Urgent...advice re university meeting?

[quark]

(edited for brevity/ privacy)

 

If you were meeting a uni prof about a possible audit or dual enrollment situation, what questions would you ask? 

 

I will be bringing letters of recommendation and test scores and DS is bringing his notebooks and journals. Should I be preparing him in some way? He is capable enough to handle it but might benefit from ideas to start the conversation.

[regentrude]

Depends on why you are meeting him. What questions do you have?

Does the prof have to approve of your DS' enrollment because of your exceptional situation? (Normally, profs have no say and enrollment is handled through the registrar's office.)

What course does your DS want to take?

I would inquire about prerequisites for the course, whether the prof would be willing to waive the requirement for a college credit in the prerequisite if your DS has the knowledge, or whether he would recommend a special preparation.

 

I would imagine you have already gotten all the info about the course (rules, syllabus, grading structure) from the website. If your DS has specific questions regarding this info, he should ask them.

Or is the objective of the meeting to determine which course sequence would be suitable?

 

ETA: Relax. Meeting such a  bright young student will be a highlight in the professor's month.. as opposed to grading or answering emails from students who want more points to get grades their performance did not merit

[Dmmetler]

My DD's mentor advised her to treat any time she's talking with someone who could be in a position to help her as though it's a job interview-do some background research on the person and their primary areas of interest, come up with a few questions that show you can fit into their projects, etc. It probably applies here, too.

 

And, as a parent, your job is to provide driving and to fade into the background and let DS handle the discussion, even though that's hard (unless the question is related to transport or supervision).

[Kathy in Richmond]

Deep breaths, mama! 

 

Remember, math professors are just regular people, too. The fact that he wants to meet your son is a great sign! I would just bring all the things you mentioned, answer any questions he directs your way, and other than that, let your son take the lead.

 

Best wishes! I hope it goes well for y'all!

[lewelma]

When ds met with the head of school for physics last year, we figured out some questions and he memorized them. I don't remember what they were.  But we were right to do it, because the professor did not guide the meeting and instead asked "so what do you want to know?"  If we had not done the preparation, ds would have been like a dear in the headlights.  We also in a casual, not-a-big-deal sort of way did some roll playing.  Not sure you need all of that, but I guess we just did standard interview prep.

 

And can I say, how exciting!

[quark]

(edited)

Thank you Regentrude and dmmetler!

[quark]

Thank you Kathy and Ruth. I just need to hear it will be fine. It's okay even if it isn't and I'm sure we'll find a way eventually, but I just wanted to hear some comforting words and you guys are so good at that. :001_wub: Thank you.

[lewelma]

Your son will come out buzzing, just you wait!  Good luck to him *and* you.

[quark]

One other question...should I bring a small gift to thank him for his time?

 

[Dana]

One other question...should I bring a small gift to thank him for his time?

I wouldn't, but sending a thank you note would be good.

 

Good luck! You've already gotten good advice.

I don't know if you've already shown samples of your son's work, but bringing some may be useful if asked for them.

[quark]

I'll do that Dana! Thanks so much! :001_smile:

[quark]

ETA: Relax. Meeting such a  bright young student will be a highlight in the professor's month.. as opposed to grading or answering emails from students who want more points to get grades their performance did not merit

Thank you so much. This means a lot to me.

[Arcadia]

Good luck and have fun. Enjoy the drive up and ice-cream on the way home :)

[kiana]

I would love to meet a bright young student who wanted to study mathematics. I'm just sayin'.

[quark]

Good luck and have fun. Enjoy the drive up and ice-cream on the way home :)

We probably will! :) Thank you Arcadia.

 

I would love to meet a bright young student who wanted to study mathematics. I'm just sayin'.

:001_wub: :001_wub: I wish he could meet you. Your stories of how you learned math and how your mom couldn't understand you...it hits so close to home here. :)

[Woodland Mist Academy]

I didn't see this thread until today. (Not that I would have been much help anyway. ;) )

 

Hope all goes well! You'll be in my thoughts!

[8filltheheart]

Curious about how it went!   I was thinking about you this morning. 

[JennW in SoCal]

Curious about how it went!   I was thinking about you this morning. 

 

Me too!

[quark]

(edited for privacy and brevity)

The end result: the prof suggests DS enrol/ audit in Discrete Math at the uni alongside or even without current self studying of calculus.

