Chapter 59: The Most Important Thing in Life Is to Be Happy!

Chapter 59: Chapter 59: The Most Important Thing in Life Is to Be Happy!

"Let’s get one thing straight first. What I’m about to say only represents my personal opinion, not some profound theory. Just listen to it as a reference, Aunt. The final decision still rests in your and Wenhui’s hands."

Chen Jingle prefaced his advice with a disclaimer.

"Oh, I know. It’s just for reference," his aunt urged. "Just speak your mind. Even if we end up making the wrong choice, we won’t blame you."

Chen Xiuyun subconsciously curled her lips upon hearing this, but she quickly raised a hand to hide her expression. She turned her head and caught Lin Yaoheng looking over, giving her all sorts of meaningful glances. She immediately shot him a glare and stealthily pinched his thigh with her fingertips.

Lin Yaoheng’s mouth twitched, not daring to make a sound.

Since things had reached this point, what else could Chen Jingle do? He thought for a moment before speaking slowly.

"First of all, I suggest you and Uncle prepare yourselves for Wenhui to pursue a master’s degree.

"Because degrees are depreciating in value nowadays, the next few years will become increasingly competitive. If you don’t join the rat race, you’ll just be crushed by the competition. Therefore, getting a postgraduate degree is absolutely necessary.

"Science and engineering are different from the humanities. You can truly learn practical things during a master’s program, and the degree provides a massive boost to your career. Regardless of which path she takes, I recommend postgraduate studies. So, don’t expect her to graduate from college and immediately start making money to pay back the family. On the contrary, you’ll have to keep investing in her.

"Of course, most master’s programs nowadays offer stipends and various scholarships, so it won’t actually cost that much. You can just ask Sister Xiu about this."

His aunt immediately turned her gaze toward Chen Xiuyun.

Chen Xiuyun nodded hastily. "That’s right. The national scholarships and grants, along with the university’s scholarships and bonuses from the supervisor’s projects, can basically cover tuition and living expenses."

His aunt gritted her teeth. "Alright! She can do it!"

Chen Jingle nodded. "Then let’s talk about the specific paths she could take.

"The academic route is currently the hardest to walk.

"In the past, people said you just needed to follow a big shot, but nowadays, even PhDs struggle to secure university teaching positions, and there are strict academic performance requirements. Furthermore, this path requires endless competition. Even academicians have to compete, let alone the small fries and cogs at the bottom. To ordinary people, a PhD might seem like the ceiling, but they can still only stay at the very bottom of the academic pyramid.

"Sister Xiu used to work in a research institute with her supervisor, so she should understand this deeply. In those major projects, master’s students can only do grunt work, exhausting themselves to death for low pay, all for the sake of a so-called permanent position. It’s not worth it! Unless her abilities are exceptionally strong, and she can smoothly complete a PhD, has absolutely no interest in the other two paths, and only wants to focus on scientific research—otherwise, never choose this route.

"Therefore, we eliminate this path first!"

Hearing this, a bewildered look began to appear on his aunt’s face.

"PhDs are only at the very bottom?" she thought in shock. "My goodness, then this... this path really shouldn’t be chosen!"

"Next is making a fortune—paths related to earning money," Chen Jingle paused. "As long as a science or engineering master’s degree isn’t in a completely useless major, the income is much higher than in pure humanities. My suggestion is to take the technical route. The country’s future direction is to develop new industries and advanced manufacturing, which requires a massive amount of STEM talent.

"Let’s take Nanke University as an example. Nanke University is a Double First-Class institution, despite not having legacy 985 or 211 status. I saw some master’s graduates from their school sharing their experiences this year, and quite a few of them secured annual salaries of 200,000 to over 300,000 yuan. It’s relatively easy to achieve this in fields like biomedical engineering, computer science, and electronic information engineering. Work for five years, and you can more or less save up some money. This salary isn’t bad, right? If you purely want to improve the family’s living conditions, this route is a viable option."

Hearing about an annual salary of two to three hundred thousand, his aunt’s eyes immediately lit up. "This is good! This is great!"

