Shengliver’s Note: This entry is credited to my teen student called Mr Li Yiyan, a 2016 YYHS graduate. His humour has me in stitches. LOL!

Summer vacation is over. We have started a new term. I am so excited that I am now a Year 11 student.

On August 22, my high school will have its new blood rush in. The freshmen will be welcomed with open arms to the ancient academy. At the school entrance, volunteers wearing badges and stripes will usher them to the dorms and classrooms. The new boys and girls not only will have sunny smiles on the faces but will appear optimistic and ambitious. They may be dreaming that YYHS is heaven on earth, an idea they were sold a couple of months ago by the school’s self-promotional posters and flyers. If they stay here over a week, however, they’ll find out that it is the biggest lie of the twenty-first century.

They are junior to us. As a sophomore, I should acquaint them with some unwritten rules they have to observe in YYHS. For example, when the bell rings at the end of the last class mornings and afternoons, we have to rush like the wind to the canteen. If you do not run, sorry man, you may well end up with an empty stomach, or you may have to do with the most disgusting leftovers.

Some of the freshmen may not be able to adapt themselves to life here in the beginning. Don’t get yourself worried. It is simply a matter of time. If someday you, all of a sudden, become aware that you are getting silent for no extrinsic reasons and you don’t speak for hours and hours on end, congratulations, man, you will count as a genuine YYHS old dog. By then, you will be qualified to make newer boys and girls wiser.

Study is absolutely the No. 1 stuff at the GOS. With good grades in exams, honours will be piled upon your head. You will be titled, at grand ceremonies with music and speeches, “a studying star” or “a model teenager” among others. So, study takes priority over any other business. Everything else, eating and sleeping included, has to give way to it. Should you be thirsty for homework and assignments, then there is no doubt that you will be in heaven here every moment every day.

Best wishes to you, fresh blood. Welcome on board. Have a great time at YYHS.