manynovel Chapter 201 Lin the Conman Who Speaks the Truth
Chapter 201 Lin the Conman Who Speaks the Truth
Lin Yan's relaxed and humorous self-introduction clearly won over many of his classmates, and the atmosphere in the classroom was no longer as scrutinizing and unfamiliar as before. Mr. Morris smiled and nodded at him, pointing to an empty seat by the window in the back row: "Lin, you can sit there for now."
As Lin Yan walked to his seat, Mr. Morris picked up a large classroom layout map from the podium and magnetically attached it to the blackboard. Seeing the map, a sudden flash of inspiration struck Lin Yan; memories of his early days at Penn from his previous life flooded back—that's it, American high schools use a rotating class system!
This is completely different from the fixed-class model in China. Here, teachers and classrooms are fixed "bases," while students are like busy worker bees, needing to shuttle between different classrooms with their books in the short three to five minutes between each class. Lin Yan remembers that when he first went to the University of Pennsylvania, it took him quite a while to adapt to this model. What he found even more objectionable at the time was that the classroom rules even required students to raise their hands and ask the teacher for permission if they wanted to go to the toilet, and usually only one student was allowed to leave at a time.
"No wonder they say Americans' kidneys are..." A wicked thought involuntarily popped into Lin Yan's head. He quickly stopped himself, but the corners of his mouth couldn't help but turn up slightly. This was probably one of the "aftereffects" of culture shock.
Mr. Morris interrupted his thoughts, distributing application forms for sports and arts clubs and instructing everyone to return them at the morning assembly the next day. Then came the routine—roll call, followed by everyone standing, facing the national flag, right hand on their chest, and reciting the oath of allegiance. This process was unfamiliar to Lin Yan; he followed along blindly, yet felt a strange sense of alienation.
During the latter part of the morning assembly, Mr. Morris announced that everyone was free to move around, mainly to familiarize themselves with the locations of the classrooms for each course in the new semester, so as not to be flustered on the first day of class. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Lin Yan went up to Mr. Morris and asked for a locker. After receiving the small key with the number on it, he was finally relieved of the burden of carrying all his textbooks around every day.
As he was comparing the layout diagram on the blackboard to figure out which direction his first math class was in, Mike Anderson, the first person to greet him that morning, warmly came over and patted him on the shoulder.
"Hey Lin! How's this map going? Getting a little overwhelmed?" Mike said with a grin. "Come on, I'll take you to your classroom so you don't get lost in this maze. We have several classes that overlap on our schedules!"
This timely help was undoubtedly a godsend. Lin Yan put away the map and gave Mike a sincere smile: "That's great, Mike, thank you so much. I really need a mentor." It seems that this "ordinary" high school life, amidst its ups and downs, is beginning to show some warmth.
Mike enthusiastically accompanied Lin Yan through the slightly crowded corridor until they found his narrow locker. Lin Yan took out his key, opened the locker, and began taking out his brand-new textbooks one by one from his backpack, neatly arranging them inside, intending to only bring the books he needed for the first class.
Just then, Mike's eyes widened, and pointing at the new textbooks whose spines weren't even fully unfolded, he exclaimed, "Wow! Lin! These... these are the new textbooks you bought yourself?"
Lin Yan paused in his work, turned to look at Mike with a puzzled expression, and asked matter-of-factly, "Don't we all buy our own textbooks? Does the school provide them?" In his view, having learning materials was a matter of course.
Mike stared at Lin Yan from head to toe as if he were an alien monster, his tone filled with disbelief: "Lin... is your family... particularly wealthy? Ordinary families like ours rent textbooks from the school! We pick them up at the beginning of each semester and have to return them in perfect condition at the end of the semester so we can rent books for the next semester. Only truly wealthy families who don't care about money buy brand new textbooks from bookstores!"
"Rent...borrow?" Lin Yan's worldview was instantly shattered, his hand holding the brand-new algebra book freezing in mid-air. Memories of his high school days in China flashed through his mind, and comparing them to this practice of even using textbooks sparingly, he couldn't help but think to himself, "America in the 1960s was so stingy! Wasn't it supposed to be the beacon of the world?"
Seeing the mixture of surprise and a touch of envy in Mike's eyes, Lin Yan, unusually, felt a mischievous "Versailles" mentality. He deliberately put on an exaggerated expression of shock and confusion, raising his voice slightly:
"Mike! Isn't the United States the most powerful and richest country in the world? How come they can't even afford to give their students a single textbook?" He paused, then continued in a tone as if stating common sense: "When I was studying in China, from elementary to middle school, the tuition included the cost of all textbooks. Every student received brand-new textbooks at the beginning of each semester, along with corresponding workbooks and exercise books!"
