The day started like any other summer day, filled with blistering heat and humid air, such that everything around me is watery. I woke up early at 7 am, got dressed, and began studying. Life in high school was banal, like an old man’s face, never changing. The morning went in a blink of an eye.

Suddenly, my mother knocked on my door. Then, she came in and said I got admitted to USTC. I was elated. I do not need to keep cramming for tests. My high school life was over, and I was only a freshman. I am a young bird out of the cage, heading toward one of the best universities in China.

It was hard to describe how I felt at that time accurately. I was thinking about a challenging math problem at that time, and naturally, it was hard for me to get back to normal life-I was still engaged in that problem. I was dazed, astonished, and then shocked and shaken. My heart was racing like a motorcar, and I distinctly heard myself yelling for joy.

I thought back to my high school life, those bittersweet memories back then. It felt only yesterday when the teacher scolded me for getting a low score on the test. In high school, the schedule was a chain around my neck. I had to wake up and 6 am, and we had ten classes a day, with only 10 minutes break in between.

But worse still is conformity in high school-the teacher treated us like dogs. In high school, the teachers were strict and, if you differ from the answer key, you need to correct yourself even if your answer is plausible. As a result, I got terrible scores back then, even though I believed that I understood perfectly, and always ended up berated by my parents. We had to wear uniforms, and they were ugly. Nobody dares to wear makeup-the school has strict rules and punishments for that. Smartphones were not allowed. Dating was forbidden, which I found absurd.

I sat there; my heart was as if it had feathers. I went out, smelling the flowers in blossom and hearing the birds chirping joyously in the afternoon air. It was a lazy afternoon, the sun crawling slowly across the sky, and the best time of the year-ice cream, playing in the parks. Other seasons were nothing like summer; the winter winds like knives against my skin, in spring and autumn toiling in work without a second to spare. I embraced the last rays of the sunshine.

Then it was dark, and the night was so charming, as I’ve never before felt before with the tired footsteps of coming back from school. The night was cool and silent. I felt like the lyrics “Darkness stirs and wakes imagination.”

I went quickly into a peaceful dream, knowing that I need not conform and tire myself out from schoolwork anymore and that my life changes dramatically. I can finally go deep into the world of math and explore freely. I will grow up to be an adult and begin my early steps into society.