5/8

The end of lectures has once again put in a reflective mood. At this point I'm 5/8 of my way through my undergrad, with only 3 terms of academic madness to go.

And yes, it's brutal folks. The kids are smart and driven and the competition is fierce. When our corporate finance prof basically told James he was fucked for the final, James finally blew his gasket. Exasperated, he remarked: "Damn Asian people! Making everything harder for the rest of us!" (James is Asian, but not really.) Then we joked about a dream world - a math class with all white girls (hungover... still sore from the previous night.) William Hung will win a Grammy before that happens.

Any program in which Asians, renowned for their academic prowess, are in the plurality is bound to be tough. And when I think about it, I'm in quite possibly the most Asian program in the most Asian faculty in the most Asian school in North America. And I'm not talking slightly dumber, slightly lazier but all-in-all pretty cool CBCs. Most of these are study-8-hours-a-day Hello Kitty chopstick FOBs straight from the mainland.

A lot of times I wonder why the math faculty is demographically so skewered. Where are all the smart Russians? The Romanians? The born-and-bred gifted Canuck kids? I don't see them, and I wonder if many non-Chinese students that are mathematically inclined are deterred by the massive Chinese presence. I had a friend in high school flat out tell me that he declined his offer from Waterloo because it was "too Chinese". He eventually went on to do Chem Eng in Queen's.

The difficulty of a course, and your eventual grade, is very much a function of the drive and academic aptitutude of your students. If your class consists of 200 identically smart, identically super-motivated kids (as our corporate finance class is), when 170 of those students are from a culture that venerates scholarship above all else, this necessarily means that a lot of very smart kids who don't necessarily have the drive will fall by the wayside. And admittedly, it's psychologically bruising to enter an exam room and see of sea of Asians. One can help but think "Shit. I'm fucked."

I often wonder now how I'd fare in a school where the students aren't nearly as driven nor as competitive. What if I was American, and went to one of the leading actuarial schools down there like Georgia State or Drake University in Iowa? How mathematically adroit and keen are the kids of the American heartland? I wonder how rigorous their exams are? I wonder how I'd fare?

But as much as I wish the demographics were different, I don't regret coming here. I'm not getting grades like I used to and admittedly this takes a toll one one's pscyche. But one must always contextualize things: I'm contending with the upper-crust of Chinese who have essentially committed to sacrificing their 20s to pass the SOA exams; I'm contending with the Xiaos and Zhangs at their own game - math - and I'm surviving. Far better to be a mediocrity amongst the elite than a prince among paupers.

Now I view every course as a conquest, one step forwards towards that holy grail - B.Math (Hon). Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than checking off a completed course under the faculty requirements. Nothing better than that feeling of Yes, I did it.