If Wenhui could come out of a master’s program with an annual salary of 200,000 yuan—nearly 20,000 yuan a month—that would be absolutely fantastic! If anyone’s child had that kind of capability, they would be praised to the high heavens!

"The last option is climbing the official ranks. This is a choice entirely different from money and wealth; it’s about social status..."

Chen Jingle pondered for a much longer time before continuing. What he was about to say was something that couldn’t be posted online; even if it was, it would be quickly deleted. It was a path he had deduced and summarized himself by analyzing a massive amount of data and information. It could be said to be the fastest method for ordinary people to achieve class mobility in this era.

He had chatted with Liang City about this once before. The other party couldn’t help but sigh, saying that if he had known all this earlier, he wouldn’t have failed to secure even a Level-Four Principal Staff Member rank; at the very worst, he would have remained in a municipal department.

And this was even based on the premise that Liang City hadn’t done well on his college entrance exam and hadn’t chosen a good university.

Li Wenhui was different, however. She was only a high school senior and still had plenty of opportunities. If she planned well, she could avoid many detours in her future life.

Many people struggled simply because they had no one to guide or mentor them, forcing them to grope in the dark on their own. By the time they finally understood how things worked, they were already in their thirties or even forties. Worse still, some remained completely oblivious to these hidden rules even when their hair turned gray.

Knowledge, sometimes, was far more valuable than one could imagine!

"..."

After Chen Jingle finished speaking, everyone was still somewhat dazed. Clearly, they had no idea such a method even existed before this.

Sister Xiu had tried taking the civil service and public institution exams before, so she understood a bit, but there was still a lot in what Chen Jingle shared today that she had never heard of.

For a moment, she couldn’t help but be dumbfounded. "You can actually pull strings like this?" she wondered. "Where did you learn all of this?"

As for his aunt, her mind was already in complete chaos. No relative in their family was a government official, so naturally, she had no way of knowing these things, which could be considered highly classified secrets in the eyes of ordinary people. It was as if a door to a whole new world had been opened.

Lin Yaoheng, on the other hand, wore a look of utter admiration. "Brother Le, you really know a lot. I’ve only heard my dad mention a little bit about this kind of stuff; some leader’s son did exactly this. But the prerequisite is that the university has to be top-tier. An average university couldn’t pull this off even if they wanted to."

Chen Jingle smiled faintly. "It’s all just theory for me. I haven’t put it into practice, but generally speaking, it’s feasible. You have to learn to analyze and capture useful information from the internet."

In truth, this all relied on information asymmetry.

Civil engineering had simply been rebranded as "intelligent construction." Some people didn’t understand the difference, foolishly chose it, and even happily believed they had selected an AI-related major. They would think, "Ah, my whole life is completely set now."

Whether it was set or not was debatable, but if they didn’t change majors, graduating to pour concrete on a construction site was an absolute certainty.

"If we follow the path you described, can she really reach that level?" his aunt asked, staring intently, clearly tempted.

Chen Jingle felt helpless. "I’m just putting it out there. Theoretically, yes. But this path isn’t suitable for everyone; it depends on Li Wenhui’s own opinion. If she doesn’t want to walk this path, no matter how much you say, it’ll be useless. Once a person develops psychological resistance, it means their compatibility with the job won’t improve, making it very difficult to move up. What I’m giving you, Aunt, is just advice. What you can give Li Wenhui is also just advice. The final decision still rests in Li Wenhui’s own hands."

"Mhm, I understand." His aunt fell into deep thought.

He just hoped she had actually listened.

After all, Chen Jingle still wanted Li Wenhui’s future development to go smoothly—at the very least, for her to take a step up from their current foundation and face work and life with a positive and optimistic attitude.

In this world, the most important thing was to be happy. Whether at work or in life, one had to be happy.

And not end up like him, forced to return to his hometown to slack off simply because he wasn’t happy.

Of course, if there were no other options and slacking off was the only way to make oneself a bit happier, then doing so wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. No one ever dictated that a person had to work non-stop throughout their life. Some people just had very strange mindsets, acting as if taking a short break was a grave sin.

They were human beings, not machines. Even machines needed proper rest.