JunyiLu (China)

Gaokao was just a nightmare to me, I can't afford to study and do exercises day and night! We were given a bunch of homework and compelled to have extra classes on Saturdays. What's worse, I didn't performance well in the tests and my parents signed me up for tutoring classes on Sundays. Of course we can't finish the excessive amount of exercises in regular time unless we burn the midnight oil everyday. All in all, we can hardly have our spare time and everyday was all about exercises and tests. Apparently this is not a good way for study. However, under the exam-oriented mechanism that score is the only criterion, it seems almost everyone (including the parents, teachers) thinks that there's no better choice to get into a good school than this way. So the students are still studying this hard and going through what we've experienced.

A student studies at a middle school in Handan, Hebei province, May 12, 2014. China's annual national college entrance exam, also known as gaokao, will be held in early June.[Photo by Hao Qunying/Asianews]