Chapter 880: Invigilate

Dean Qin helped Lu Zhou a lot in his undergraduate years. Even though Lu Zhou would have been successful even without Dean Qin’s help, his journey wouldn’t have gone so smoothly.

Therefore, even though Lu Zhou wasn’t certain he could convince the ICM board, he was still willing to give it a try.

Speaking of which, what confused Lu Zhou the most was what gave Dean Qin the confidence to host the ICM conference. However, the conference would greatly benefit the Jin Ling University mathematics department.

…

Because Lu Zhou promised his parents that he would go back home for New Year’s, he decided to finish his next month’s work before the end of the month. The university also went into exam week, so he became busy again.

Usually, the exam week was arranged at the beginning of the year, some time after New Year’s Day. Rarely was it arranged before New Year’s Day. Students nor the teachers were happy with this arrangement.

This year was a little special. The Ministry of Education policy that was invented a while ago wanted to increase academic culture and confidence doctrine.

The person from the Ministry of Education might have misread the doc.u.ment from the Communist Party of China because they simply interpreted confidence doctrine as “no foreign festivals”.

Therefore, forget about the Christmas decorations, even New Year’s Day parties and gala were suspended.

There were very few people like Luo Wenxuan, who still celebrated Christmas.

Not just that, but this year’s exams were done around Christmas day. Even though the single loners were happy, the teachers who had vacations planned now had to go back to school to invigilate and mark the exams.

Even though Lu Zhou didn’t really care about the festivals, he didn’t like this arrangement.

There was no reason to be so petty over a festival.

This felt wrong.

However, Lu Zhou didn’t have time to care about such a trivial matter.

It wasn’t like he could write a letter about it.

That would be ridiculous.

When Lu Zhou was eating at the cafeteria, Dean Lu from the mathematics department sat down across from him and asked with a smile, “Um… Lu Zhou, are you free tomorrow?”

Lu Zhou knew the dean wanted something from him, so he suspiciously looked at the dean.

“What?”

Dean Lu smiled and said, “Um… We still need someone to invigilate the exams, do you think…”

Lu Zhou shook his head.

“No, no, too tiring.”

Invigilating exams was horrible.

The teachers had to sit there for hours, watching and listening in all directions. Even though Jin Ling University had a pretty good exam culture overall, that didn’t separate the couple bad apples from the tree. He could just sit there and not care about anyone cheating, but morally, he wouldn’t do such a thing…

In short, Lu Zhou wasn’t interested in watching a bunch of undergraduate students doing brainless exam questions. He was even less interested in catching those idiot students who would try to cheat on these brainless exams.

Dean Lu quickly explained.

“No no, you’re mistaken. I’m not asking you to invigilate. It’s just that we don’t have enough people. The school wants each office to send someone, at least one person. You have a lot of students under you, just bring two of them to the exam. Of course, it’s fine if you don’t want to, I’ll just inform the school board.”

Lu Zhou wasn’t going to let Dean Lu inform the school board over such trivial matters, so he sighed and said, “Okay then, I’ll send a student over, just send me the exam information.”

Dean Lu smiled and said, “Okay okay, no problem, I’ll send it to you later… Thanks.”

Lu Zhou: “You’re welcome.”

The invigilation was thus settled.

After Lu Zhou finished eating dinner, he gave He Changwen a call. After telling him about the invigilation, he got up and returned to his office.

However, when he returned to his office, he saw that He Changwen was not there.

“Where is He Changwen?”

“I don’t know,” Lin Yuxiang said. “But I just noticed he went to the toilet a couple of times. Maybe he has food poisoning?”

Food poisoning?

Lu Zhou had a bad feeling.

Then…

It turned out his feeling was correct.

On the morning of the next day, Lu Zhou received a phone call from this guy sitting on a toilet.

“Professor… I tried my best.”

Lu Zhou paused for two seconds before replying, “What do you mean… you tried your best?”

He Changwen spoke in a shameful tone, “I got food poisoning from lunch yesterday, and I was on the toilet all night, I’m still on the toilet… I might not be able to invigilate!”

Lu Zhou quickly said, “How are you how? Is it serious? I can get someone to send you to the hospital.”

“No no, I’ll be fine…”

The phone call disconnected, but Lu Zhou could hear the toilet flus.h.i.+ng before then.

Lu Zhou looked at his blank phone screen and went silent for a while.

