Ten minutes...
For the first time, Zhang Liwei felt what it was like to experience time dragging on interminably.
A few people whispered incessantly among themselves.
Qiao Ze stared at his thesis in silence without any expression.
Really, several times Zhang Liwei had the impulse to snatch his thesis back and just run away.
But he still restrained himself.
This time, he had mustered up all his courage to come here.
The problem was that snatching it was easy, but if he went back, he still couldn't produce results and getting scolded by his mentor would be the least of his worries.
If he couldn't graduate, he would truly be letting down all the hair he had lost over the years.
If he had to come back next time...
Forget it, he really couldn't suffer that embarrassment.
...
Finally, Qiao Ze turned to the last page of the thesis and then calmly looked at him.
Even with the obstruction of the glasses, the probing look still made Zhang Liwei feel uncomfortable all over.
"You're a Ph.D., right?" Qiao Ze asked.
"Ah?" Zhang Liwei's first reaction was to glance at the people behind him, blush, then take a deep breath and explain calmly, "Uh... yes... did you figure it out from my thesis?"
"No, your topic must have been filed previously within the school, and there was a notice on the intranet, I glanced at it briefly and then remembered it," Qiao Ze explained casually.
Zhang Liwei was speechless.
What was an undergraduate doing paying attention to that kind of thing?
"Ah? Dude, you're not a graduate student? You're a Ph.D.? No wonder, but why did you pretend to be a graduate student?" Zhang Zhou couldn't help but ask.
Zhang Liwei turned his head, his face red as he forcefully explained, "Classmate, 'Ph.D.' is just the colloquial term; the full title is actually Doctoral Candidate. I simply omitted the prefix, that's all."
That made sense...
But seeing the teasing look in the three people's eyes, Zhang Liwei was finally about to break down, but before he could speak, Qiao Ze spoke again: "Well, how should I put it, you should rewrite it. Your approach is wrong, the analytical tools you've used are incorrect, naturally leading you into a dead end.
"Why would I want to humiliate him? It's true his IQ isn't suitable for noncommutative geometry," Qiao Ze responded casually, putting down his phone.
What he didn't expect was that the person who had just sent a WeChat wasn't one of those three.
Instead, it was a message from his former class teacher, quite abruptly and oddly saying, "Qiao Ze, the teacher didn't take enough care of you before and apologizes. Don't take it to heart. A new beginning, keep it up, the teacher believes in your future!"
These types of boring messages were usually not replied to.
"No? He's a Ph.D. candidate now, and his IQ is still not up to par?"
"It's not just about whether his IQ is up to par; it's that his thinking is already limited. For example, if you guys want to go into his field of research in the future, you'll definitely have a brighter future than him," Qiao Ze said seriously.
It was a heartfelt comment, but it stunned the three roommates in the dormitory.
Truly stunned.
Especially Chen Yiwen, who moved his mouth but didn't say anything. His eyes, however, seemed to redden a bit.
"That... Qiao, you're serious about what you just said, right?" Zhang Zhou asked shakily.
Qiao Ze nodded, somewhat puzzled why the three of them were suddenly acting so strange.
"You're not just saying that to comfort us?" Gu Zhengliang asked again for confirmation and then added, "You haven't forgotten how last time you said that Zhang Zhou and I weren't very bright!"
Qiao Ze nodded again and said earnestly, "You guys really aren't very bright, but I've said it, you're not stupid! Like the Ph.D. just now, he's already hovering on the edge of stupidity! If he doesn't change his research topic, then he's truly stupid."
"Wait, let me sort this out, you mean to say a dope can get into a Ph.D. program at our School of Mathematics, so for someone like me, Chen, and Zhang Zhou, who aren't too bright, there's absolutely no problem getting into a better graduate school in the future?"
Qiao Ze looked at Gu Zhengliang with surprise and said, "I don't know about the difficulty of the graduate entrance exams, but if that person just now can get into a Ph.D. program, why would you think you can't get into a graduate program? Are the exam questions very hard? Let me see..."
Finishing his words, Qiao Ze turned to his computer and started searching for past graduate entrance exam questions in mathematics. There were plenty of resources online, and he casually opened a question bank from last year's Math Section I...
A moment later, Qiao Ze turned back around, looking at the three people opposite him with a puzzled gaze.
After hesitating for a long time, he ventured to ask, "Do you all feel like you won't live until the day of the grad exams?"
"Pfft..."
"Fuck!"
"Bang..."
Someone sprayed water, someone hit their head from standing up too fast, and another fell right over.
Helpless when a certain top student talks about jokes seriously, the lethality is indeed too great.