Then, seemingly casually, he dropped the most crucial line: "And the tuition for a semester, all together, is only... well, about $6."
"Six...six dollars?! And that includes all the new textbooks and workbooks?!" Mike was stunned by the outrageous prices and benefits, his mouth agape. He looked at the brand-new algebra book in Lin Yan's hand, a book that would probably cost more than a few dollars in a bookstore, and then thought about the rented textbooks he had to use carefully, which he couldn't use for writing or drawing on, and which he had to return at the end of the semester. He felt his worldview had been completely shattered. His gaze towards Lin Yan instantly changed from "a transfer student who might have some money" to "a guy from a mysterious Eastern paradise of welfare."
The morning's four classes were quite packed, with the first class, math, starting at 9:00 AM sharp. Lin Yan found the math classroom according to the timetable and chose a seat by the window. Sunlight streamed through the window onto the desk, making it feel warm and cozy.
The math teacher was an elderly gentleman with gray hair and thick glasses. He wrote a navigation problem involving trigonometric functions on the blackboard:
A ship is traveling at a constant speed on a straight canal. There is a fixed observation point P on the canal bank. At a certain moment, the crew measures the azimuth of observation point P relative to the direction of the ship's bow as N 30° E (i.e., 30 degrees east of north). The ship continues to travel in its original direction at a speed of 10 miles per hour.
1. One hour later, the crew measured again and found that the azimuth of point P was now N 60° W (i.e., 60 degrees west of north).
a) Please determine the closest distance between the ship and the observation point P during the first observation.
b) What is the shortest distance between the ship and point P during the two observation periods?
2. Assume the ship continues to travel at its original speed and direction. Please establish a function to describe the relationship between the distance d (in miles) between the ship and the observation point P and time t (with the first observation defined as t=0 hours).
The teacher began drawing a diagram on the blackboard, explaining how to construct a coordinate system and how to use changes in azimuth and ship speed to establish equations.
Lin Yan only glanced at the question; his brain didn't even need to consciously calculate. His mathematical foundation from his previous life at Wharton and the powerful spiritual deduction ability of a cultivator allowed the answer and the complete analysis process to automatically emerge. This was far too basic for him.
He turned his head and stared blankly out the window, inwardly thinking, "That's it? This kind of dynamic geometric model that uses changes in azimuth to find the shortest distance is way too simple..."
Mike, who was sitting next to him, was frowning and trying hard to keep up with the teacher's explanation. When he turned his head, he saw that Lin Yan was staring out the window in a daze. So he quietly leaned over and asked in a low voice, "Hey, Lin! What's wrong? Are you not listening? Don't you understand?" He had a kind of concern on his face, thinking that this new student from the East was having trouble with American math.
Upon hearing this, Lin Yan rolled his eyes elegantly, speechless. Too lazy to explain, he simply took out a brand new notebook, flipped to a blank page, picked up a pen, and began to write furiously.
Instead of drawing the complex diagrams his teacher used, he clearly marked the key points and vector relationships with simple lines and symbols. His solution steps were logically rigorous, each step interconnected, employing trigonometric functions and geometric relationships in a smooth and flowing manner. In just a minute or two, he wrote out the answers to the first and second questions, including detailed derivations, and even went so far as to establish a quadratic function relationship between distance d and time t for the third question using concise mathematical language.
After he finished writing, he pushed the notebook directly in front of Mike.
Mike curiously took it, initially glancing at it casually, but his eyes widened as he looked. Lin Yan's solution seemed more direct and efficient than the teacher's explanation on the blackboard; each step was written clearly, with brief explanations beside it, as if afraid Mike wouldn't understand. Its detail and thoroughness were even more meticulous than a math teacher's blackboard writing!
When he saw the line of large characters written by Lin Yan at the very bottom of the notebook in a slightly flamboyant handwriting, he was completely petrified:
"Not that I can't understand. It's just too EASY. We learned this back in 8th grade in China."
(It's not that I don't understand, it's just that it's too easy. We learned this kind of question in the second year of junior high school in China.)
"Eighth...eighth grade?!" Mike screamed inwardly, his hand holding the notebook trembling slightly. He looked up again at the composed Eastern boy beside him, who seemed as if he had merely swatted a mosquito, and felt the mysterious aura surrounding him grow even heavier. At this moment, distant China in his mind was not just a country with the Great Wall and delicious food, but also a mysterious birthplace teeming with geniuses. An overwhelming sense of curiosity and longing surged within him.