It sounds a bit like it's also the shock of encountering such hard math. I'm jealous of other countries that work their high school students hard. I remember

It sounds a bit like it's also the shock of encountering such hard math. I'm jealous of other countries that work their high school students hard. I remember meeting international students that had learned all of my engineering college math in high school. Back then, neither me nor my parents knew that I could and that I _should_ absorb that kind of math, let alone how to go about doing it. It would be nice if that notion was more institutionalized in the USA.