Hello, my name is Eric Lawson, you will find me on the name sales thread. But I have something to share that is a bit personal and if I am going to do it, might as well start it out with the community I feel most comfortable in. I have a very unique story to share about my life and what has become of it. I have been told by many that this is a really good story and that I should write a book. I cannot tell if they are just saying that though because I know them personally, so here it goes....
I grew up in a fairly wealthy family, but I had no rules. I was very undisciplined and would do whatever I pleased, my life was wonderful at this point. I knew there was something different about me though when I started going to school. In kindergarten I would growl at kids and would hardly talk to anyone not to mention I was doing horrible and could barely manage. I had no social skills what so ever. I was a very weird child, I would obsess over things and would be interested in one thing. In 2nd grade I was diagnosed with ADHD and was put on medicine accordingly. This helped with my concentration and somewhat with school, but I still did poorly. At this point was when I started really getting into computers and runescape. I would explore through my computer and play around, I learned so much. I would be on the computer from since I got home until my "time limit" was up. Anyways my peers at this point would consider me as stupid or retarded because I had no social skills and did poorly in school. This would continue on until about 5th grade until my parents divorced. This was a huge blow as this destroyed our financial situation and my mom became a single parent. Soon we had to use food stamps and we couldn't afford new clothing or a coat for the winter. At this point in life, everyone is a son of a bitch so of course everyone game me a hard time about my situation. Not to mention due to my financial situation I wouldn't have enough money to get the nutritional values i needed every day. I had to do dares in school in order to afford to eat and would occasionally have to steal it if no one was willing to take my services. Then one ass hole said there was something in my locker, and there was a filed down toothbrush and they said it was a weapon. I was promptly kicked out of school and placed into an alternative setting. After a few months they put me back and the same cycle of bullshit happened 3 more times up until freshman year of high school where it happened the final time. Meanwhile while this was happening my mother developed a relationship with a person who I will not release any information about other than he had medical issues. This man had 4 kidneys and 2 pancreases. He was ill a lot and because of my adhd I was very active and he did not like that. Also due to my upbringing with no rules, we butted heads as he was very strict. Eventually he decided instead of allowing me inside the house, that he wouldn't let me in the house until my mother came home. My mother at this point had a job and she worked late. At this point is where I started drinking and smoking because I felt like it couldn't get worse. One day he decided to get into a fight with me or aggravate me by going into my room and touching my things. At this point I was in the room watching him, then he picks up my dead grandfathers deck of cards and begins to open them. I expect the worst and yell at him to put those down. He then taunts me and I start to get pissed as anyone would in the situation... Then things started to get physical, in the end I flipped him over and he landed on the dresser. He then proceeded to get up and grab me by the neck and push me into the closet. I am in 8th grade. My mother and brother were at the door at this time and I called the cops, but my mother lied and said that he didn't so that we had a place to stay. That all came to an end freshman year, my mother donated him a kidney and he broke up with her, he then blamed it on me as it was my fault and I became extremely depressed. A few weeks later during a school football game I invited my "friend" over to my father’s house where we were going to drink, but I had different plans. I filled up a water bottle of vodka and told him "watch this". I then proceeded to chug the whole thing to drown my pain as fast as possible. He asked me if I was alright and I said yea, then we filled up a few drinks and went to the game. At this point the alcohol has not settled in so I was in fact feeling it but I knew when I would sit down it would really hit me. We got there and at this point I was intoxicated, I sat down and I couldn't get back up. But my "friends" wanted to go to the game so they dragged me anyways. On the bleachers I could barely keep my body up, I fell back onto the person behind me and when I tried to walk down the bleachers because it was clear I was too drunk, I fell down them. I then blacked out and woke up in the hospital 11 hours later with a BAC on .233. My goal was to die as I had ruined my mother’s happiness and I didn't think I deserved to be there anymore. This as well as another factor got me kicked out for the fourth time and final time. At this point I was in shambles, but over the next 2 months things started looking better. Then one day a student asked me if I wanted to play chess, he was beating everyone so I decided what the hell, I played it on my phone a few times. I played him and destroyed him in about 15 moves. It turns out a teacher was mentoring him so the teacher came up and said: "If you can beat me in 32 moves ill buy you lunch". I upped that by making him also agree to a $20 visa gift card. As you can guess I lasted 32 moves, then to my surprise later on I would find out that he is ranked 1800, classified as an expert at chess. At this point he had proved to me that I was not as stupid as everyone has always told me. All of my life I was told I was no good, this was the first time that anyone had ever told me that I was any good at anything. I would then proceed to play chess a ton against people and eventually got to the point where I was beating him every time. Too