Ya, know kids are kids, no matter how smart they are, and today was one of those days. Just a vent post! My daughter 17 (average hard working kid, 31 ACT, Calculus 1, likes math, female) wanted to do a summer math program. We found one, she was accepted, and the rest is history.
It sucks being last and constantly reminded of it! . They have kids that are 12 yrs old (33 act) all the way to 16 yr olds that compete nationally… most have 1-3 years of Number Theory, Programming, Algebraic Geometry, Crypto, etc under their belt.
Her explanation is “It is just hard always being late to the problem. They get it every time (well most of them) I’m always 10 minutes behind from the start of class until the end of class all day.” that isn’t the hard part “Some of them are so cocky, so arrogant, that is what is hard” many of the boys just walk up to her work and say “Well, that is wrong! Why would you even do it like that? You should start over!” or gloat “I have a true engineers mind I don’t even need to be here I know as much as the TA’s I’m sure of it.”
She is learning and I’m trying to encourage her she just says “Why can’t people just be nice and helpful why is everyone such a jerk all the time? I get it I’m new it’s my first class, I’m not as good I know this, you constantly reminding me of this every 30 minutes does either of us any good.”
Just a hard day……….that is all. Feels like grade school lol.
I sympathize, too. This illustrates that one’s emotional age does not necessarily keep pace with one’s intellectual age (i.e., the 12 year olds are basically grade schoolers and demonstrating it with their behavior).
I don’t know if this would help, but maybe tell her that the biggest braggarts are often the ones who are the most nervous about their own standing. They might not be quite as hot stuff as they pretend to be. (Also - even if they are top dogs… maybe remind her that it’s a combination of great STEM skills AND great people skills that is the most lucrative in the long run).
But I sympathize for her having to put up with it.
My younger daughter just finished her first year of graduate school (economics) and I think she has at least one classmate who behaves like this, at least in classroom settings.
There are a couple of notable Fields medal winners who self-identified as “slower” than their peers, especially in high school. One, Laurent Schwartz, said:
“I was always deeply uncertain about my own intellectual capacity; I thought I was unintelligent. And it is true that I was, and still am, rather slow. I need time to seize things because I always need to understand them fully. Even when I was the first to answer the teacher’s questions, I knew it was because they happened to be questions to which I already knew the answer. But if a new question arose, usually students who weren’t as good as I was answered before me. Towards the end of the eleventh grade, I secretly thought of myself as stupid. I worried about this for a long time. Not only did I believe I was stupid, but I couldn’t understand the contradiction between this stupidity and my good grades. I never talked about this to anyone, but I always felt convinced that my imposture would someday be revealed: the whole world and myself would finally see that what looked like intelligence was really just an illusion. If this ever happened, apparently no one noticed it, and I’m still just as slow. (…)At the end of the eleventh grade, I took the measure of the situation, and came to the conclusion that rapidity doesn’t have a precise relation to intelligence. What is important is to deeply understand things and their relations to each other. This is where intelligence lies. The fact of being quick or slow isn’t really relevant. Naturally, it’s helpful to be quick, like it is to have a good memory. But it’s neither necessary nor sufficient for intellectual success.”
Another, Maryam Mirzakhani, described her process this way:
Mirzakhani described herself as a “slow” mathematician, saying that “you have to spend some energy and effort to see the beauty of math.” To solve problems, Mirzakhani would draw doodles on sheets of paper and write mathematical formulas around the drawings. Her daughter described her mother’s work as “painting”.
As a math teacher I can say, deeper understanding is much more important than faster understanding. I hope your daughter has a better day tomorrow.
I don’t care if the kids are younger, they sometimes just need to be put in their place. She needs to be confident in herself and tell them to quit being so obnoxious. Clearly, they are lacking social skills, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with her sticking up for herself and letting them know that. She will need to be able to speak up as she navigates life.
Its likely that some of the kids trained in competition math already since they were young and are familiar with the kind of material, like number theory puzzles, that’s not typically part of the normal school curriculum. That kind of immature show off attitude from young kids is regrettable.
Its similar to other areas, like with music protegees where 5 year olds on youtube play violin concertos. Remember one really does not compete with those other people but the only important measure is how much one grows as a person.
Some of the young “geniuses” might end up giving it all up when puberty hits, other become stars. It should not matter. Best to try to keep a positive attitude, even if it seems difficult. Perhaps one should take it as a learning opportunity on how to deal with difficult people and as a future leader win them over to your team.
(Wow, how did you solve this so quick, can you teach me your trick, that’s amazing, is this the same method your friend used, where did you learn that)
If she is female and they are male, then encourage her not to fall into the trap of thinking she is not good at math…he is good at math and these people may be faster at it but that doesn’t mean she isn’t great at math too.
