Anecdotally and from my personal experience, this is unfortunately accurate. I would add two points to this depiction of scholastic life: Teaching is not a hig

Anecdotally and from my personal experience, this is unfortunately accurate. I would add two points to this depiction of scholastic life: Teaching is not a highly regarded position in US society in general (I.e. those who cannot do, teach). There is a trend within the US and UK to view STEM subjects negatively. The derogatory “nerd” stereotype is not so prevalent among other cultures. Growing up in the US, it was very clear that you could be either attractive/well-liked or good at math. For those that happened to possess both features, discussions would come from the angle that the person is attractive/well-liked in spite of being good at STEM. The underlying premise seemed to be that you had to extra good-looking to be labeled as attractive if you were also to do well in math.