An Article I Wrote for the High School Paper :: Personal Narrative Essay Example

An Article I Wrote for the High School Paper Philip Emeagwali, a man of immeasurably high intelligence, spurns the description people most often attach to him: genius. "I don't like that term. People think it only means genius in the mathematical sense or that it refers to a select group of people," Emeagwali, 44, told about 50 parents last night at a public forum on schools. "But I think every one of us has the power to be a genuis. I was not born a genius; it was nurtured in me by my father." When he was 10, growing up in western Nigeria, Emeagwali was drilled daily by his father to solve 100 math problems in one hour. There was no time to write solutions on paper -- he had 36 seconds per problem. So Emeagwali did them in his head. "People later called me a mathematical genuis, but you would be a genuis, too, if you had to do 100 math problems in an hour," he said. In the last two days, the man who has been called "one of the greatest intellectual giants Africa has produced" has been taking his message -- the importance of homework, cultivating encouragement at home, and surmounting obstacles -- to a school district that has been mired in problems. Standardized test scores here sank to such lows in recent years that the state placed the district in a special monitoring program. And even as the roofs of the town's school buildings crumbled, taxes soared. Not that Emeagwali didn't have his own trials to overcome. When he was 12, Emeagwali lived underneath ceilings that crumbled from rocket shells. From 1967 to 1970, Nigeria fell into civil war, forcing schools to close. Emeagwali had finished only seventh grade. "We ate only once a day. Some days we had nothing to eat. We were among the poorest families in the world," Emeagwali told students at a high school assembly earlier in the day. "Growing up poor and overcoming several obstacles made me a stronger person. I became more determined to succeed in life." Studying on his own from 6 a.m. to midnight, Emeagwali passed entrance examinations to the University of London with top grades. In 1974, he immigrated to the United States, obtaining degrees in several subjects.