When I decided to take the postgraduate entrance examination at the beginning of last year, I found out that I was pregnant. Although I had been preparing for pregnancy, when I clearly saw the two deep red lines on the pregnancy test stick, I was still confused for a few seconds.

Not long ago, my boss asked me to study for a graduate degree in the next two years, otherwise I would not be given any chance of promotion. Now that I am pregnant, in a company with many strong people, my path to promotion seems to be mediocre. More elusive.

Gone are the days when one person was single and the whole family was not hungry. Now there is an unknown life in my belly, and I must take responsibility for it. Responsible, this word sounds easy to say, but to truly achieve it, it takes a lot of energy and effort.

The prerequisite for being responsible for others is that you must first be responsible for yourself. When my boss gave me an ultimatum, he was also telling me that if I didn’t work hard, I wouldn’t even have a chance to get promoted.

Educational qualifications are still the threshold for advancement

There is no shortage of talents in this society. If you don’t believe it, if you just grab someone around you, he might just be a highly educated turtle. If you are not admitted to a first-tier university for your undergraduate degree, you will not be able to compare with the elites from first-tier universities whether you are working or continuing your studies. Even if they entered the workforce after graduating from undergraduate degrees, they later became part-time postgraduate students. You use the speed of a civil aircraft to catch up with the proud people who have already boarded the supersonic plane. When you finally hear their voices and think you can finally become one of them, you find that they have already rushed ahead, and you can't even see their shadows. Less than.

What’s even more frightening is that they have no intention of slowing down at all. While doing their job, any one of the first-class architects, CPA, CFA, and high-level certificates can show you a slap in the face. The slash young people who start businesses and the writers who open public accounts all seem to be able to crush me, the ordinary me. I am like a weak grass, looking up at these people who have risen from the ground and are still spreading their branches. big tree.

In the fight for promotion in a company, academic qualifications are often a hurdle. The reality is so cruel. People who are better than you can leave you far behind with just a slight lift of their feet. And these realities also tell me that academic qualifications are still the basic element for you to achieve value improvement. For ordinary people like you and me, they are still the indispensable brick that opens the door to the new world. By improving your academic qualifications, you can expand your horizons and expand your choices. Otherwise, why are there so many continuing education advertisements flashing around in your computer every day? I have been working for 7 years, but I still can't compete with a stupid young man with a higher education than me. This is the reason.

I am one of the passengers on civil aviation, and the bleak current situation has made me feel deeply anxious. I had to look at myself again, up and down, inside and out.

What kind of person are you?

Socrates’ famous saying completely opens the door to inward exploration. He said that you must know yourself. In other words, you have to know what kind of person you are? What kind of virtue do you have?

I grew up in an intellectual family in a small 18th-tier city. My family was not wealthy, but I was able to live comfortably since childhood. The overall atmosphere of the family is harmonious and stable, so everything from elementary school to university was smooth sailing. There were no ups and downs in my life, and my studies were done step by step without any setbacks. This kind of experience made me develop a restrained and lack of self-discipline. Once I left the constraints of the outside world, I started to run wild and completely unruly.

He has never experienced storms and has never seen the world. He is rebellious and willful and full of poetry and enthusiasm for the distant future, but he is content with the current contentment.

Watching the craze of mass entrepreneurship with itch, I dreamed that one day I could make a lot of money, then quit my job and enjoy the beautiful life of growing flowers and vegetables at home and sleeping until I wake up naturally. I don’t dare to leave my current job, which is more than enough than above.

My working ability is average. Educational qualifications are average. Looks average. The family is just so so.

But don’t I have any advantages? After much deliberation, all I can think of is a serious work attitude. This is due to character and experience. It is also forced by reality. People without strength and a good attitude will really be torn apart by the waves of the times. At least I worked hard until the end the day before delivery, worked overtime when it was time, and never asked for leave or left early. It was precisely because of my only advantage that saved me in the end that the leader gave me a chance.

My character may be representative of the millions of people in the workplace today who have traditional ideas, pursue stability, want stability in this world, but also long for the outside world, but have too much ambition but not enough energy. This kind of personality also determines that the best way for me to change is to pass the traditional way of improving my academic qualifications through examinations!

Why it is necessary to change

The work content of my current position is very trivial. I work passively from morning to night. Overtime is a common thing, and I leave the time to myself. Very rarely, people ask me what exactly I am doing in the company. I usually answer, doing odd jobs.

Not to be self-deprecating, this is indeed the case. Although it is said to be able to train people, from a rational perspective, there is no long-term development, and there is not much that can be truly learned. It is more of a repetitive labor. If I continue to stay here, I may be able to numb myself in my comfort zone, but the job that I can see at the end makes me despair, and I don’t want to live like an old man who has returned to work at a young age.

Changing positions has long been included in my plan, but with no expertise and a single knowledge structure, how can I be qualified to change positions? I remind myself all the time that in such a company and in such a position, you don’t have to worry about being fired, but you have to worry about being cooked and think you are very comfortable. The most terrifying thing is boiling frogs in warm water. After seeing this situation clearly, I finally made up my mind to take the postgraduate entrance examination!

Finally decided to take the postgraduate entrance examination even with a big belly

Japan’s super mother raised four children by herself and still went to Harvard, the world’s top university. Life and business are in order. Not everyone can achieve this kind of miraculous legend, but you can always try to get closer to the role model and create your own magic according to your own situation.

