[kem]

I think there's a bigger problem the article is getting at, that people are kind of missing or downplaying, which is the culture around math skill acquisition and ability.

It's obvious this guy had a love of math and ability in it, from his majors and subsequent events.

But it's also actually not that unreasonable for him to start second-guessing himself when he struggled with math earlier in life.

I do think there's this idea that if you're good at math and have something to offer in it, it will show early on regardless of life circumstances or mentors or role models or whatever, that if it's not immediately obvious that you're a mathematical genius you should forget about it.

"Realizing a test you took in elementary school needn't define you" is actually a nontrivial thing to overcome in today's society, maybe even especially in STEM circles.

Sometimes I wish STEM culture was more focused on sharing the joys of STEM and trying to be as open-minded and inclusive as possible, instead of brandishing it as a competitive tool.

[eli_gottlieb]

Very much agreed. I've definitely encountered the attitude that my high-school grades or my undergrad GPA define me. And by "define me", I mean that my undergrad GPA of 3.45, higher in just my CS+math courses, is considered a little on the low side to be applying for STEM grad-school. My GPA was sufficient to graduate with Latin honors, but it's low for STEM? Come on.

Yes, we definitely treat STEM as a competition to see who can be the closest to "perfect" at set tasks and classwork, rather than as an exploration (or even exploitation) of structures and spaces through strictly logical reasoning.