There’s nothing you can do about diarrhea.

It’s not like I can make him bring a toilet to the exam room.

What a show that would be…

Lu Zhou looked around his office and saw that student Han Mengqi was the only one who did not go on holiday. Mengqi looked at Lu Zhou with an innocent face.

Lu Zhou hesitated for a bit before he sighed and stood up with his notebook.

She was the only good student who came into his office during the Christmas holidays, so he wasn’t going to give her a hard time.

It was just one exam.

He would do it himself.

The moment Lu Zhou entered the exam room, the quiet exam room went into chaos.

“F*ck me! Is that G.o.d Lu…”

“Nutty, academician invigilating us! F*ck, my phone is in my bag, I want to take a photo.”

“Sh*t, my cheat sheet…”

Lu Zhou looked at the cla.s.sroom and paused for a second. He looked at the cla.s.sroom number and then looked at the muddled teacher on the podium.

“This is number theory, right?”

The teacher nodded and spoke in a respectful tone.

“Yes!”

“Oh, so I’m at the right place.” Lu Zhou stepped onto the familiar podium and looked at the students. He then looked at the other invigilator teacher and said, “The exam is about to begin, start handing out papers.”

“Okay!”

“…”

Lu Zhou didn’t know why, but he felt like his co-invigilator seemed to be a little too excited…

The test papers were soon distributed.

After the bell rang, the number theory exam officially began.

Because Academician Lu was invigilating, the students and even the teacher were on “extra alert mode”. They all sat there with perfect posture.

Lu Zhou looked at the nervous students and wanted to laugh. However, he didn’t want to interrupt the exam.

The time quickly pa.s.sed by as the clock on the wall ticked away.

Lu Zhou began to feel bored. He yawned and took out his notebook from his pocket. With a pen in his hand, he continued to research where he left off yesterday.

As expected, solving problems yourself was more interesting than watching other people solve problems.

Lu Zhou was in the zone, and he totally forgot that he was in an exam room.

Time pa.s.sed by quickly when someone was doing something that they loved.

Without knowing it, an hour had gone by.

Lu Zhou stopped writing and was surprised to see that the exam was almost over.

Lu Zhou looked at the invigilator at the back of the cla.s.sroom.

I’m the only one distracted.

If the other invigilator is also not doing their job, then it wouldn’t be fair to those students who studied hard for the exam.

Lu Zhou was about to stand up and move his stiff arm when he suddenly saw something unusual.

He saw a pretty young girl, who was sitting next to the window with her head down. Her arm leaned against her head and her hair acted as a curtain, creating a blind spot.

Lu Zhou’s experience as a student told him that this person was up to no good.

Even though Lu Zhou had never cheated before, he had seen plenty of cheaters.

He quietly stood up from his chair and began walking toward the girl.

Lu Zhou quietly walked behind the girl and looked at her table.

As expected…

The screen from her phone was more obvious than a lighthouse at night.

He could even see her little finger swiping through the phone.

There was nothing else to say.

Lu Zhou gently coughed.

“Ahem.”

The female student was like a frightened rabbit. Her shoulders tensed up, and she nearly dropped her phone on the ground.

The moment she made eye contact with Lu Zhou, her face turned white as she stuttered, “Te, Teacher… um, it’s not like that.”

It’s not like that?

What are you, watching SpongeBob during an exam?

“Sigh…” Lu Zhou shook his head and said, “I only gave you guys a few lectures this semester, but this is a little too excessive.”

The pretty student was scared, and she almost started to cry.

The other invigilator noticed the commotion and began walking over.

The young teacher mercilessly took away her phone and spoke in a stern manner, as if he was trying to impress the academician.

“Cheating in an exam, zero marks! Punishment recorded!”

The girl replied with tears in her eyes, “Teacher, can you not record it? My mom is very strict, she will kill me over this. Sir, let’s talk outside…”

She stood up and grabbed Lu Zhou’s arm, trying to walk outside. However, Lu Zhou stood there, frozen.

He quickly reacted and retracted his arm.

“Student, my mom is very strict as well!”

However, for some reason, the cla.s.sroom burst into laughter.

The female student turned bright red, and she tried to explain but didn’t know what to say.

Lu Zhou looked at the chaotic cla.s.sroom and began to think.

F*ck sake!

This year’s exam is too easy, that’s why these people are laughing.

Maybe…

I’ll just mark it harshly.