Tag Archive for 'high school'

Being socially active is important to academic success

Published by davinci on May 11, 2009 in autobiography and personal. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

I had originally written the material in this post as a part of the ongoing series on the causes of my depression. I had taken this material out because it had made the high school section of my chronology far too long, and also because I didn’t think the details were that relevant to the theme of the series. However, as I was writing the next post in the series, which was to be about my experiences in graduate school, I realised that a lot of it didn’t make sense except in comparison with my high school experiences. I have therefore cobbled some of the material back together into this post.

I am not including this post in the ongoing series numbering primarily because it is out of chronological order, but also because I think its theme is important enough that the post should stand on its own. There is a widespread belief that intelligence and sociability are inversely correlated; gifted children are commonly stereotyped as being socially awkward and unpopular, especially in high school. I not only think that this stereotype is untrue, I think it is perniciously harmful. It is especially harmful in the case of gifted adolescents of Asian descent, who are basically hit with the double whammy of being stereotyped as socially awkward for two different reasons… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. How I managed to be so successful in high school
  2. The causes of my depression, part 6: how Mrs. Mallo saved my academic career
  3. The causes of my depression, part 15: the most important thing I did in undergrad
  4. My academic and personal background
  5. Why children should be allowed to study whatever they want to study
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The causes of my depression, part 2: my high school predictions about the future

Published by davinci on April 23, 2009 in autobiography and personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

In high school, I predicted to my parents what I would be doing in the future, the kind of environment I would be working in, and even the demographics of the people I would be working with. But instead of helping me, my parents did everything they could to hinder me and prevent me from achieving my goals.

My predictions were quite reasonable, or so I thought. First, there would be a close collaboration between computer scientists and physicists to study some issues which are at the core of both fields; as a result, there would be a niche for people fluent in both fields who could facilitate communication between the two communities. Naturally, I thought that I should fill that role. Second, I would be working in close proximity specifically to astrophysicists… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 3: science writing in high school
  2. How I managed to be so successful in high school
  3. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 4: high school and being editor-in-chief
  4. The causes of my depression, part 19: the demographics of my graduate school labmates
  5. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 5: writing about open notebook science in high school
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Overcoming my writer’s block, part 4: high school and being editor-in-chief

Published by davinci on April 10, 2009 in autobiography and personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

In the previous post, I wrote about the main cause of my writer’s block, as far as scientific writing was concerned. But that was not the end of it — my parents continued to punish me for writing even as I switched to other topics.

Now, being beaten, locked out of the house, and threatened with disownment would probably have deterred most people from continuing to do the things that provoked those reactions in the first place. But the maltreatment I received at home was more than balanced by the acclaim I received outside. Everyone called me a genius and told me that this or that one of my essays was the most insightful thing they had ever read on whatever subject it was on, that I was the most talented writer they had ever met, that I should be published, and so on. People kept telling me that I should submit my writings to this magazine or that journal, but I couldn’t heed their suggestions. I had conflicting goals: on the one hand, like any author, I wanted to disseminate my writings, but on the other, I had to limit the probability that my parents would chance upon them. And this latter constraint took priority, because being caught would have meant being prevented from writing at all… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 3: science writing in high school
  2. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 5: writing about open notebook science in high school
  3. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 2: elementary school, ESL, and fiction
  4. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 1: overview
  5. How I managed to be so successful in high school
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Why children should be allowed to study whatever they want to study

Published by davinci on February 4, 2009 in autobiography and personal. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

An experience that I think must be common to a lot of the children of authoritarian parents is to have their extracurricular interests disparaged, and to be told that anything that isn’t on the school curriculum is not worth studying. I know this is very common among Asian parents, and it’s just one more manifestation of the inherently anti-science attitude that is present in traditional Asian beliefs about raising children.

My parents’ rationale for attacking me for spending time studying subjects not on the school curriculum was, according to them, so that I would be more “focused in school”. This is just so wrong on so many levels… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. Authoritarian parenting and its harmful effects on gifted children
  2. How I managed to be so successful in high school
  3. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 1: overview
  4. Being socially active is important to academic success
  5. Miscellaneous articles about raising gifted children, from Scientific American
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How I managed to be so successful in high school

Published by davinci on February 4, 2009 in autobiography and personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

High school was a very difficult time for me, but I was also extremely successful during this time. My parents had arrived in Canada only two years earlier, and it would be some time before the disruptive effects of their interference with my education would become apparent. I was very fortunate that for several years in elementary school — probably the most formative years of my life — I could learn from excellent teachers without my parents continually disparaging everything they taught me. I began high school very, very far ahead of my classmates, and I had gotten that way by doing precisely the very things that my parents would discourage and attempt to prevent me from doing during high school: reading books not on the school curriculum, learning things by actually doing them, going around talking to people with an interest or expertise in a subject, and so on.

There were three interweaving strands in my high school life: academics, school-related extracurricular activities, and interests altogether outside of school… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 4: high school and being editor-in-chief
  2. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 3: science writing in high school
  3. The causes of my depression, part 2: my high school predictions about the future
  4. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 5: writing about open notebook science in high school
  5. The causes of my depression, part 19: the demographics of my graduate school labmates
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