Article

2007-04-25 -Short Attention Span Theater-

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Posted by Bobby 2007-04-25 06:20|| || Front Page|| [5 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Great, now she can look forward to an entire lifetime of being a mal-adjusted, socially unskilled, lawer who had no childhood.

I knew a kid like this when I was in junior college.
He was 16 and a junior in psychology. His father was a professor. I always wondered what the big hurry was, and why he couldn't just let his kid grow up the way everyone should. Needless to say, the kid was strange. Very strange. I'd love to see him today, I'll bet he's the department head of psych in some little junior college nobody has ever heard of. Just like his father.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2007-04-25 08:06|| 2007-04-25 08:06|| Front Page Top

#2 We are supposed to be impressed by a degree in pseudos-ecience?

Posted by JFM ">JFM 2007-04-25 08:10|| 2007-04-25 08:10|| Front Page Top

#3 That's nothing. There are people graduating with degrees in Koranic Studies that are younger than this. And that's just about as realistic as social psychology.

Posted by Jackal">Jackal 2007-04-25 08:29|| http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2007-04-25 08:29|| Front Page Top

#4 I'm unimpressed

Posted by Doogie Howzer, MD">Doogie Howzer, MD 2007-04-25 08:44|| 2007-04-25 08:44|| Front Page Top

#5 Reading the article, it sounds like she really is that gifted intellectually. Eight AP courses (generally equalling three semesters of work at the university level, credit given for two semesters; it's highly probable at least a third of those classes were hard sciences and mathematics) plus an equal number of courses taken at the local college -- plus the normal high school curriculum likely completed in her freshman year -- all completed by the end of her junior year in high school? If she weren't allowed to continue, she's exactly the type to drop out and become an autodidact. The only problem is that her social skills likely match her chronological age, or less, not her intellectual ability. But that would be so whether or not she's allowed to move on early, and this keeps her happily busy instead of bitter at the world. We don't want another genius Luddite sending bombs through the mail to professors he thinks are wrong.

Bigjim-ky, I only hope your little friend went on to do research, as he clearly wasn't fit for anything resembling the real world.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-04-25 10:38|| 2007-04-25 10:38|| Front Page Top

#6 Then there is Amobi Okoye who is graduating from Louiville at 19 after starting at 15. He was majoring in biology. He later switched his major to psychology, in order to graduate a semester early. Which will allow him to be a first round NFL draft pick as a 6'2" 302 lb. defensive tackle.

Quite a story for a kid that immigrated from Nigeria at 10.

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2007-04-25 10:44|| 2007-04-25 10:44|| Front Page Top

#7 If she weren't allowed to continue, she's exactly the type to drop out and become an autodidact.

A fate too terrible to contemplate!

I only hope your little friend went on to do research, as he clearly wasn't fit for anything resembling the real world.

Hey! I resemble that remark!

Posted by Angie Schultz 2007-04-25 11:16|| 2007-04-25 11:16|| Front Page Top

#8 All that so she could go to Wayne State University Law School?

She can't be that bright.

Posted by DoDo 2007-04-25 11:55|| 2007-04-25 11:55|| Front Page Top

#9 Angie dear, I'm not fit for the real world, either. That's one of many reasons I'm not a psychotherapist... or a professor. (Admittedly, psychotherapy and professing are two of the many, many professions I did not go into, but the point still stands.) The problem with being entirely self-taught is that one tends to miss the absolutely critical bits that aren't written down in the books. Spinoza, for instance, derived Judaism from reading the Catholic Old Testament in Spain, and so the beliefs he developed were in many ways unconnected with the beliefs and practices of the Jewish congregation he joined when he moved to Amsterdam... hence his rejection of all faith in favour of atheism.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-04-25 14:23|| 2007-04-25 14:23|| Front Page Top

#10 TW - your comment on Spinoza is timely for me because I just happen to be reading an article about him in the New York Review of Books - a magazine which I still enjoy unless the articles are about politics (in which case, many times I can't resist the temptation to yell at the magazine while reading).

I want to tell you that I love reading your comments, and want to thank you for always adding interesting viewpoints about the subject under discussion. Let me disclose that a friendly remark you once made to me, in one of my first comments here at Rantburg, made me see this site as more than just a place to learn some new facts, but a real community of wonderful people trying to help each other understand. It's a superb example of the glory of Western civilization and why it is so important for it to be preserved.

So, thank you, TW. (It may be too late in the day for you to read this, but it's a thought I won't mind repeating sometime in the future)

Posted by ryuge 2007-04-25 22:47|| 2007-04-25 22:47|| Front Page Top

23:39 JosephMendiola
23:31 DMFD
23:29 JosephMendiola
23:26 DMFD
23:25 JosephMendiola
23:24 DMFD
23:24 ryuge
23:22 USN, ret.
23:22 Zenster
23:19 DMFD
23:13 CrazyFool
23:11 Zenster
22:59 JosephMendiola
22:59 USN, ret.
22:54 JosephMendiola
22:47 ryuge
22:44 Anguper Hupomosing9418
22:36 JosephMendiola
22:30 Zenster
22:25 JosephMendiola
22:23 JosephMendiola
22:22 JosephMendiola
22:22 JosephMendiola
22:14 Flagum Gonque3645