A slacker was 20 minutes late and received two math problems… His solutions shocked his professor.

His statistics Professor must be recognized and awarded too, for not stealing it and taking the credit.

That reminds me of the time I myself was late for class. There was a problem written on the blackboard of which I thought it might be homework. So I spent a week trying to solve it. Then it hit me, that was surely an unsolvable problem! The next week I told the professor I tried hard, but failed to solve the problem, thus concluding it has to be unsolvable. Turned out, it was a normal homework assignment and I was just bad at it.

"I have never let school interfere with my education." Mark Twain

A similar thing happened to me, though obviously on a vastly smaller scale. I was taking my maths degree at Oxford (which was a mistake - I would have done better at a less pressured university), and had a reputation as a poor student. I hadn't left myself much time to complete my homework and did it in a rush. In my tutorial my tutor looked at me oddly, and asked if I'd read this one question. I thought I had, but she added "and did you notice the part at the bottom pointing you to the section of the book that explains how to tackle questions like this?" I think I blushed, because I'd been going too fast to notice it. But she hadn't finished. "Well, congratulations. You've come up with a much better way of solving the problem. This is far more elegant, and I'll be using it in future." Best maths moment of my life. I wish I could remember what the question was!

I learned this in life: "If you don't know what you can't do, you can do anything".

"The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person already doing it." - Old Chinese Proverb

Towards the end of my senior year in high school, I met with my HS school guidance instructor. When he asked me what I was going to do after graduation, I told him I was going to go to UT in Austin, TX. He smirked and told me to go to the local community college instead and learn a trade. Many years later, after obtaining my degree in economics and my juris doctorate, I ran into him at a grocery store. When I reminded him of our conversation many years back and that he had been completely wrong about my intellectual abilities, he replied that he was not wrong. In fact, he said, it was his intention to challenge me. He explained that by pretending to have zero faith in my abilities, I became motivated to prove him wrong. I thought it was a clever way to get out of it.

This is so true. I have fixed problems very easily when I thought they were easy and others thought they were difficult. It's in our mindset.

Imagine what he could have accomplished if he had not attended at all.

He never knew it was unsolvable that is why there was no limit for his brain to seek the answer...amazing story.

I'm 48 years old and lived my whole life in the US. I have met many, many more people who overestimate their ability, their knowledge, and their expertise, full of confidence, lacking introspection or any sense of self doubt, than people who just needed to believe in themselves in order to accomplish greatness.

The world mathematicians: This is impossible to solve! George: I missed the part where that's my problem.

He's lucky the Professor didn't take all the credit!

As one joke says: Never say, that something cannot be done, because there is always some idiot, who doesn't know about that and will do it :)

He took "It's all a part of the plan." to a next level.

Once upon a time, I took an exam for my Chemical Structures and Bonding class and solved a problem using 2 ratios of unknown quantities which allowed me to give a quantitative answer. The prof brought up my answer later saying she was only looking for a qualitative answer and did not know it was possible to solve it quantitatively. Felt good!

A friend told me a story about her grandfather who was a mathematics professor. He had a student who came to one class and received a 98% as a final grade. The professor met the young man and asked him how he attained the mark he got when he only attended one class. The student’s reply, ‘Well sir, I think the first class confused me.’

Context: " Go late to lecture to unlock your full potential."

Read the book "The Man Who Knew Infinity", about an Indian boy who solved theorems that University math professors could not. His name was Ramanajuan. He was constantly writing equations on scrap paper, on metal with pieces of coal, whatever he could find. He died young while at Cambridge University from pneumonia in the late 1890s. His equations are still being discovered to solve modern day problems in space, etc.

My father, born in 1921, went to school in OK and had to drop out pick cotton, his dad was a Constable, he went back to school and was able to up even going up 6 grades higher, joined Navy, electrical Engineer and all that helping his big family as the youngest boy during depression on up! Amazing the drive people have to accomplish dreams ❤