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This is exactly what happened to me as a kid, but in my case it wasn't curse of the "gifted" but curse of the pushed. In my younger years growing up in Ukraine

This is exactly what happened to me as a kid, but in my case it wasn't curse of the "gifted" but curse of the pushed. In my younger years growing up in Ukraine my parents and granparents pushed us hard to learn math, and so did my school. Endless repetition, hours of homework, Saturday classes, etc. I didn't have any sort of gift for math, this is just how children were taught there. Moving to the US and going into 5th grade, the first several years were just repetition of things I'd already learned in Ukraine. They were so easy. My grandmother wasn't there anymore and to my parents it looked like I was doing _great_ so they also loosened up and didn't really push me further. When we finally got to substantially new material I started to struggle. I got too used to everything being so easy and built on concepts I'd already had drilled into me. I failed a math test once - even my teacher was surprised. I ended up falling from perfect score As to Cs, then scraping back up to Bs by the end of high school. Now I regret not taking math as seriously as I should have after leaving Ukraine, and am now taking time at home to learn on my own. Thankfully I'm used to self-learning in other areas, so I think it's going pretty OK.

ciaranm 10y ago
This reads like the _exact_ opposite problem to what the parent described, to me.
- drakonka 10y ago
  This part in the original comment resonated with my experience: "When I was a kid, I could grasp concepts easily and I understood maths very quickly so I didn't really bother doing things like homework or actually studying." This was exactly the case for me after moving from Ukraine. Concepts were easy because I'd already known them, or they were just starting to be built on top of stuff I'd already drilled and knew before. So I did not put any effort into homework or studying. When entirely new concepts came along they crept up on me and my bad habits and I failed hard.
arvinsim 10y ago
I have the same experience. For context, I live in a third world country. I was lucky in the sense that I was enrolled in a prestigious school from kindergarten to grade 4. The school has a great curriculum that doesn't dumb down math and science while also emphasizing the arts. Arts and Sciences were equally interesting to me. I made no distinction with my enjoyment of solving arithmetic with creating poems or painting. Unfortunately, my family went into hard times and I had to transfer to our public school. In contrast to my previous school, teachers can't personally help each student because there were 50+ students per class. I also found out that the lessons they taught are already covered in my earlier years. I coasted through Grades 5 and 6 using my stock knowledge. When I got to high school, I was used to leaning back on what I learned. This is where I first tasted difficulty in learning the advanced math subjects. Sure, I got good grades in algebra but when it came to calculus, I was stumped. I could not care less about it because "math should be about calculation, not this symbolic mumbo jumbo". My boredom and inability to deal with the challenges resulted in my delinquency. I often cut classes and plagiarism homework. I still can't remember how I manage to graduate from high school. Now I deeply regret that I didn't apply myself back then.I am now a software developer and a lot of interesting stuff are closed to me because I can't understand the math behind them. I resolved to return studying high school algebra last year. Armed with experience and a new perspective, I realized how much I have missed and how useful math is.
- drakonka 10y ago
  I'm in the same position as you now, I think - a coder who wants to explore interesting subjects that rely on math knowledge I don't have. How are your studies going now? I have recently (a couple of weeks ago) started going through a textbook on discrete mathematics, spending 1-2 hours a day. So far it feels like I'm going through concepts that I intuitively already know (the first chapter is on logical thinking), but it has been very interesting to learn how to put names and definitions to those concepts, and to prove them. After this I hope to study algorithms and statistics.

ciaranm 10y ago

This reads like the _exact_ opposite problem to what the parent described, to me.

drakonka 10y ago
This part in the original comment resonated with my experience: "When I was a kid, I could grasp concepts easily and I understood maths very quickly so I didn't really bother doing things like homework or actually studying." This was exactly the case for me after moving from Ukraine. Concepts were easy because I'd already known them, or they were just starting to be built on top of stuff I'd already drilled and knew before. So I did not put any effort into homework or studying. When entirely new concepts came along they crept up on me and my bad habits and I failed hard.

arvinsim 10y ago

I have the same experience. For context, I live in a third world country. I was lucky in the sense that I was enrolled in a prestigious school from kindergarten to grade 4. The school has a great curriculum that doesn't dumb down math and science while also emphasizing the arts. Arts and Sciences were equally interesting to me. I made no distinction with my enjoyment of solving arithmetic with creating poems or painting. Unfortunately, my family went into hard times and I had to transfer to our public school. In contrast to my previous school, teachers can't personally help each student because there were 50+ students per class. I also found out that the lessons they taught are already covered in my earlier years. I coasted through Grades 5 and 6 using my stock knowledge. When I got to high school, I was used to leaning back on what I learned. This is where I first tasted difficulty in learning the advanced math subjects. Sure, I got good grades in algebra but when it came to calculus, I was stumped. I could not care less about it because "math should be about calculation, not this symbolic mumbo jumbo". My boredom and inability to deal with the challenges resulted in my delinquency. I often cut classes and plagiarism homework. I still can't remember how I manage to graduate from high school. Now I deeply regret that I didn't apply myself back then.I am now a software developer and a lot of interesting stuff are closed to me because I can't understand the math behind them. I resolved to return studying high school algebra last year. Armed with experience and a new perspective, I realized how much I have missed and how useful math is.

drakonka 10y ago
I'm in the same position as you now, I think - a coder who wants to explore interesting subjects that rely on math knowledge I don't have. How are your studies going now? I have recently (a couple of weeks ago) started going through a textbook on discrete mathematics, spending 1-2 hours a day. So far it feels like I'm going through concepts that I intuitively already know (the first chapter is on logical thinking), but it has been very interesting to learn how to put names and definitions to those concepts, and to prove them. After this I hope to study algorithms and statistics.