It wasn’t the case for him but I’d like people to also note that in Korea, one of the strategy for getting into good universities is to actually drop out of high school and grind for the national exam by going to cram schools (hagwon)<p>People do this because there are certain admission categories where the university only looks at the test results. So they go “okay, by not going to school, my child can fully focus on exam instead of wasting time on useless subjects like art and PE. And school math curriculum is too easy anyway”<p>This really saddens me because schools should be more than gateways to universities, but I digress.
Contains a couple of pop narrative cliches that always turn out to be gaudy exaggerations for journalistic effect: "he came from art, he is driven by beauty! he stunned the mathematical world!", it's bollocks really, and he's no doubt quite embarrassed by this article. He once thought about being a poet, but actually didn't like the work. His parents had a mathematical academic background and he picked that up as an undergraduate. He exhibits fairly typical neurodivergent behaviour of people with ADHD and/or autism. I would like to see journalists start writing about actual poets, or sculptors etc, in this absurdly valourizing, mythologizing way.
Imagine every kid had had a maths professor that demonstrated live research in the classroom, like the Japanese teacher that June Huh benefitted from - who knows, the world may be full of similar talent, we will never know.<p>We should remember not to just present results, but to teach, demonstrate and live how to get there more. It's not even abour rich vs. poor education - almost all go through the whole system never seeing this, and for June Huh, sleeper maths genius, meeting that one person changed everything!
Related:<p><i>He dropped out to become a poet – now he’s won a Fields Medal (2022)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37010709">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37010709</a> - Aug 2023 (75 comments)<p><i>He dropped out to become a poet – now he’s won a Fields Medal</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31985400">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31985400</a> - July 2022 (136 comments)
<i>"The work showed that “you don’t need space to do geometry,” Huh said. “That made me really fundamentally rethink what geometry is.”"</i><p>That is one of the most thought provoking things I have ever read.
Very cool that at least in S. Korea one can "mess up" by dropping out of high school and eventually go on to study under, work with, and finally win one of the most prestigious medals in the world. I think this _may_ be possible in the US, but would be much harder. This is isad because the US has a more anyone can do anything culture, which is normally great. But maybe it doesn't exist in some fields/schools/industries.
I share quite a few of his quirks. I was also rejected by most of the grad schools I applied to. So how come I didn't amount to anything?<p>Seriously, a well written article including the accessible explanations of his work. Plus, LoL funny. Thank you.
So he belongs to a wealthy family then, correct? Poetry is typically the pursuit of the bourgeoisie. It does not pay very well, especially to afford a family and only work three hours per day, as per the article. It’s great that he gets to live this lifestyle, for him, but there are some of us who pursue poetry at a net loss to quality of life. I’d possibly even contend that <i>most</i> people who actively engage in creative writing do so to their own detriment in a consumerist society with little to no safety net such as the US. Perhaps South Korea has a generous public endowment for poetry, and I would love to hear about it if so.<p>Otherwise, I’m not particularly moved by another chronicle of superior outcomes in creative pursuits due to hereditary wealth articles.
This story is a bit of a misnomer when you look deeper. His dad is a statistics professor and he was mentored by well known mathematician in undergraduate so it's not like he didn't have a lot of schooling.
> he dropped out of high school to become a poet.<p>Not even college, high school. Really misleading/unfortunate title.<p>As an aside, why would anyone need to drop out of anything to become a poet?