To achieve this, good time management is particularly important. After making up your mind to take the postgraduate entrance examination, you must make arrangements early. The more time you have, the more relaxed people will be. Because the expected date of delivery is September, the first three months after delivery are spent in confinement, breastfeeding, and coaxing the baby to sleep. As a new mother, I cannot spare too much time to review. The postgraduate entrance examination is on December 24th, so I have enough time to review after delivery. There was almost no time. The child's situation was unpredictable and we couldn't fight an unprepared battle. So I started my postgraduate review a year in advance. I didn't plan to register for classes. I searched and collected information about major universities by myself, prepared reference materials by myself, and through social networking Exchange information with other candidates online, prepare for interviews, and submit application materials.

Prescribe the right medicine according to your own weak links. I am a liberal arts student, and the first link I review is mathematics, which is my weakest. I am busy at work and often study until late at night after get off work, without caring about the baby in my belly.

During early pregnancy, my body reacted strongly, I felt nauseous every day, I couldn’t vomit and couldn’t eat anything. While other people's pregnancy weight skyrocketed, I lost almost ten pounds. Every time I study, I wonder, why are you so hard on yourself? But when I thought about my current embarrassing situation and imagined the possibilities in the future, I read hard like a chicken blood.

Starting in May, major colleges and universities started to conduct early interviews. I rushed to apply for the first batch, because the later it was, the harder it was to control the situation. Facts have proved that my approach was right. In June, I participated in the Target The teacher at the school was very kind and the interview ended in a professional and harmonious process. In the end, I successfully passed the early interview with excellent results. The school I applied for later was abandoned due to the pain of pubic separation in the third trimester of pregnancy, which made it impossible for me to travel far away.

Passing the interview in advance can relieve me a lot of stress in the subsequent exams. Now I just need to concentrate on the joint entrance examination at the end of the year!

The baby arrived early in August. Hearing this cute little life cry, my motherly love overflowed and I couldn’t control it. I stopped reading for three months and couldn't read. Other friends who were preparing for the exam shared their review progress in the group every day and exchanged experiences on wrong questions. But I held the crumpled little person in my arms and kept humming children's songs. Breastfeeding and walking around are really a bit stressful. It was already early December when I mustered up the courage to pick up the book and review it again. I have forgotten almost half of what I reviewed before, so I need to clear my mind again. There is no time for me to review as regularly as before. I decided to change my study method and attack the real questions.

After buying a collection of postgraduate entrance examination questions from the past ten years on Taobao, I clearly distinguished my strengths and weaknesses.

If you cannot improve your weak areas in a short period of time, give up and concentrate on consolidating your strong areas. My strengths are English and logic, and I have really put a lot of effort into these two areas. It's already after 10:30 at night when I put the baby to sleep every day, and it's already after 11 o'clock after I take a bath and clean up. I turn on the computer, take out my notebook, analyze the question types, reflect on the wrong questions, and then continue to practice the real questions, constantly improve the speed of doing the questions, and always raise my head. It's already 3 o'clock in the morning.

After 10 days of continuous cycles of sleeping, taking care of children, breastfeeding, reading, and doing questions every day, I went to participate in a pre-exam simulation. Due to my long-term irregular work and rest, I was not used to taking exams during the day. , I could barely keep my eyes open when I wrote the questions in the morning, and my test scores were very miserable.

The importance of pre-exam simulation is reflected. You must adjust your work and rest, otherwise you will not be able to concentrate on the exam. Thanks to my family’s support in the last half month, I was able to slowly adapt to the exam schedule.

The unsatisfactory results in the mock exam did not have a negative impact on me. I firmly believe that I can get into the ideal school, and I also firmly believe that a person who travels a hundred miles can only go half a mile, and don’t give up due to external reasons.

I really reviewed until the last minute.

Before I went to the examination room, I was still recalling the question types of the logic test and looking for various proposition possibilities for the large essay questions. Even if you feel that you did not perform well in the first exam, you will not give up. Having experienced so many exams since childhood, you have already developed a calm psychological quality. It is difficult for you and it is difficult for everyone. Let him go and hope for the future.

It has been reported that the number of people who actually completed the postgraduate entrance examination is only half of the number of people who signed up for the postgraduate entrance examination at the beginning. Success always belongs to those who persist to the end, and the same is true for the postgraduate entrance examination.

Perhaps because of this persistence, I passed the school’s self-marking program and became one of the first batch of people to receive the proposed admission notice.

The professional score is ranked 25th, and the ranking includes full-time students. In English, I scored an incredible 87 points, three points of which I lost because I forgot to fill in the answer sheet. Although this score is a little lower than I expected, I am still very satisfied.

I am proud of myself. All my hard work over a long period of time has not been in vain. Now I can take care of my children at home without any pressure, and my maternity leave is over. I return to work refreshed and full of vision for a better future.

Ever since I stopped muddling along and started desperately planning for the future, I have never felt more at ease in my heart. This sense of stability has made me more confident in myself. I have more energy at work and my initiative has increased a lot. The harder you work, the luckier you will be. This makes perfect sense, because you earn this luck with your own hands.

Maybe this is why I was pregnant, worked until the day before giving birth, and had to take the postgraduate entrance examination.