Chapter 3: More Books

In seventh grade, his counselor suggested, not for the first time, advancing Alex to the next grade. After talking to their son, Alex's parents refused.

"Why don't you want to study with older kids?" his mother asked at home. "Aren't you bored with seventh-grade classes that you have memorized months ago?"

"First, high school students are all bigger than me, and would resent me coming into the class. I'm not looking forward to their hostility. Second, I will still be reading or working on other things in the classes, and the new teachers will go through their own period of suspicion and perhaps animosity of a jumped-up student who doesn't appear to pay attention. But the most significant — and I really prefer not to advertise this — is that there are probably no courses in the junior high or high school that would be of any interest to me."

"Son, I know you are ahead on math, but they have things like Calculus I and II, Advanced Chemistry, Honors History..." Alex's father began.

"Dad, you know I spend quite a bit of time in the college library. I am reading graduate course material for math, several sciences, electrical engineering, psychology, philosophy, anthropology and linguistics. In a year, I think I could take Ph. D. qualifying exams in several programs."

There was a stunned silence for a minute. Alex's parents had been almost deliberately ignorant of his studies. It had been clear after the operation that Alex was more than just an outstanding student. He seemed to study well on his own, and the Driscolls were almost scared of his pace. In addition, they had a nagging guilt that they should have been doing something extraordinary to accommodate his extraordinary talents. Perhaps send him to special camps, hire tutors, find a school for young geniuses. None of that seemed easy or cheap, and to be fair to them, they also did not want Alex to spend his childhood away from home and under such pressure.

Well, Alex appeared to be good at applying pressure himself, and, after all, science camps and schools for the gifted were not necessary. After an uneasy silence, filled with wonder, uncertainty and guilt, the conversation resumed.

"So, you intend to stay in school until 12th grade?" his father asked.

"No, I think I will get bored before that. I think I will go to college in a few years, but I would like to spend more time with my cohort."

"You know, you will have to prepare for college admission ahead of time. They will want all kinds of test results, and probably want to think before admitting somebody so young."

"Yep, I know. I suspect, though, they will be highly motivated by my work," said Alex.

He thought that at some point, he would run out of materials easily available in the library or on the Internet. He would need to actually attend advanced seminars and talk to the professors and researchers. At some point after that he would have to stop coasting on other people's work and try doing original research. Not yet, though. There were thousands of interesting books and research papers. Perhaps millions.