Chapter 194 - 143: Golden Sunflower Card
Yang Xu was looking at Jiang He’s test results.
After reading them, he said, "Not bad. You’re recovering faster than expected. You can be discharged. It’s great to be young..."
Jiang He let out a sigh. "Finally."
"However, discharge is one thing, but you still need to mentally prepare for what we just discussed."
"The early graduation defense?"
"Yes. The university is making a special exception for you this time, so the process can’t be taken lightly. In fact, it will be much stricter than a normal defense. There will be five professors covering four major fields: clinical surgery, basic medicine, pathology, and pharmacology. They will question you from all angles to assess your comprehensive medical knowledge. It’s definitely going to be difficult; they won’t let you pass easily."
At this, Yang Xu chuckled. "But you know many of the professors, and given the level you’ve demonstrated recently, I’m confident it won’t be a problem for you. Still, ’despise the enemy strategically, but take them seriously tactically.’ You should still prepare a little over the next two days. Crack open some books."
Beside them, Shen Yu couldn’t help but praise him. "Dr. Jiang... you’re so incredible. Does that mean that once you pass this defense, you won’t be a student anymore?"
Yang Xu replied, "That’s not quite it. Graduating early from his undergraduate program is just the first step. Next, he has to enter the ’Excellent Doctor Education and Training Program.’ It’s a special national-level track. To put it simply, he still has to go to graduate school."
At this point, Yang Xu’s expression suddenly became a little peculiar. "My graduate student."
He emphasized: *My*.
Yang Xu’s eyes gleamed as he stared intently at him. "Jiang He, after finishing your master’s with me, you’ll go straight for a doctorate. You’re willing to do that, right?"
’Hurry up and agree! Don’t be ungrateful! Don’t make me get on my knees and beg you.’
Shen Yu blinked, feeling that something was odd.
In her experience, it was always the students who ran themselves ragged chasing after their advisors for a spot in a direct master’s-to-PhD program, pulling every string and calling in every favor they could.
The advisor was always the one who held the power of life and death.
But now... uh, wasn’t this the world turned upside down?
Without hesitating, Jiang He nodded. "No problem, Professor. I’ll do both my master’s and doctorate with you."
Hearing this, Yang Xu was overjoyed, grinning from ear to ear!
’This is great! Now I can show off to Professor Wang again! And it feels like an academician fellowship is waving at me, haha!’
"Good, good, good."
As Yang Xu said this, he stood up and walked to the window, pretending to check the latch to calm himself down.
He glanced around the room.
He even looked back at the door to the hospital room.
Then, he cleared his throat and walked back to the bedside.
Watching his professor’s series of actions, Jiang He guessed he was about to discuss something important.
Sure enough, Yang Xu said, "Besides the defense, there’s something else I need to talk to you about. It’s regarding that miRNA early screening you want to do, and the early prediction project for severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) as the first-stage goal."
Jiang He’s expression turned serious. "Go on."
"Over the past few days, I’ve discussed your research idea with a few people, including some at the provincial hospital and several key experts in the Capital City. Their opinions were surprisingly unanimous: they’re not optimistic. In fact, you could say they strongly advise you not to touch this field."
"The medical community has tried to tackle early prediction of SAP before. From interleukin and C-reactive protein to various complex scoring systems, countless teams have poured who knows how much money into it. In the end, the results either lack specificity or have sensitivity that’s too low, making them completely unusable as a clinical standard. As for using miRNA for early screening of pancreatic cancer, that’s even more of a pipe dream. There are too many variables, the investment is a bottomless pit, and you won’t see any return in the short term."
Yang Xu paused for a few seconds, letting Jiang He digest this information.
Then, he began to persuade him.
"Jiang He, listen to me. Your situation is different now. You have the resources of a national-level P3 laboratory, and the higher-ups think very highly of you. The safest path for you right now is to go along with the government’s wishes and earnestly take on that joint respiratory virus engineering project."
"For this project, the state provides the money, the personnel, and the policy support. As the lead researcher, as long as your name is on this project, your position will be as solid as a mountain."
At this point, Yang Xu leaned forward and lowered his voice to a whisper.
"If you get the itch to work on your own projects, you can absolutely do some simple, short-term clinical retrospective studies or improve a few basic surgical techniques. With your intellect and skills, publishing a few papers in core journals should be a piece of cake."
"That way, you can ensure your reputation doesn’t decline, your résumé will look better and better, and... the funding and prestige will keep rolling in. Do you understand what I mean?"
Jiang He understood his professor’s intentions perfectly.
With twenty years of experience from his past life as a foundation, he of course understood how the game was played in this country.
If Yang Xu’s words were translated into plain speech, he was basically saying:
’Just lie flat! Don’t touch the Hell-difficulty pancreatic cancer early screening. The project’s failure rate is too high. Once you’ve sunk a few years into it without results, the patience of the higher-ups will run out, and your halo will fade.’
’You’re better off just coasting on the government project, casually churning out a few easy papers to maintain your image as a peerless genius. It’s safe, painless, and offers the highest returns. You’ll be set for life, with both fame and fortune!’
His words were extremely pragmatic.