I
didn't go to school for fourth grade but I did go back for fifth. I
had been doing a lot of math on my own not as any part of a
structured home school program but just because I liked math because
I was good at it and it was fun to figure stuff out. And because I am
a massive nerd. A massive nerd. Math had always come effortlessly to
me and when I went back to school I was bored to death by math time.
At the first of the year my teacher put a long division problem up on
the board to show us what a really hard problem might look like. I
asked if I could try and solve it and she allowed me to. I divided
the twelve digit number by a three digit number all the was to the
ground no cheating remainders, which I always hated. My teacher was
impressed the other kids were just really bored. After that my
teacher made copies of all of the math work for the whole year and
let me do it as fast as I wanted during math time. As fact as I
wanted was very fast and I was done in less than a week. Which then
gave us another problem because I was even more bored now that I had
finished all of the math so she got me the next two years of math and
they took much longer as I tried to learn algebra on my own during
math time. I got through the sixth grade curriculum and then was
stuck on many of the pre-algebra concepts and she didn't have time to
help me so I was allowed to spend the remaining math time for the
rest of the year reading books in the library which was the sweetest
reward of all. I could look at all of the coolest picture reference
books without a single competitor and I was left alone which was
where I wanted to be. Interestingly cruising through the math work
neither garnered me many friends or social standing and may actually
have contributed to my nerd status. I could never tell what I was
doing wrong I thought those kids would be impressed, no accounting
for taste I guess.
