Who would study psychology if they didn't have some kind of problem?

Chapter 296 Arriving at the Destination

Say something.

Being able to read other people's expressions and being able to hide your own expressions are not always the same thing.

Moreover, Nan Zhuren is indeed an honest person, and he doesn't seem to have any intention of hiding his expression.

Chonghui glanced at Nan Zhuren in the rearview mirror and nearly dropped the steering wheel: "What you're saying and what you're saying on your face don't match at all!"

As a senior fellow with a PhD in psychology, Chonghui's own emotions are also very well expressed.

He took a couple of deep breaths and tried to reason with them: "It's like how a therapist pretends not to know a client after leaving the consultation room—although our two projects are intrinsically related, they are actually independent of each other, understand?"

Nan Zhuren thought for a moment: "But, according to the report we submitted before, Director Chang also said that we would need to cooperate with the work later. They might even conduct investigations on other students and teachers in the school, and they will definitely need our help then, right? If we do some preparation work in advance, it will be easier when the time comes, won't it?"

Wow, what you said actually makes some sense.

The senior student wasn't swayed by the logic: "Judging from Chang Ming's previous slacking off, it doesn't seem like he'll do anything else later!"

"Speaking of which..."

Nan Zhuren suddenly leaned back in his seat—you know what, the seats in the car Lu Jia chose are quite comfortable; I wonder if the interior was upgraded separately.

The young consultant recalled, "That Director Chang... although he seemed to care about nothing, he showed his emotions when he saw my report later."

"And it's a relatively positive emotion, similar to—[expectation]?"

When the conversation turned to professional matters, Chonghui's attention was inevitably drawn to it.

However, he quickly composed himself: "Well... let's wait for Director Chang to contact you first. At least we can't do anything based on our own subjective assumptions, understand?"

“I’ve heard some things about you from your senior colleague, and now I feel like you’ve been influenced by that student. I have to say—don’t bring the emotions from the last project into the next one!”

Seeing that his senior brother had been amused enough, and that the other party was indeed in control of the steering wheel again.

Nan Zhuren pursed her lips.

[Emotional readjustment]

"Don't worry, senior brother. I'm not upset."

Looking at Nan Zhuren's expression in the rearview mirror, Chonghui suddenly felt that the change in his junior brother was quite jarring.

There really is nothing left on my face?
For a moment, Chonghui even began to doubt what he had learned over the past few years.

……

Overall, the journey afterwards was relatively smooth.

Following the navigation, the vehicle slowly came to a stop at the school gate with the words "Jiangdu No.1 Middle School" printed on it.

Then, they were stopped by security guards.

"The license plate isn't registered, so you can't come in," said the security guard, who looked to be in his fifties.

The security guard didn't show any negative emotions on his face, and his tone of voice was very calm.

Chonghui and Nan Zhuren expressed their understanding of each other's work in respecting this act of loyalty to duty.

Chonghui quickly took out his phone and started communicating with the contact person, while Nan Zhuren opened the car door and looked out at the scenery inside the school. Unlike universities, high schools have much more variety in their names. For example, there are private schools named "XX Public Middle School," public schools that take parts of idioms like "XX Seeking Truth Middle School," middle schools that use various long and elaborate names and include words like "Experimental" or "Foreign Language," and some that simply transliterate foreign words like "XX Hank Middle School."

Then there are middle schools that combine local characteristics, so their names are even more varied.

The quality of teaching also varies greatly.

However, public middle schools that can use a simple and unpretentious combination of "city name" + "Xth" + "middle school" as their school name are generally able to maintain a minimum standard.

Especially the middle schools that use "First" as their middle name, at the very least, have a rich history, and even if they are not the best, they can't be that bad.

Looking out from the school's main gate, Nan Zhuren could only see a large square with a sculpture bearing the school motto, an outermost office building, and the shadowy outline of a teaching building.

The campus is so large that you can't even see the dormitories.

"What are you thinking about?" After a brief conversation with the contact person, Chonghui noticed that Nan Zhuren was lost in thought and took the initiative to ask.

“The school is very big,” Nan Zhuren said honestly. “I’m wondering how long it would take to collect data on the students here.”

“At first I thought there wouldn’t be many students here.” Nan Zhuren shrugged. “I’m not from Jiangdu, I come from a small place. My old school only had one teaching building and one dormitory building.”

Chonghui expressed his understanding and said he was very experienced in this situation: "Stratified sampling will do. By sampling students from each grade and their score ranges, and then balancing the male-to-female ratio, we can get fairly reliable data."

“We’ll select a few hundred people, and talk to each of them for about ten minutes,” Chonghui said, giving his estimate. “With the two of us working together, we can complete the data sampling in a little over a week.”

This is the most optimistic scenario.

Nan Zhuren nodded.

As they were talking, they saw a middle-aged man with a large belly walking briskly in their direction.

"Principal Ma," the security guard greeted him.

"Hmm." The middle-aged man nodded, smiled, and waved his hand, completing a response with little eye contact with the security guard in a single second.

He then looked at Nan Zhuren and Chonghui, his eyes involuntarily showing surprise at their appearance.

But he still maintained a polite smile: "Is this Teacher Chong from Beidu? It must be hard work for you to come all this way."

"Professor Nan... I've heard so much about you. We've also organized internal study sessions on those learning videos from Jiang University. Students' mental health is indeed very important."

He naturally began the small talk and offered a brief greeting.

"Principal Ma," the duo greeted, mimicking the security guards.

"Oh, Vice Principal," Vice Principal Ma emphasized, shaking hands with Chonghui and Nan Zhuren in turn. "I'm so sorry, we were just having a meeting to discuss your matters. I didn't expect to be so negligent and keep you both waiting for so long."

Upon hearing this, Chonghui skillfully followed up with pleasantries: "We should have arrived early. We thought the roads would be congested, but the traffic was actually quite good..."

The two were led inside by Vice Principal Ma. Nan Zhuren did not participate in this social interaction, but instead looked around.

Then, after walking for a short while, we saw the playground.

Students are training inside.

(End of this chapter)