 

Some things I learned and/ or felt glad that we did from the start, and things not necessarily only specific to a child thinking of majoring in pure math:

1. If your child can work with AoPS, do it and stick to it. (this is a lesson learned...I wish I had made it our core instead of a supplement)
2. Spending time doing living math/ puzzles/ non traditional math is VERY valuable for a math-loving young child. Don't ever think of taking the time to do it as a waste or as delaying a child's progression. In fact I would even suggest making the living math/ non traditional math topics a temporary core focus for the very big picture kids. Let them play with the basics of concepts like topology and number theory and probability from a young age. We were lucky enough to meet families who did this early so we followed  suit when DS was 5 to 6-ish.
3. Read math biographies -- DS confidently answered questions on the mathematicians the prof mentioned and even went into detail on the specific things he liked about these mathematicians and they also discussed some of these points together...I think it gave the prof some insight into DS's personality. It gave DS a level of conversational maturity that reflected who he is and what he likes.
4. Don't rush the math...go into as much depth as your child can take. This is the main thing that gave me the confidence to even consider sending out feelers to profs...I knew that DS had enough background and critical thinking ability to field almost any question that an established prof might ask a tween/ teen.
5. Keep lots of records and notebooks showing higher math work in good condition. We brought 2 bag loads of notebooks and I was wishing I had brought some of the patterns DS had scribbled/ doodled on pieces of paper when younger because the prof was specifically looking for that kind of stuff and I had thought it might be too kiddish to show him. Now he only has my word that DS did it. It will depend on the prof though I think. This prof was obviously someone looking for more than just traditional step-by-step math work.
6. Competition math isn't necessarily a benefit to a math career. You guys have assuaged my fears on this before...but it felt good to hear it from the prof.
7. Allow kids to pursue the big picture...don't hold them back too much or force repetition for fear of gaps. Some kids might need the repetition but when you know it's hurting your child, let it go.
8. Honor your child's learning style.

I hope our experience helps someone! Thanks again for all your support.

[8filltheheart]

Quark,

 

What a beautiful testament to your ds!   Thank you for sharing. Sincerely.  That was a piece of wisdom and insight.  And do NOT go deleting it tomorrow!!

[Alte Veste Academy]

How wonderful, quark! You must be so proud!

 

Thanks so much for your list. It is exactly the affirmation I needed before starting our new year. Also, can you (or your DS) recommend good math bios to read? DS11 tends toward science, but I would like to mix it up a bit.

[JennW in SoCal]

Thank you so much everyone...I wish you were all accessible in real life. I'd call you guys over for coffee/ tea/ root beer/ ginger beer :) and give you as much gory detail as you can take. :D

 

You'd never get rid of us.  The tea would get cold because we'd be talking too much, then you'd have to make more and the day would just be gone!

 

 

The prof spent about 85 minutes talking to DS! Is that a good sign?  Ummm, yeah!!  Very good sign.

 

But as they kept talking, DS opened up about things he reads and explores afterwards...about how disappointed he was in Feynman that he said in one of his books about topologists being too abstract (prof was impressed that DS didn't just gush about Feynman), and some of the other stuff I could catch include reading up on Eigen vectors (and explained to prof what it was), about the four color map theorem (and the prof introduced him to the two color one), about Godel's theorem, about the stable marriage problem, probability theory, proof by induction etc. It was nice to see DS talking without stumbling, and talking to someone other than me about things he reads and likes but someone who got everything without looking lost (his friends, while also very advanced, usually don't keep up with this type of reading/ math). Then the prof started looking through the notebooks DS had brought and the conversation just kept getting more detailed, centering on proofs, vectors and matrices and they traded some equations and thoughts about vectors and geometry and I just became more lost lol.

 

How wonderful!  I'm so happy for you!   

 

I think I feel a little sad after this meeting because ... 

 

Sorry, have to interrupt here.  Do NOT go down the shoulda/coulda but didn't road because it is a waste of mommy energy and it ultimately does NOT matter. What matters is what happened today, and what is going to be happening this fall.  You are making sure that come the fall your son has all he needs to feed his mind. Clearly the professor liked what he saw.  

 

And this:

 

The end result: the prof suggests DS enrol/ audit in Discrete Math at the uni alongside or even without current self studying of calculus.

 

This is simply awesome!!!!