My older S1 went to one of those math camps and felt stupid every day. He majored in math at a top school known for its program. What he did learn at the program was problem solving skills. The math was hard enough that he had to actually think about how to solve it. That skill has opened many, many doors for him. Most big tech companies have applicants do on-line programming problems; it’s ALL about how you think through a problem, not how sharp your coding is. The folks who run the program clearly thought she brought something to the table – she should remember that. She may well find that by the end of the summer, the pieces have clicked into place. Or they may not…but later, when she’s in Calc 2 or some other course, she’ll realize she “gets it” thanks to the summer she spent wrestling with it.
S also couldn’t stand the obnoxious braggarts, no matter what their age. They also tended to be the most insecure.
Whatever your D decides to study down the road, this summer will be an important life lesson.
It’s really no different in sports, performing arts and other competitive fields. Although I find team sports to be more supportive (until it becomes all about college recruiting)
That said, when it comes down to the important stuff (career), the kids that have the most success are generally the ones with good knowledge and excellent leadership. You certainly have to be competent, but you get way ahead in business (basically in any industry) if you’re a team player, likable, and a leader.
Anecdotally, my college room mate was a big 8 CPA back in the 80s. He was a real people person trapped in a CPA’s body (sorry CPAs - you get a bad rap). He’s now the CFO of a f100 company. I met up with him recently to catch up and he told me he was picked to fast track early on because the firm saw him as a leader (he’s very humble and said there were many others at least equally skilled). He was hired by a client, put through a top MBA program and the rest is history. None of that because he was the best technical person. He’s the type that others want to be around.
Don’t worry about these other kids. Tell your daughter to do her best, hone her skills, and just be the fine person I’m sure she is. She’ll do great!
(As an owner / operator of a small business - I would hire a smart, well rounded, likable person all day long. Wouldn’t even consider an arrogant know it all kid for any position because I’d never risk having them speak to a client - even to answer the phone!)
I hope this won’t keep your daughter from pursuing a career in math if it is otherwise appealing. My daughter is a mathematician and has had so much support and encouragement from professors, classmates, TAs, post-docs, people she’s met at math conferences, etc. She runs into a jerk once in a while, but the profession has been overwhelmingly welcoming to her. The little snots will probably always be little snots, but the vast majority of professional math geeks will be much, much kinder to someone who is enthusiastic about math and willing to work hard.
I second what @planet says. I got my doctorate in math from a well regarded department and met many supportive faculty and classmates. So many fields now are heavily quantitative, so she can use her problem solving skills anywhere.
Ignore the braggarts. There were a few like that I met in grad school .But most of these types either shut up or grow up by then.
Encourage her to keep up with her problem sets. She can check out some videos on.the art of problem solving site that go over some strategies that may align with her problem sets. Asking the others, "so how did you approach the problem " will either get the braggarts to shut up or help out. It worked in my days as a grad student. She should also approach her TA.
S also experienced students who knew how to solve a problem by rote, but could not explain how/why to save themselves. It’s not just about solving the problems. It’s understanding the questions and thinking about various approaches to solving the problem. And along the way, she’ll pick up some new tools for her tool belt.
S did a science fair project in middle school on forecasting the spread of an epidemic. Learned a programming language, did lots of math, finessed the program, and it took WEEKS to run. Did a great presentation and board and won the grand prize. A year later he learned the simple algorithm that would have run his data in minutes, not weeks. He kicked himself for a little bit, but then realized he had learned so many skills during that project that he had used on other projects since then. It really influenced how he approached programming and teaching others, and taught him that if he worked with others, he might discover different approaches to solving problems.
Please don’t have her say this. One of my kids had a teacher who used this line on the class and years later we are still mad at her. And no, my kids are NOT working for her kids, thank you very much.
I think Anne Landers or Dear Abby used to say you should say something like, “Why would you say something like that?”
I hope that math camp your D is attending is a real math camp teaching real foundation and fun facts of mathematics, instead of a math camp that is basically a SAT math section prep mill. Our ACT 31/33 and AP BC 5 D went to one in summer before her junior and felt what your D currently feels. Many of the kids (especially the boys) started in their middle schools every summer and after school, so there is shame to compare their knowledge in math exercises.
The thing is that these talent boys will likely to compete with other highly talent boys from other math prep camps and cancel out their advantage when comes to apply to top college. It is very sad that many of them wasted, if they were not really into math but made that by their families, many good summers in door instead of enjoy outside and nature for all for nothing at the end. Our take in this.