As school kids, the last few minutes of every working day were hellish. Dreams of my favorite cartoons would be flashing by as I stare mindlessly into the vast emptiness of the skies. I would then plummet at terminal velocity into the reality after being struck by the best marksmen in the nation, armed only by a chalk and nothing more, my teachers, to awaken to the harsh reality that there are five more minutes to melodious sounds of the school bells. One common fantasy of all the kids would be to ring the school bell themselves a few minutes earlier than the closing time but I'm glad I wasn't in China when I once played the prank.

One man in central China had been sent to prison for an year for ringing the school bells five minutes earlier. However, the premise was different. The national college entrance exam was cut short by five minutes due to the early bell, only to the loss of several students who had to hand in their papers incomplete after planning out their exam too well.

Xiao Yulong, pleaded guilty saying that he had hit the school bell four minutes and 48 seconds early by mistanke on June 8 which was the bane of 1050 students who gave in their papers five minutes before the stipulated time.

Several protests many times at the school and the education bureau seeking a probe into the issue had happened since then.

Xiao then received a court sentence sending him to prison for one year but with a one-year reprieve. Luckily for him this mean he may need to serve very little of time inside the prison.

"Xiao was careless in his work and mistakenly rang the bell too early, resulting in adverse social impact," a court statement said.

Similar to the competitive tests in our nation, this national entrance test is where the students fight for the highly limited university seats.

(Aw- Anil)