 

Some things I learned and/ or felt glad that we did from the start, and things not necessarily only specific to a child thinking of majoring in pure math:

 

This list is terrific:  

1. If your child can work with AoPS, do it and stick to it. (this is a lesson learned...I wish I had made it our core instead of a supplement)
2. Spending time doing living math/ puzzles/ non traditional math is VERY valuable for a math-loving young child. Don't ever think of taking the time to do it as a waste or as delaying a child's progression. In fact I would even suggest making the living math/ non traditional math topics a temporary core focus for the very big picture kids. Let them play with the basics of concepts like topology and number theory and probability from a young age. We were lucky enough to meet families who did this early so we followed  suit when DS was 5 to 6-ish.
3. Read math biographies -- DS confidently answered questions on the mathematicians the prof mentioned and even went into detail on the specific things he liked about these mathematicians and they also discussed some of these points together...I think it gave the prof some insight into DS's personality. It gave DS a level of conversational maturity that reflected who he is and what he likes.
4. Don't rush the math...go into as much depth as your child can take. This is the main thing that gave me the confidence to even consider sending out feelers to profs...I knew that DS had the critical thinking ability to field almost any question that an established prof might ask a tween/ teen.
5. Keep lots of records and notebooks showing higher math work in good condition. We brought 2 bag loads of notebooks and I was wishing I had brought some of the patterns DS had scribbled/ doodled on pieces of paper when younger because the prof was specifically looking for that kind of stuff and I had thought it might be too kiddish to show him. Now he only has my word that DS did it. It will depend on the prof though I think. This prof was obviously someone looking for more than just traditional step-by-step math work.
6. Competition math isn't necessarily a benefit to a math career. You guys have assuaged my fears on this before...but it felt good to hear it from the prof.
7. Allow kids to pursue the big picture...don't hold them back too much or force repetition for fear of gaps. Some kids might need the repetition but when you know it's hurting your child, let it go.
8. Honor your child's learning style.

I hope our experience helps someone! Thanks again for all your support. We are going to be looking into the audit/ concurrent enrollment option more seriously now that we have the support of this prof.   It is all so very exciting!  Congratulations!!

[Dana]

I'm so pleased for you both!

 

Yes, 85 min is an excellent sign!

And discrete is fun IMO.

[mysticmomma]

Wow! Awesome

[quark]

Quark,

 

What a beautiful testament to your ds!   Thank you for sharing. Sincerely.  That was a piece of wisdom and insight.  And do NOT go deleting it tomorrow!!

 

Thank you 8. :grouphug: Lol, okay, I will not delete it lol. :laugh:

 

How wonderful, quark! You must be so proud!

 

Thanks so much for your list. It is exactly the affirmation I needed before starting our new year. Also, can you (or your DS) recommend good math bios to read? DS11 tends toward science, but I would like to mix it up a bit.

 

(edited for privacy and brevity) Thank you AVA.

 

Books DS and I really liked:

The Man Who Knew Infinity

Simon: The Genius in my Basement

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (I mention this because they also talked a little about physics)

 

Mostly everything else was via documentaries and Wikipedia.

The ones I can remember DS reading:

Carl Friederich Gauss

Evariste Galois

Niels Henrik Abel

William Hamilton

Paul Erdos

Julia Robinson

Harold Scott Macdonald Coxeter

Andrew Wiles

John Conway

Terence Tao

Ravi Vakil

[quark]

Thank you Jennifer and Dana! :001_wub: 

 

[lewelma]

Oh Quark, I am so very pleased for you and ds. 

 

Your list is awesome. Point #2 makes me feel better about all the time I feel my child 'wastes' doing origami.  Do you or your ds have any recommendations of good math biographies? 

 

Been thinking of you all day.

 

ETA: we were posting at the same time.  Thanks for the list. :001_smile:

[quark]

Thank you mysticmomma. I wish I could hug you all in person. :grouphug:

[quark]

Oh Quark, I am so very pleased for you and ds. 

 

Your list is awesome. Point #2 makes me feel better about all the time I feel my child 'wastes' doing origami.  Do you or your ds have any recommendations of good math biographies? 

 

Been thinking of you all day.

 

Thank you Ruth! I kept thinking about you and your son and wishing you guys were here. Was thinking, "now, if only I had followed Ruth's advise and rehearsed something" lol.

 

I have listed the bios I can remember in post #25! He also just follows links and more links within the wikipedia articles.

 

[Arcadia]

Happy for you that everything went well :)

Hope your son enjoys his Discrete Math class.

 

Hopefully your house hunting is much more successful than mine :lol: and that you get a wonderful buyer and price for your current home.

