Slashdot Mirror
The Real-Life Doogie Howser
An anonymous reader writes "Sho Yano this week will become the youngest student to get an M.D. from University of Chicago. He was reading at age 2, writing by 3, and composing music by his 5th birthday. He graduated from Loyola University in three years — summa cum laude, no less. When he entered U. of C.'s prestigious Pritzker School of Medicine at 12, it was into one of the school's most rigorous programs, where students get both their doctorate and medical degrees. Intelligence is not Yano's only gift — though according to a test he took at age 4, his IQ is too high to accurately measure and is easily above genius level. He is an accomplished pianist who has performed at Ravinia, and he has a black belt in tae kwon do. Classmates and faculty described him as 'sweet' and 'humble,' a hardworking, Bach-adoring, Greek literature-quoting student. And in his own words, 'I may not be the most outgoing person, but I do like to be around people.'"
My father was someone like that, IQ literally off the charts, used by the University of Chicago to help calibrate IQ tests for people with IQ's over 200. Multiple degrees for the sake of multiple degrees, the whole nine yards. Did his buddy's doctorate thesis for his PhD in an unrelated field just to help him out, and his buddy is now a leading expert in his field. People's expectations were off the charts with how they how wanted to exploit him. His own expectations of himself and others became unfathomably high.
Had trouble his entire life connecting to normal people, even people of normal genius level intelligence had trouble relating with him. He thought so far ahead of everyone else that he even thought ahead of himself. When you spend so much time thinking past tomorrow you have trouble living for today. The result was this life was a mess and the practical details of his life were something that I often had to to take care of for him.
Being a genius is an accident of birth, being a genius compared to other geniuses is arguably more of a curse than a gift. In the end the longer he lived the more he learned to dumb himself down when around others. It was a social survival skill. I do not envy the person in this article.
IF only the school systems in america werent structured how they are I imagine that we could have many folks finishing schooling much earlier than 18 and college a few years later..
I know many students who were held back merely because they had to wait to go on to the next year.. at best put in an "advanced placement" course..
we could easily have students graduating highschool at 14 or 15 ...if not sooner.. with the 'smart' ones beating that.. all of the time.. but.... it just doesnt seem to happen
Perhaps you just don't hear about their childhoods after they've found success, but I always hear stories about these geniuses graduated X years early, but rarely about their professional accomplishments.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
As such, the path he has chosen is good news for diseased children. However, humanity as a species isn't affected by those personnal tragedies he decided to focus on. On the other hand, there's a number of subjects in physics, genetics or even medecine that could have had a much wider impact.
Yes, I'm aware such a way of thinking classifies into the cold-hearted bastards category.
I don't know any genius level people, but I know 3 who were fast-tracked through high school and graduated very prestigious colleges at 17/18. They all went on to get PhDs, and they all failed out for the same reason: sometime during their PhD they wanted to try to re-live their youth as they should have, and began acting like teenagers again again. Drinking, partying, getting in trouble.... these guys were the smartest guys I knew, but each one, on their own, managed to derail their careers because they completely missed their youth.
Not saying this kid is in any danger of going down the same path... maybe his massive intellect will divert him from temptation. But every time I hear about someone graduating college exceedingly young, I always wonder when their fuse is going to run out.
What is generally recognized though is that the accuracy of the test also diminishes at greater than 120. Richard Feynman had an IQ of 'only' 125.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CGIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRichard_Feynman&ei=re7MT9foDIKE8ATci_2lDg&usg=AFQjCNFlZ7QHTlH2GfvFMOBQXefQcbolfQ
love is just extroverted narcissism