Chapter 31: Class Officer Election Culture
Xiang Chuan sat in her seat with her terminal open, watching the slow installation progress bar on the terminal light screen, and couldn’t help but complain in her heart about how thick this textbook must be.
Looking around, Class Eight Grade One was all in the same state: using personal terminals to receive study textbooks from the teaching terminal on the podium.
But this loading speed is so slow! It’s as slow as installing a Windows system!
“Hmm… the speed is indeed a bit slow, probably because the campus dedicated network is currently being used together for transmission,” Zhu Bingwen said, looking at the students frowning at their screens and showing a wry smile. “All high schools use the same group of servers, and now that school has just started, they’re all transmitting textbooks at the same time.”
“Can’t they coordinate with each other to stagger the transmission times?”
The brown-haired boy sitting in the front row by the window side couldn’t help but complain.
“An average fleet has more than three thousand high schools. Even if spread over twenty-four hours, there are still nearly one hundred twenty schools transmitting textbooks simultaneously each hour. Assuming one school has three hundred fifty new students, one hundred twenty schools would mean over forty-two thousand students extracting data from the server at the same time.” Zhu Bingwen explained, “During normal classes, it doesn’t use so many server resources, so this problem doesn’t occur. It’s just more serious every time new students start school.”
“Can’t it be transmitted via the space-time network?” A boy wearing glasses in the front row raised his hand and said.
“Uploading to the space-time network would first cause mixing of information flows, and second, from the fleet’s perspective… um, it’s not convenient to say. If you’re interested, you can look it up yourselves after class.” Zhu Bingwen smiled and shrugged.
It’s just resource balancing between fleets. Xiang Chuan raised an eyebrow; on her first day of transmigration, she had seen similar discussions while investigating modern history. She had thought back then that even thirty thousand years later, after flying into the universe, they were still playing these games—like a certain two-dimensional famous saying, as if human souls were still bound by gravity in their narrowness.
“By the way, Teacher, which subject are you in charge of?”
Chou Manman suddenly asked a question, and everyone came back to their senses: right, their homeroom teacher hadn’t said what he taught yet.
“I teach history. Didn’t you see it in the previous class?” Zhu Bingwen laughed.
Oh, no wonder he spoke so convincingly about history in the second class this morning. Everyone suddenly understood.
“Teacher,” Xiang Chuan raised her hand to ask, “Where does our high school history start and end?”
“From the Dark Virus Crisis to about the past two hundred years. The time span is quite long, and high school courses basically revolve around major events within the past fifteen thousand years. To study events in the transition periods in detail, you’ll have to wait until university. Our fleet’s university history major isn’t as good as the Eleventh Fleet’s, but its courses from Tianyuan 5000 to the present still reach the average level across fleets.”
“Nothing before Tianyuan 5000?”
“Records from the first five thousand years were basically lost in the Dark Virus Crisis. At most, there are only fleet voyage records collected in the History Research Institute.”
Xiang Chuan fell silent. Even Tianyuan Era records were incomplete, let alone Common Era records. Incomplete history wouldn’t be a direction for course study, so didn’t that mean she had no advantage in any subject?
Just thinking about having to solidly finish three years of high school made Xiang Chuan’s head hurt. The good news was that Tianyuan 20000 years’ compulsory education covered from kindergarten to university, so at least she didn’t have to fight tooth and nail in the college entrance exam.
Since the textbooks hadn’t finished transmitting, neither the students nor the teacher could start class, so the entire First Year High School simply used this fourth period for communication to build teacher-student rapport. During the chat, the students in Class Eight Grade One learned that their Teacher Zhu Bingwen was originally from the First Fleet, but due to family work transfer, he moved to the Third Fleet with his parents and had lived here for over a hundred years. He himself was now 302 years old.
“Teacher Zhu, you look so young!”
The classmates exclaimed, and Xiang Chuan once again felt the difference in lifespan concepts between modern people and 21st century people. Thinking of the diner at home who looked about the same age as her father but was already over two hundred years old, she thought she should adapt quickly.
Before the fifth period started, Zhu Bingwen looked at the students in the class who were already chatting freely with each other and had some intentions in mind.
So when the class bell rang and the students in Class Eight Grade One sat up straight looking at the podium, they discovered that “Class Cadre Election” had somehow been written in big letters on the teaching light screen.
Xiang Chuan widened her eyes: modern times still preserved the class cadre system?
“Originally, I planned to wait a couple of days for you to get familiar with each other before starting the class cadre election, but thanks to Classmate Xiang Chuan, you got familiar with each other faster than the previous classes I taught, so let’s just settle the class cadres today.”