 

ETA:

Links :)

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/teaching/cs70-s05/

https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs70/su14/

http://math.berkeley.edu/~bernd/math55.html

[kiana]

I loved Discrete. It was the course that changed me from being a math minor to a math major.

 

I'd taken calc 1-3, linear, and diffeq, but at my small rural university these were all taught in a rather algorithmic way, so I found them easy but boring. They do examples in class, assign homework like the examples, give test questions like the examples ... yawwwwn. (I realize that not all calculus is taught this way, but at a small, non-selective school without an honors option, it pretty much is). I had had proof in high school math, but not since. So discrete was a wonderful class.

 

FWIW, it frequently has a calculus prerequisite, not because calculus is required, but because a certain amount of mathematical maturity is required. College algebra would satisfy all the algebraic prerequisites for most classes, but very few students who had just completed college algebra or even precalculus would be able to handle it.

[Dmmetler]

That's awesome! I enjoyed Finite and Discrete Math (and may well have been the only music major to take them :) )-they're just plain different and fun.

 

It's a wonderful and humbling experience to see your child in their element, isn't it?

[quark]

(edited for privacy and brevity)

 

Thank you kiana and dmmetler.

 

[Dana]

I really appreciate this feedback kiana. I asked the prof twice (second time to make sure I heard him correctly) about the calc prerequisite and he said he doesn't feel DS will need to finish calc 1 first. Calc is a prereq on their website IIRC. DS might still go ahead and do it anyway. But the boy is really enjoying his slower-paced summer break so I'm just going to let the excitement of this meeting simmer down a bit and discuss again next week or in 2 weeks' time.

 

Sometimes prereqs are more about maturity issues and seeing that everyone has some of the same background (proof exposure etc).

[MBM]

I bet the prof really enjoyed the conversation a lot! Your son will do just fine and at the uni find like-minded people who will challenge, encourage and, most importantly, inspire him. He'll be in his element.

 

What you might find is that in a few years, your son might fall in love with something else. I have noticed quite a few of my son's friends really like CS, physics and math.

 

Anyway, how exciting! I hope your son has a great time and I'm sure he will. :)

 

PS My husband used to be a prof and one of his students gave him a trench coat as a gift after the course ended b/c dh's was kind of old and frumpy. LOL.

[Woodland Mist Academy]

:grouphug: You have so much going on! So many emotions! :grouphug:  Give yourself some time to process it all...

 

:hurray:  Congrats to you and your son! :coolgleamA:

 

Your list is fabulous. I just wanted to reiterate your comment about the list not applying only to a child thinking of majoring in pure math. When my daughter had her recent interview (different situation, different focus), I was so glad that we had kept as much work as we had. There were a few bits we couldn't find (either tossed before the moves or still packed away somewhere), but I was so incredibly thankful we had as much as we did. Keeping track of biographies and other books in the field proved beneficial as well.

 

So many things we had done because. . . well. . . because they were just the sort of activities we did . . .we didn't do them for any future gain. . . looking back I can see the tapestry they wove.

 

Good work, Mama! Even if for much of it you were just along for the ride, your willingness to tag along for the duration speaks volumes!

 

:cheers2:

[quark]

(edited for privacy and brevity)

 

Thank you Dana, MBM and Woodland Mist!

[kiana]

Although I mentioned in my list not to worry too much about gaps, I can tell you that I fall victim to that often enough still. I worry that not having the calc will be a huge gap for him...lol, despite DS showing me time and again that he will fill the gaps in himself. The lockstep traditional system...it's just SO hard to leave that behind. It's so ingrained in my mindset that although a part of me is excited to take the risk, the other part keeps questioning it.

 

No. I can't think of a point in any elementary discrete math text I've read through (which is a lot, did I mention that I <3 this subject?) where you ever *had* to use calculus. At most, there was an optional, asterisked, problem. It *does* come in in more advanced texts, so you will want him to have calculus before he tries (for example) a more advanced number theory class. Heck, one of my favorite classes ever used complex analysis (calculus with imaginary numbers) to study number theory, so he wouldn't be ready for *that* one for a while yet.

 

But for the elementary? He'll be fine.

[quark]

Thank you kiana!

[FairProspects]

Yes, thank you for the list. I feel much better about my decision to let ds play with Math Quest books and do Zacarro problems all summer. :) It feels to me like he is making no progress and is fiddling around, but maybe I just have no idea how these big picture kids put things together long term. Congrats to your son!