After a semester or so, my infatuation with computers burnt out as quickly as it had begun.

Most of my teachers probably found I made less trouble if they let me read.

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.

Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic.

Conversely, I came to realize that being good at something is hardly a reason to avoid doing it.

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

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