I can't thank you enough for posting this. I could tell a similar story about math and science, only it took me until my junior year of
college to "find" my inner scholar this way. From then on-- it was, er-- well, it wasn't that it was
easy exactly, but it was more engaging, more flow-state, more of the time.
Anyway. I could have written it, but my DD14 (who thinks she is "bad" at STEM, btw) wouldn't have taken it so much to heart.
She read your post and exclaimed;
"Yes! Exactly! He learns the way that I learn. I need to have all of those pieces to put together or I feel frustrated that I'm not truly understanding what I'm doing, and I feel inadequate that I don't really have mastery of the material. I need to see how it fits together and work hard problems that mean something."
When she has all of those things working together, it is flatly ASTONISHING how much ground she can cover per unit time. It's really remarkable. I
so wish that she'd had the experience of a similarly able peer to work with.
