After graduating from Huake, my original plan was to go abroad for further studies. At that time, I scored 7.0 on the IELTS and 108 on the TOEFL, and I received offers from UIUC, CMU, UNSW, and USYD. However, due to my family's financial situation, I had to give up on the options in the US and Australia, and instead adjusted my path to work for a few years to save enough tuition before figuring out a way to come to Japan. I have worked at three companies in China: a state-owned enterprise, a well-known internet company, and a state-owned private enterprise. My first job was at the state-owned enterprise. The benefits were good, and I could take it easy, but the efficiency was astonishingly low. Even a simple small project had an extremely complicated process, and everything required layers of approval. I had to run through countless departments just to get my resignation stamped, which took a full two weeks. Moreover, the salary at the state-owned enterprise was clearly not enough to save for studying abroad. For someone eager to break out, it was neither a place I wanted to stay nor a place I should stay. So, I resigned after less than half a year. My second job was at a well-known (even notoriously known) internet company. The salary was double that of the state-owned enterprise, not counting the year-end bonus, with nearly twenty thousand in hand each month. However, there was a high turnover rate, with everyone trying to grab bonuses and build their resumes, and no one was really focused on the engineering itself. Additionally, the complex interpersonal calculations, office politics, and the seasoned colleagues who could stab you in the back while pretending to be laid-back made me quickly realize that this environment was not sustainable. However, I did manage to save enough for my first pot of gold here, which gave me the confidence to switch jobs. My third job was at a state-owned private enterprise. By that time, I was already preparing to go abroad, and I no longer had expectations for the job itself; I just wanted a stable environment to self-study Japanese. Unexpectedly, this turned out to be the most exhausting of the three. Not only did I have to work in a clean room, but I also had to rotate night shifts. However, after getting familiar with the processes, I found that there were actually quite a few fragmented times available for self-study. I clearly remember using the company computer to find many Japanese articles online, copying them into Word, and then printing them with the company's dust-free paper to take into the clean room. Since the clean room had to accommodate a lot of equipment, with high ceilings and loud machine noise, as long as I didn't get too close to others, I wouldn't be heard. So, I often took advantage of the fragmented time during night shifts or when operators were working on machines to read Japanese aloud, squeezing every bit of time to the extreme. With this job, I passed the N2 exam after half a year of self-study. After passing N2, I actually stopped studying Japanese seriously, as most of my energy was focused on applying to graduate schools. Although I passed N1 in the JLPT six months later, it was purely because I started cramming a week in advance. The working hours at this company and my Japanese study time basically overlapped for about a year. When I went abroad, I had saved around four to five hundred thousand RMB in total. This is how a poor student goes abroad—without a background, without connections, and without anyone paving the way for me. I had to find my own way. This is also why I completely cannot understand the wasteful mentality of people like Feng Tang Xiao Miao. In their twenties or thirties, not lacking money, time, or energy, yet they lie around waiting for others to feed them; when faced with difficulties, they don't think or solve problems, only crying online, expecting the government, society, or netizens to support them. There aren't that many saviors in life. The only one who can truly take you out is always yourself.