Top Student at Their Peak
Chapter 54 - 54 54 How Do You Know Teacher Qiao

54: Chapter 54: How Do You Know Teacher Qiao?

54: Chapter 54: How Do You Know Teacher Qiao?

The omnipotent netizens say everything for a reason, like how boys must take good care of themselves when going out.

After all, they might inadvertently be taken advantage of by mischievous young girls.

Even though it was just holding hands, if she dared to hold hands today, who knows what she might dare to do next time, Qiao Yu didn’t even dare to think.

Fortunately, as days passed, although the two of them continued their routine of having breakfast together and taking walks before heading home to study, Xia Keke did not make any further moves.

At most, she just held his hand during their walks every day, not even avoiding people anymore.

As for Qiao Yu…

A young girl doesn’t care, so he cares even less.

If adults saw them and gave ambiguous smiles, he accepted it calmly.

After all, it’s just innocent childhood friends, and he’s very open about it.

Finally, it was June 28th.

According to the schedule on the Little Alibaba official website, today was the day to announce the preliminary competition results.

Although Qiao Yu was confident he could enter the finals after checking the answers, this was important, and after saying goodbye to Xia Keke, he returned home and immediately turned on his computer, discovering an email from the Little Alibaba Competition website.

Seeing this email, Qiao Yu felt relieved.

Although the point allocation for each question in the preliminary exam was not revealed, after looking at the reference answers, he estimated his score should not be less than 70 points.

Upon opening the email, it was indeed the case; his score was 71, ranking 286 in the preliminary round, fairly ahead, but not particularly notable.

Because then Qiao Yu eagerly opened the official website, where the full list of finalists was already available.

This year, a total of 800 people made it to the finals.

Interestingly, the person ranked just before him was from Yanbei University, and the one after him from Qinghua University; he was squeezed right in between.

Though it wasn’t entirely coincidental, as Qiao Yu scanned the whole list, he realized there were quite a number from Yanbei and Huaqing University who participated and made it to the finals, more than a hundred in total, mostly occupying the top 400 spots.

Many were also from foreign universities, about sixty to seventy people made it to the finals.

The rest mainly came from other prestigious domestic universities.

Places like Hangzhou University, Shuangdan, Jiang University, Gua College, universities with regional names…

Among them were a few high schools with XX in their names, hidden among them, making Star City Railway First Middle School’s name somewhat unremarkable.

Even excluding those university students, his ranking among high school students was only fourth.

This made Qiao Yu realize he was worried for nothing.

With his half-baked knowledge learned self-taught, he indeed had some gaps compared to those who had systematically studied these subjects in schools.

The only regret was that Star City, apart from Railway First Middle School, didn’t have any other high school students making it to the finals.

However, Qiao Yu was still very confident about the finals.

It’s not that this math competition had simpler finals compared to prelims, but according to the competition rules, the finals allowed for selecting a track.

Qiao Yu felt the prelims were difficult mainly because the coverage was so broad, testing a bit of everything.

But the finals were different, directly divided into five tracks.

Algebra and Number Theory, Geometry and Topology, Analysis and Equations, Combinatorics and Probability, and Applied and Computational Mathematics.

After choosing a track, the questions would only cover the content related to it.

He had focused his study time on Algebra and Number Theory.

Not only the past questions of Little Alibaba math competitions but also other related problems he found online, and he felt pretty good about it.

Indeed, once he developed an interest, things that seemed challenging before became interesting points.

As long as one studied patiently, they could even enjoy the joy of solving problems.

Yes, every time he solved a difficult problem, Qiao Yu couldn’t help but imagine hearing the Alipay gold coin notification sound and felt a sense of happiness.

But now, there’s no need to think about it so much; just wait till early July to fully engage in the finals and aim for a good score.

Even if he couldn’t win the gold award, a silver award would be acceptable for Qiao Yu.

$15,000, which adds up to over a hundred thousand yuan.

After Qiao Xi quit drinking, that would be enough for their expenses for a year.

…

Railway First Middle School, administrative building.

Anyone who has been a principal knows that the principals portrayed in TV shows are mostly nonsense.

In Huaxia, as a special public institution, primary and secondary schools generally operate under a principal responsibility system.

So the principal’s work primarily focuses on the big picture, mainly aligning with higher-level requirements and leading the school’s development direction.

Thus, as summer vacation approaches, principals typically are extremely busy.

Within the school, they must host various meetings: principal meetings, leadership meetings, enrollment exams, college entrance examination volunteer meetings, teacher annual assessments…

But internal meetings are relatively simple; it’s the external meetings that are numerous.

In districts, cities…

Education policies, summer student safety issues, campus environment renovation, and so on.

Principals must attend all sorts of department meetings, at least showing the right attitude.

Times are tough; being a principal isn’t easy.

Being the principal of a prestigious school might be slightly better, but for ordinary schools, it’s tough to offend anyone.

Otherwise, inspections for food safety, fire safety, traffic safety could be daunting even just thinking about them…

Especially now that schools have a set number of staff positions.

But for a school to grow, it always hopes to bring in some good teachers.

Schools don’t always have teachers retiring every year to free up positions, so they need to apply for more positions from the personnel bureau.

If one has good relations with higher-ups, even with tight positions, they might get approval for one or two extra slots.

But without good relations, in the current stringent environment limiting new positions, there’s no hope if things go wrong.

So Zhang Tiejun has been genuinely busy lately, that kind of busy where his feet don’t touch the ground.

For example, today he had two meetings.

In the morning, he gave a speech on setting up summer safety work, and after lunch, he and He Duchang, the vice-principal in charge of teaching, rushed to the city education bureau to attend a meeting summarizing Star City’s college entrance exams and preparing for next year’s exams.

The only good news was that in the afternoon’s meeting, he didn’t have to go on stage to give a speech; he just needed to listen.

He talked about some work issues with the vice-principal in the car, then closed his eyes to rest.

The meeting started promptly at three in the afternoon.

As the bigwig on stage spoke, the principal of Rongcheng Middle School sitting beside him gently nudged his arm and softly asked, “Principal Zhang, do you have a teacher named Qiao Yu at your school?”

“Hmm?” Hearing Qiao Yu’s name mentioned by another principal, Zhang Tiejun immediately became alert, turned to look at the colleague, and calmly asked, “Principal Lu, how do you know Teacher Qiao?”