Zhu Bingwen opened a list on the teaching terminal, which listed four position names: Class President, Vice Class President, Labor Supervisor, Class Activity Supervisor.
Does it need to be written so high-end and classy? It’s just Labor Committee Member and Cultural Committee Member. Xiang Chuan thought.
She leaned back in her seat, clearly in a watching-the-show state. This kind of class cadre election had nothing to do with her in her previous life, and she had no intention of getting involved in this life either, so of course now she was just watching her classmates perform.
“Students who want to apply for Class President, please raise your hand.”
As soon as Zhu Bingwen finished speaking, a few students in the class raised their hands. He entered the students’ names into the candidate list and then continued:
“Good, then students who want to apply for Vice Class President, please raise your hand.”
“Ah?”
Xiang Chuan’s surprised questioning voice drew the attention of the whole class, startling her instead.
“Hm? What’s wrong? Classmate Xiang Chuan, do you want to run for Class President too?”
As he spoke, Zhu Bingwen prepared to add a name to the Class President candidate list.
“No no no, I didn’t mean that. Teacher, please don’t add it.”
Xiang Chuan broke out in a sweat; she didn’t want to add unnecessary trouble for herself.
“Then why did you make a sound just now?”
“Uh…” Facing the curious gazes of the teacher and classmates fixed on her, Xiang Chuan knew that if she didn’t say something, even if the teacher didn’t pursue it, the classmates definitely wouldn’t let her off after class. “I was thinking, why doesn’t the class cadre election require candidates to come up and give a self-introduction…?”
The smaller her voice got as she spoke, the wider the listeners’ eyes opened.
“Your information is already in the school’s teaching archives database, and after four classes this morning, you’ve all gotten familiar with each other. Do you still need self-introductions?”
Zhu Bingwen had guessed something in his heart, but he still asked calmly without changing his expression.
“Not the kind for first meetings, but… self-introductions about campaign intentions and aspirations for the position. For example, someone running for Class President could say what style they plan to lead the class in after becoming Class President, what commitments they will make, and so on…”
There’s such a campaign method? The students in the class suddenly understood.
Since entering the Tianyuan Era, all elections have been optimized by AI based on personal information and ability. The form of speech campaigns gradually fell out of use after the Fifth World War with the rise of AI technology, and naturally no one in the Tianyuan Era knew of such a campaign form.
“I see, there’s such a method.” Zhu Bingwen showed a suddenly enlightened expression. “But how credible is just the candidate’s own statement? Who can know if these candidates have the ability to fulfill the commitments they make in their campaign speeches?”
“Uh…”
Xiang Chuan was stumped. Indeed, in the 21st century, many politicians failed to fulfill their promises in campaign speeches, leaving the public with the fixed impression that “politicians equal liars.” In contrast, the modern era, which values personal ability, greatly reduced such exaggerated speech performances by having AI judge personal ability levels.
Just as Xiang Chuan wondered if she had said something unnecessary, Ouyang Yating beside her suddenly spoke up:
“Then, how about combining the two forms?”
Combine? The students in the class started thinking upon hearing this, and Zhu Bingwen nodded silently in his heart watching their expressions.
“Classmate Ouyang, please continue.”
“Thank you, Teacher.” Ouyang Yating stood up from her seat. “Split the reference value of personal campaign speeches and AI evaluations equally. Let the evaluators judge based on the candidates’ speeches as reference, then combine it with the AI’s evaluation results, and conduct the election based on the final outcome.”
This form made the other students buzz with discussion. Ouyang Yating gave a slight bow and sat down, then noticed the gaze from her right. She didn’t need to look to know it was Xiang Chuan staring at her.
This kid’s thinking is really flexible. Xiang Chuan, the 21st century person whose brain doesn’t turn fast, thought.
“This is indeed a good method.” Zhu Bingwen smiled and praised, then looked around at the students in the class: “Students who agree to try this new form for the class cadre election, please raise your hand.”
Unexpectedly, the vast majority raised their hands. A small portion, like the brown-haired boy sitting in the front row by the window side with an uninterested attitude, obviously didn’t bother to raise their hand.
“Good, then we’ll adopt this new form. But having everyone come up to give speeches suddenly would be too abrupt… how about this: we’ll save the speeches for tomorrow and first list the candidate list today.”
As he spoke, Zhu Bingwen turned around to continue the election for the other class cadre positions. This time, more people seemed to raise their hands.
The school’s buildup part is a bit long (actually, I got carried away writing…), aiming to have Xiang Chuan go home and enter the kitchen in the next chapter!
