(The line spacing got all wacko, sorry about that)

That prompted me to look up how to make line breaks in Markdown syntax, which I'd been wondering about myself for a while.

Try typing two or more spaces and then hitting enter
whenever you want a new line.

My 4th grade teacher is teaching my class how to write poetry, and this is one of the poems that I wrote:

Where am I?
What is this place?
Is it the darkness of night?
I heard screams
and then I was here
Here, as in nowhere

This place was not nothing
it was less than that.
I didn’t see nothing,
for I had nothing to see with
I didn’t hear nothing,
for I had nothing to hear with

I didn’t feel nothing,
for I had nothing to feel with.
I had slept before, but nothing like this

Was Grandma here?
Did she meet this fate too?
I couldn’t know, for
I had nothing to know with
Even if she was here,
she did not exist for me

They said I would go to the land of the clouds
they said nothing of this place
Even the eternal flame would be better than this
for there they had warmth
and I had less than cold

Why would
anyone
want this fate?
The final sight,
and then less than nothing

I want to see the world

I must respect you before your insults matter to me.

Brandon_Nish Concerning Cyberbullying

In my small fourth grade class of 20 students, we are learning how to write essays, and get to pick our own thesis statements. One kid, who had a younger sibling, picked the thesis statement: "Being an older sibling is hard." Another kid did "Being the youngest child is hard." Yet another did "Being the middle child is hard", and someone else did "Being an only child is hard." I find this as a rather humorous example of how people often make it look like they're being oppressed.

Does anyone know why people do this?

Did u use any special mnemonic technique? Or you succeded just because of continiual repetition?

Do you memorize digits by groups of 2 or 3, or it depends on a context of actual output number?

Online Videos Thread

Impressive!

Have you ever tried dual n-back programs like Brain Workshop? They might interest you if you're into working memory training.

Which method did you use to improve memory? Can you still recall the number?

I memorized a 20-digit number in under a minute, then repeated it forward, backward, and forward again, and lastly repeated it while adding 1 to each digit.

My name is Avi, and I'm 19.

I was similiar in some aspects to you when I was a kid, in particular being good at math (did calculus and programming at 12-13), getting in trouble, being bored in school, reading a lot, having trouble with emotions.

I hadn't had an explicitly rational upbringing, and only recently (9 months or so) got into it after a chance encounter with HPMOR.

I'll try to give advice on the things you asked. Bear in mind that I didn't actually try any of this when I was in school, it's mostly what I would advise my younger self if I had to do it over.

So, you mention being bored in school. There are at least three possible scenarios for that, which should be solved differently:

1. You have trouble concentrating or generating the will to concentrate on material that you don't know, but think is important.
2. You think the material being taught is unimportant and therefore don't care about paying attention.
3. You already know all or some of the material that is being taught.

I don't really have anything for 1 aside from the standard "force yourself to pay attention", maybe others can help.

For 3, you could consider asking (or having your parents ask) to be skipped a class, or ask to be allowed off, if you really know everything that is being taught. (I haven't taken any real math classes since sometime around 7th grade. I'd take out books from the library and just go through them. Also someone gave me a bunch of old Martin Gardner books about math, which are quite interesting if you can find them.)

If you absolutely must be in a class where you already know what's being taught, try finding math questions to think about that you can memorize, so you can work on them without looking like you're doing something else. Try http://brilliant.org/ , and find your level. You should be able to easily memorize a few questions each day, and work them out mentally throughout the day, perhaps writing down the answers during recess or something. I've done this myself sometimes, when I had to wait for a bus and it would be awkward to read something while waiting.

For 2, you should carefully consider how likely it is that you already know, at 10, what kinds of things are likely to be important, better than whoever planned your curriculum. If you really feel that way, respond and I'll come up with something for that, but I do think it's unlikely.