My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.

My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.

The 1970s, the decade of my teenage years, was a transitional period in American youth culture.

My fellow students there were very smart, but the really novel thing was that they actually seemed to put a lot of effort into their school work. By the end of my first semester there, I began to get into that habit as well.

My head was always bubbling over with facts and it seems to me this had little to do with my paying close attention in school and more to do with my voracious and omnivorous reading habits.

I was partly old-fashioned and partly modern.

As it was, I realized choosing the study of Chinese literature as my life's work was probably a mistake.