At 03:53 PM 3/24/2010, Horace Heffner wrote:
On Mar 24, 2010, at 8:29 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 11:56 AM 3/24/2010, Horace Heffner wrote:
On Mar 24, 2010, at 7:34 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Well, I was ten in 1954, and I think I read the book before I was
in high school, and it made a strong impression on me.
If you were ten in 1954 you must have been 17 and 18 when you
attended the two year Feynman lecture series for freshmen and
sophomores at CIT?
Lucky guess! I had skipped a grade and a half back in elementary
school (they wanted me to skip more, but my father declined it,
though it would not be socially beneficial), so I graduated high
school in 1961, just having turned 17. So I was 17 the first year
and 18 the next, just as you wrote. I'm impressed, somebody is
paying attention.
Not as impressed as I. That's quite an achievement!
Don't be impressed by it. Achievement is something that I'd have to
work for. I didn't have to work to get into Caltech. It was easy.
Maybe too easy. To sit with Feynman and Pauling, I just had to get up
in the morning and go to class.
I didn't finish, you know. Dropped out after only one term more than
two years to become a folk singer. Now, that was hard! Think about
it, coming from being a nerd, socially completely inept, and no
musical skills, to being a performer (solo, in fact, usually)? And I
could tell stories about Other Stuff I've done that I'm willing to
allow people to be impressed over. They involved real work, sustained effort.
I have worked steadily, over the last year, to become familiar with
this field, and to prepare for the work that I need to do in it.
That's a kind of accomplishment. I still have many obstacles to
overcome, almost all of them in myself.
Ain't it usually that way?
