Chapter 47: Graduating Early?

Night.

With a beep from his keycard, Zhou Yun wearily stepped into his hotel room, dropped his backpack, and collapsed onto the bed.

After resting for a while, he felt somewhat recharged.

Normally, this amount of work wouldn’t tire him so much, but ever since this business trip began, everything seemed exhausting no matter what he did.

After taking a shower, he finally felt a bit better. Sitting at the desk, he began organizing the notes from today’s meeting. Their team was responsible for Subproject One. Although they had a general direction, the technical details still needed discussion. Moreover, they had to write the upcoming project proposal themselves, a task naturally falling to Zhou Yun.

This was a rite of passage for all graduate students—writing the proposal!

The proposal itself wasn’t difficult; the real annoyance lay in the endless revisions afterward.

Opening his laptop, he habitually checked his emails.

“Hm? An email from NeurIPS? Could it be the results?” Zhou Yun clicked into the NeurIPS website. Indeed, the acceptance list was out. A quick scan confirmed that his paper was on it.

At that moment, everything truly settled.

Closing the NeurIPS site, he noticed one more new email in his inbox.

“Dami—R&D Department?”

He muttered under his breath and opened the message.

“Oh~ so that’s how it is? But didn’t they just announce the results today? How did they get my paper so quickly?”

He wasn’t surprised to be approached—he knew the value of his paper well—but he hadn’t expected such a swift reaction.

After some thought, Zhou Yun drafted a reply but scheduled it for later. He wanted to rest properly tonight; if they responded immediately, he couldn't just pretend not to see it.

Satisfied with the scheduled send, he closed his email and returned to organizing his meeting notes.

It wasn’t until nine in the evening that he finished all his tasks for the day.

“Finally done.” He stretched and shut down the computer.

***

The next morning, at eight o’clock in the hotel restaurant.

“Morning.” Deng Yonghua met Zhou Yun for breakfast.

“How did you sleep last night?”

“Not bad.” Although the hotel bed was bigger than the dorm’s, it still wasn’t as comfortable as sleeping at school.

Perhaps it was the psychological effect of being on a business trip; he wasn’t quite sure.

“By the way, someone from Dami emailed me yesterday, said they want to buy my technology. Do you have any advice?” Zhou Yun mentioned this to Deng Yonghua, who had much more experience with such matters.

“Oh? What technology?”

“The one from that NeurIPS paper. Since they just released the list of accepted papers yesterday, I guess that’s how they saw mine.”

“That fast?” Deng Yonghua nodded thoughtfully. “Since they reached out, it wouldn’t hurt to talk. But it mainly depends on you. My advice is to sell it. For academics, unless you start your own company, it’s nearly impossible to bring technology to market. The engineering workload is beyond an individual’s capacity. So it’s better to exchange it for money. After all, whether for research or daily life, we all need funds.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think too. I already emailed them back. They might contact me today.”

Deng Yonghua paused, then laughed with mock frustration. “Then why did you ask me?”

“Well, you have experience. If there’s a trap in there, I can stop it in time, right?”

“You kids these days, I don’t know what you’re always thinking about. Society isn’t perfect, but it’s not as dark as you imagine. A big company like that doesn’t have time to trick a grad student who hasn’t even graduated.”

Zhou Yun didn’t argue but still believed one must always be cautious.

With not much else to talk about early in the morning, the two focused on their meal.

Suddenly, Zhou Yun’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Hm?”

He checked the screen: a message from the dorm chat group.

“@Zhou Yun, do you have a class at 8 a.m. today? Did you ask for leave?”

He suddenly remembered—he was still a first-year grad student, and there was a class this morning. But he had completely forgotten, likely because it had been so long since his last class.

“I haven’t. If the professor doesn’t take attendance, it’s fine. But if they do, could you help me explain to the professor?”

“Got it.”

Zhou Yun put away his phone and began pondering something.

Forget about being reborn; even without that, the graduate courses were essentially meaningless to him, as what they taught was rarely applicable to research.

Not just him—this was true for almost all graduate students.

***

Therefore, attending class was little more than a waste of time for him.

He had to find a solution; otherwise, with so many first-year courses, how much time could he devote to research?

“Professor, can first-year grad students be exempted from regular courses?”

Deng Yonghua looked up in surprise. “Why the sudden question?”

“Well, I just realized that attending classes doesn’t seem to benefit me.”

“You’re right. For you, those courses aren’t necessary. The school has seen this before, and the solution is simple: graduate early. A NeurIPS paper like yours will make the school open doors for you.”

“Graduate early?”

Deng Yonghua nodded. “Exactly. Actually, just with one NeurIPS paper, you can waive some courses. But I think that’s unnecessary. It’s better for you to just graduate outright. Being a graduate student imposes too many restrictions on you.”

Zhou Yun found some truth in that. “What about the thesis? Isn’t there a proposal and all?”

“That’s just procedural. As long as the final result is good, the process can be managed. But if your thesis isn’t up to par, even I can’t help you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“This is indeed an important issue for you. You should seriously consider it.”

Zhou Yun had never considered graduating early before.

But now that it was mentioned, it didn’t seem impossible. Graduating early would simplify many of the school’s bureaucratic hurdles, allowing him to focus more on research.

No matter how he thought about it, early graduation seemed an excellent idea.

So... early graduation it is?

As for the thesis topic, he could decide later.

After all, it was just a formality. Graduate theses mostly measured workload; as long as there was some innovation, it wasn’t strictly scrutinized.

When judging a graduate student’s excellence, people looked more at how many minor papers they’d published rather than their thesis.

For Zhou Yun, writing a thesis was only about whether he wanted to, not whether he could.