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PatchWork
by Joyce Whitis |
Lin Su....ten years old
Lin Su Winton lay in her crib, watching the geometric shapes twirl and sway above her head. Her brown eyes danced as she reached for the sphere. Her father, a math professor, had made the mobile for his baby daughter to illustrate that a one dimensional circle when rotated will form a sphere. She knew what it was. In fact at seven months of age she could identify most geometric shapes including her favorite, the four-dimensional hyper cube.
Her parents were only mildly surprised at their baby's ability to learn at an accelerated rate. "We could pretty much tell from the time we brought her home from the hospital, that Lin Su was.....well, exceptional," Dr. Winton, her father, told us.
Mary, Lin Su's mother, spoke from the depths of her living room chair, " I really took notice when at four months she spoke her first complete sentence. She looked at me and said clearly 'I want my bottle'. We knew that bringing up baby was going to be just a little bit different than what we had expected."
At ten months, Lin Su was adding and subtracting small positive and negative numbers. Soon she was cutting her morning toast into geometric shapes as a sideline to breakfast.
One evening, when she was two and a half, Mary taught her daughter to read. Within three weeks she was reading parts of the daily newspaper.
Her remarkable advancement in learning continued so that she was tested and given the opportunity to start school early.
Since she was only four years old, her parents limited their daughter to the first grade because of her size and maturity. The next year, the Wintons moved to Stephenville where Dr. Richard Winton had accepted a position in the mathematics department at Tarleton State University. Lin Su was enrolled in the second grade. She was five years old.
Soon she was enrolled in piano lessons and in the summer played softball with other girls but always read everything she could get her hands on. The entire family enjoys skiing trips during vacations and Lin Su rapidly became an accomplished skier. The Wintons built a large swimming pool in their backyard and Lin Su became an agile "fish".
One day when she was six, Lin Su visited her father's office while he was still working. A book that Dr. Winton had written, "Introduction to Abstract Algebra" was lying on his desk. While waiting for her father to finish his work, the little girl who logically would have been thinking about starting to school, picked up the book and began to read. The first chapter was the Theory of Sets. Lin Su eagerly read two sections and then began to work all the problems. Finally she made up her own problem to support her answers.
Dr. Winton included her problem in his book which he uses to teach graduate students algebra.
During the summer of 1993, Lin Su now seven, wanted to try enrolling in an algebra course for credit at Tarleton for the second summer session after softball was over. Due to her age she could only audit the course but she enjoyed the university atmosphere and visiting the game room after class.
At 10 years old, Lin Su began seventh grade at Stephenville Junior High School. She was given permission to enroll in ninth grade Algebra I. In the busy adjustment of getting used to life in Junior High, she finished the first six weeks with a 95. This was just not good enough to please her so she earned an average of 100 in Algebra I each of the remaining five six weeks.
Early in the school year, still ten years old, Duke University invited her to take the SAT test given to high school juniors and seniors. There was no preparation for the test. Lin Su managed to score 470 on the verbal and 580 on the math for a total score of 1050. She thus qualified to attend an awards ceremony given by Duke University in May, 1997. The ceremony took place at the TCU campus in Fort Worth.
After each student had received their award, Lin Su was called back to the stage alone to be honored as the youngest student to ever be recognized at the Duke University awards ceremony. Further it was explained that if she had stayed in her normal grade level, she would have had the highest SAT score of all the students.
This year Lin Su is taking English, Science, speech, computer literacy, and band at Junior High and 10th grade geometry at the High School. Her father picks her up and takes her to the high school where she is in class with her baby sitter! If she continues at the present rate she will be a college freshman at 16 .
However long it is until Lin Su enrolls in college, she is dead level certain about what she wants to do. "Genetic Engineering", she answered when asked about her future. As surely as the party goer whispered in the ear of the Graduate, "plastics", so Lin Su has had known since she was six years old just what she wanted to do with her life. In fact she just finished a paper about this subject. The following is an excerpt.
"My defining moment was probably when one of my latest hobbies,
(saving practically everything I found, so I could examine it under my microscope), grew old. I started thinking back to my past hobbies and immediately saw a connection between most of them.....Jurassic Park....dinosaurs ...DNA...chemistry...cloning...bugs I had searched for...all linked together by science....genetic engineering !! I now had a 'file' in my brain, solely dedicated to storing information on genetic engineering."
Genetic engineering is surely in the future for Lin but for now she's excited about playing keyboard in the jazz band along with best friend, Emily Seawright. "I play the French Horn and Emily plays the flute. Since these instruments aren't exactly suited to the stage band, our band director said he'd let us play the keyboard."
Lin is also looking forward to piano lessons with Dr. Parks who usually only takes college students. She has been studying since third grade and loves playing piano. Her tastes are generally pop but she is getting interested in classical.
Like most other girls her age, Lin tackles hour long telephone conversations with friends where gossip, and jokes are passed back and forth. She and her mother fuss gently about the way she pulls her hair back in preparation for a picture. The family, which includes a younger sister, Kristin, who is nine, talk together about their upcoming ski trip to Colorado; the imminent birthday party that will be a swimming party for several girl friends at the Winton home; what to have for dinner. Lin in this respect is little different from hundreds of other Stephenville girls.
Lin Su Winton is a pleasure to know. She tells us that she is a "neatness freak" as she shows us her spotless room, filled with pictures and momentoes, all attractively arranged. Her conversation is somewhat antimated as ideas sprout from her active brain and then she comes back with some humor that makes you burst into laughter. It is obvious that she is completely "normal" whatever that means with an exceptional intellect in especially in areas of math and science.
"I am most proud of her caring spirit and unpretentious manner. I must give credit to the many fine, dedicated teachers she has had in the Stephenville Independent School District," Dr. Winton told us. "These teachers are truly unsung heroes to whom we owe a debt that we can never repay. I must also give tremendous credit to the administration of the Stephenville Independent School District. They have demonstrated a strong and constant support and determination to do whatever it takes to give students what they need to grow academically, athletically, and socially in a safe atmosphere where the students can flourish. My sincere thanks go out to all those individuals who have helped to make Lin Su's life so very productive."