I was exceptionally good at mathematics. I remember when I had just started school my mum had bought a thoroughly obnoxious cassette tape to play in the car. It was basically just some bloke singing the times tables.
"ONE TIMES ONE IS....ONE" "TWO TIMES ONE IS....TWO" "THREE TIMES ONE IS....THREE" "SEVEN TIMES SIX IS....FOURTY-TWO"
And so on up until 12x12.
Pretty soon I was feeling like a champ because I was beating my mother to the answers. It all just sort of escalated from there. I think I had a lot of natural talent but I was always just playing with numbers to pass the time, this is what made me really sharp.
My parents split up when I was young and lived 4-5 hours by car away from each other so I would often go on really long drives to see them. To pass the time I would constantly just multiply random numbers I would see. For example, my mum may have been driving at say 64mph. I would then look for a number plate and just multiply what I saw. To this day the one thing I really excel at is mental maths. Ever since I started doing this i've been able to multiply two digit numbers together instantly (e.g 37x89).
Anyways when you're a kid mathematics essentially just boils down to basic algebraic excercises so I performed somewhat well. I would finish spreadsheets way before my teacher who would have been using a calculator!
I believe the flexibility and agility mental maths gave me trickled down into other subjects. It just made me really sharp, it's kind of hard to explain. If there are any parents reading this, teach your kids mental math! I honestly believe that little cassette tape I recieved 15 years ago has been the single most influential thing to have happened to me in my lifetime.
The guy who tutored me (lets call him Mr.Smith) was always comparing me to a kid named Charlie. Mr Smith was also my history teacher and a really long serving member of staff. Charlie had been at the school around 10 years before me but he had told me he saw a lot of him in me. I recall one particular assignment he gave me was an essay on the nature of time. This was pretty hard for me as a 9-10 year old, ultimately my essay wasn't very good. Mr.Smith had made Charlie write the exact same essay 10 years ago. He made me read Charlie's essay then told me he was now studying philosophy at oxford university. No pressure!
Yup thats pretty much the exact bracket.
When I was 12 I had to move abroad with my mother for family reasons. I was really scared of living in a foreign country and having no friends! All I wanted to do was fit in. When you're a pre-adolescent it's all you really care about, you just want to be one of the boys. I had already passed my peak but I was going out of my way to try and be like everyone else. I never did my homework or studied anything and would often answer questions wrong on purpose. During english class I would even fake a foreign accent to be like the other kids! I gradually evolved into the archetypal class clown. But I was making friends so I was happy