学进去

Growing up, I thought math class was something to be endured, not enjoyed. I disliked memorizing formulas (公式) and taking tests, all for the dull goal of getting a good grade. One of my teachers told my mother that I was “slow”. But my problem wasn’t with math itself. In fact, when a topic seemed particularly interesting, I would go to the library and read more about it.

By high school, no one told me that I could become a professional mathematician. What I wanted to do then was to play college football. My goal was to get an athletic scholarship to attend a Big Ten school.

The chances of that happening were very low. But that didn’t stop my coaches from encouraging me to believe I could reach my goal, and preparing and pushing me to work for it. They made video tapes of my performances and sent them to college coaches around the country. In the end, a Big Ten school, Penn State, did offer me a scholarship.

I wish math teachers were more like football coaches. Students are influenced by more than just the quality of a lesson plan. They also react to the passion of their teachers and the engagement of their peers and they try to achieve a sense of purpose. They get advantages from detailed and exact instructions and constant feedback (反馈).

Until I got to college, I didn’t really know what mathematics was. I still thought of it as laborious (耗时费力的) calculations. Then my professor handed me a book and suggested that I should think about a particular problem. It wasn’t easy, but it was attractive. My professor kept giving me problems, and I kept chasing them, even though I couldn’t always solve them immediately. The mathematical research I was doing had little in common with what I did in my high school classrooms. Instead, it was closer to the math and logic puzzles I did on my own as a boy. It gave me the same sense of wonder and curiosity, and it rewarded creativity. I am now a Ph.D candidate (候选人) in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.