bad that after that there was no one else to play so I got bored of it and moved on. This teacher just so happened to be a math teacher as well, he was hands down the best teacher I have ever had. At this time I was a sophomore in geometry. But at this school we were low budget, so instead everyone was taught algebra two (which was a year ahead). I managed to understand everything he was going to teach for the whole year in a few weeks thanks to him, then he started teaching my trig. At this time a he was moved to be a one on one for a low functioning autistic adult. The new teacher didn't know more than trig so I quickly became good at trig and got bored. I told her to print off some pre-calc worksheets, but instead she printed out both high school AP calculus courses. I managed to teach myself both courses in 6 months. I then realized that this was not pre-calc but in fact calculus after some time, and I didn't know what to learn from there on, so I came up with some challenge problems. My first challenge problem was to independently come up with a formula to find the n-th derivative of a function raised to a constant. Which I did and came up with a solution and checked online to see if I was right. I was, then I came up with my 2nd and final challenge problem. I told myself I was going to find the n-th derivative of a function raised to a function. I found a solution and checked online, but there appeared to be no solution.... I thought this is odd, but my solution clearly works, so I went to my original math teacher (the one who played me in chess that day) and he told me about his grandson who created a theorem and that maybe you might have one there yourself. From that point on, I dedicated all of my heart and soul to learn as much as I could about what I found and to prefect it. But it turns out that I needed to prove it or it would just be a conjecture. I then went to the internet, here is my original post. As you can see I got quite the response from this man. But I would be spending my entire senior year doing this. But senior year is another story that was surreal but maybe I will add on to this to add that in as well as I was returned back to high school and everyone got to see the real me. But anyways in the end I got plenty of letters of recommendation and got into college. I am currently on the final draft of my paper that I will hopefully be publishing soon, I found out my own proof without Markus that is 2 and a half pages long. I can provide more information if this does sound like a good story, but as of now I am going to go to eat.
If you decide to respond, please consider that I am basically telling you my life's story, what became of it, ect. I was not expected to pass high school, but now i am publishing a theorem in advanced combinatorics. I believe everyone can do something of similar magnitude. The whole reason that i got good in math was not to impress anyone or make money, but because it was the most fun i have had in my life. The feeling i got when i found out i had proved my conjecture was the most beautiful life changing feeling in the world, and I would love to share it as much as possible. As of now I am in college, and I love my life, I am so glad it didn't end that day. Thank you very much for reading this if you got this far.
I grew up in a fairly wealthy family, but I had no rules. I was very undisciplined and would do whatever I pleased, my life was wonderful at this point. I knew there was something different about me though when I started going to school. In kindergarten I would growl at kids and would hardly talk to anyone not to mention I was doing horrible and could barely manage. I had no social skills what so ever. I was a very weird child, I would obsess over things and would be interested in one thing. In 2nd grade I was diagnosed with ADHD and was put on medicine accordingly. This helped with my concentration and somewhat with school, but I still did poorly. At this point was when I started really getting into computers and runescape. I would explore through my computer and play around, I learned so much. I would be on the computer from since I got home until my "time limit" was up. Anyways my peers at this point would consider me as stupid or retarded because I had no social skills and did poorly in school. This would continue on until about 5th grade until my parents divorced. This was a huge blow as this destroyed our financial situation and my mom became a single parent. Soon we had to use food stamps and we couldn't afford new clothing or a coat for the winter. At this point in life, everyone is a son of a bitch so of course everyone game me a hard time about my situation. Not to mention due to my financial situation I wouldn't have enough money to get the nutritional values i needed every day. I had to do dares in school in order to afford to eat and would occasionally have to steal it if no one was willing to take my services. Then one ass hole said there was something in my locker, and there was a filed down toothbrush and they said it was a weapon. I was promptly kicked out of school and placed into an alternative setting. After a few months they put me back and the same cycle of bullshit happened 3 more times up until freshman year of high school where it happened the final time. Meanwhile while this was happening my mother developed a relationship with a person who I will not release any information about other than he had medical issues. This man had 4 kidneys and 2 pancreases. He was ill a lot and because of my adhd I was very active and he did not like that. Also due to my upbringing with no rules, we butted heads as he was very strict. Eventually he decided instead of allowing me inside the house, that he wouldn't let me in the house until my mother came home. My mother at this point had a job and she worked late. At this point is where I started drinking and smoking because I felt like it couldn't get worse. One day he decided to get into a fight with me or aggravate me by going into my room and touching my things. At this point I was in the room watching him, then he