’s intelligence to a dog’s, isn’t it?

Three seconds later, Xue Song blurted out: "Yes, the paper is written very well! At least ten thousand times better than some of your seniors! But you can’t compare with them."