Nice and Smart

So, I am here at the University of Michigan, and I have started what is dubbed “Math Camp.” While the name may conjure up images of happy time with numbers, this is not the case. It is a lot of math, and so far of the 8 hours of instruction I have had so far, much of it has already been way over my head, in the kind of way that I am not sure there is any way I could retrieve it. However, that is not the point of this post. Yesterday I met with a group to go over the first homework assignment, and was very pleasantly surprised with how very nice everyone was. In fact, thinking about it, everyone I have met has been very, very pleasant and nice. Not only are all the people I have met in my class and on campus nice, they are also very smart. But, not just very smart. Very, very smart. But not just very, very smart, very, very, very smart. They do math problems in their head in minutes that I sit and stare at for two hours and don’t even know where to begin (and which they can’t explain to me).

They are from a huge variety of places, from the eastern US, to the western US, to China, Japan and Korea, to Eastern Europe. They have come straight from an impressive set of school, or have worked at fancy impressive places doing high level consulting or pricing corporate bonds. They age from 25 or so to 40 or so. They vary hugely in their ability to speak English or in their ability to communicate effectively despite being native English speakers. However, so far I have not met anyone that is not nice. All my group mates (out of whom I knew by far the least math) were all very, very willing to explain things and help. Some of them had completed the problem set with no problems, but just showed up to help out. So, that is that. I am among very, very smart, and nice people. Hopefully they continue to be nice.