Here is my last post about the Youth Math School. The other day, I thought I should blog about being a teacher at the Youth Math School, but then I realized I hadn’t finished the story of my own studies. Here it is.

I do not remember how I signed up for these classes in school #30. I believe I just walked into the old Math Department building, which was still open for the evening classes, found the ad board, and looked up the classes for the 8th graders. I noted the day and time, and just showed up.

I know it seems wild to students nowadays that you could just walk into a school building during the evening hours, find the room, and nobody would ask you anything. I believe that University students who taught these classes still had to find a janitor to take the key and open the classroom, since I remember us sitting in the hallway and waiting for our teachers. And I also remember looking for someone to open a classroom for me when three years later, I was a teacher myself.

My current self is just wondering why it was assumed that the school should allow these evening classes, why they trusted us, why parents didn’t care where their teenage kids were (most likely, they were happy that their teenage kids were doing math rather than drinking cheap wine on the streets), but my past self didn’t give it a second thought.

Anyway, I was in a math class again. Once again, I was the only girl in the class. Our teachers were Misha Chepovetsky and Borya Goldberg. Since they were teachers, we addressed them with their patronymics (and later, when I was a teacher myself, I learned that it was very important to address other teachers in the same school using their full names with patronymics). We practice addressing each other that way even during our university classes, with surprised looks from our classmates. Misha was Michail Anatolievish, a second-year student in the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics at Leningrad State University, and he taught at the Youth Math School for the second year. Boris Michailovich was a first-year student of the same department.

Since the classes were very interactive, and everyone could see who was the first person to raise their hand so that the teacher could stop by and check their problem solution, it was immediately obvious “who is the smartest,” and as I mentioned earlier, the idea that each individual student’s achievements and what is not, should be private, didn’t exist.

Vadim was definitely “the smartest one,” and Tolya Korobkin was “the second smartest.” Surprisingly, I was not trailing and sometimes would come in third, so the teachers started to pay attention to me. It was somehow assumed that all of us wanted (or should I say “should have wanted?”) to be admitted to the 9th grade of school #30. Also, all of us participated in the Math competitions in our respective school districts, and a lot of us made it to the city competition.

The City Math Olympiad had taken place in the old Math Department building (they were still reluctant to send the kids to compete at the out-of-town campus), and to my (and everyone’s else) surprise, not only did I receive a third degree diploma (remember, I never had any before that), but also, I was the only person of our Youth Math School class who got it :). During the awards ceremony, my whole class was cheering for me, and once again, I was the only girl who received any diploma… until we saw one more girl who was called out to receive the award. All of us watched closely a miniature figure of a pretty, subtle brunette walking to the podium. That was Elena K., my future classmate and my best friend for many years to come.

To be continued.

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.