picks up my dead grandfathers deck of cards and begins to open them. I expect the worst and yell at him to put those down. He then taunts me and I start to get pissed as anyone would in the situation... Then things started to get physical, in the end I flipped him over and he landed on the dresser. He then proceeded to get up and grab me by the neck and push me into the closet. I am in 8th grade. My mother and brother were at the door at this time and I called the cops, but my mother lied and said that he didn't so that we had a place to stay. That all came to an end freshman year, my mother donated him a kidney and he broke up with her, he then blamed it on me as it was my fault and I became extremely depressed. A few weeks later during a school football game I invited my "friend" over to my father’s house where we were going to drink, but I had different plans. I filled up a water bottle of vodka and told him "watch this". I then proceeded to chug the whole thing to drown my pain as fast as possible. He asked me if I was alright and I said yea, then we filled up a few drinks and went to the game. At this point the alcohol has not settled in so I was in fact feeling it but I knew when I would sit down it would really hit me. We got there and at this point I was intoxicated, I sat down and I couldn't get back up. But my "friends" wanted to go to the game so they dragged me anyways. On the bleachers I could barely keep my body up, I fell back onto the person behind me and when I tried to walk down the bleachers because it was clear I was too drunk, I fell down them. I then blacked out and woke up in the hospital 11 hours later with a BAC on .233. My goal was to die as I had ruined my mother’s happiness and I didn't think I deserved to be there anymore. This as well as another factor got me kicked out for the fourth time and final time. At this point I was in shambles, but over the next 2 months things started looking better. Then one day a student asked me if I wanted to play chess, he was beating everyone so I decided what the hell, I played it on my phone a few times. I played him and destroyed him in about 15 moves. It turns out a teacher was mentoring him so the teacher came up and said: "If you can beat me in 32 moves ill buy you lunch". I upped that by making him also agree to a $20 visa gift card. As you can guess I lasted 32 moves, then to my surprise later on I would find out that he is ranked 1800, classified as an expert at chess. At this point he had proved to me that I was not as stupid as everyone has always told me. All of my life I was told I was no good, this was the first time that anyone had ever told me that I was any good at anything. I would then proceed to play chess a ton against people and eventually got to the point where I was beating him every time. Too bad that after that there was no one else to play so I got bored of it and moved on. This teacher just so happened to be a math teacher as well, he was hands down the best teacher I have ever had. At this time I was a sophomore in geometry. But at this school we were low budget, so instead everyone was taught algebra two (which was a year ahead). I managed to understand everything he was going to teach for the whole year in a few weeks thanks to him, then he started teaching my trig. At this time a he was moved to be a one on one for a low functioning autistic adult. The new teacher didn't know more than trig so I quickly became good at trig and got bored. I told her to print off some pre-calc worksheets, but instead she printed out both high school AP calculus courses. I managed to teach myself both courses in 6 months. I then realized that this was not pre-calc but in fact calculus after some time, and I didn't know what to learn from there on, so I came up with some challenge problems. My first challenge problem was to independently come up with a formula to find the n-th derivative of a function raised to a constant. Which I did and came up with a solution and checked online to see if I was right. I was, then I came up with my 2nd and final challenge problem. I told myself I was going to find the n-th derivative of a function raised to a function. I found a solution and checked online, but there appeared to be no solution.... I thought this is odd, but my solution clearly works, so I went to my original math teacher (the one who played me in chess that day) and he told me about his grandson who created a theorem and that maybe you might have one there yourself. From that point on, I dedicated all of my heart and soul to learn as much as I could about what I found and to prefect it. But it turns out that I needed to prove it or it would just be a conjecture. I then went to the internet, here is my original post. As you can see I got quite the response from this man. But I would be spending my entire senior year doing this. But senior year is another story that was surreal but maybe I will add on to this to add that in as well as I was returned back to high school and everyone got to see the real me. But anyways in the end I got plenty of letters of recommendation and got into college. I am currently on the final draft of my paper that I will hopefully be publishing soon, I found out my own proof without Markus that is 2 and a half pages long. I can provide more information if this does sound like a good story, but as of now I am going to go to eat.
If you decide to respond, please consider that I am basically telling you my life's story, what became of it, ect. I was not expected to pass high school, but now i am publishing a theorem in advanced combinatorics. I believe everyone can do something of similar magnitude. The whole reason that i got good in math was not to impress anyone or make money, but because it was the most fun i have had in my life. The feeling i got when i found out i had proved my conjecture was the most beautiful life changing feeling in the world, and I would love to share it as much as possible. As of now I am in college, and I love my life, I am so glad it didn't end that day. Thank you very much for reading this if you got this far.
