Math.

              One of the most common stereotypes for Asians is that they are good at math. I am sure many of the people out there who generally associate Asians with math must assume that we are born with extraordinary calculation abilities or inherit them from our ancestors.  That, however, is not the case at all. So how is it that majority of the Asian population is” above average” in terms of mathematical skills?

                The answer is simple. We just start learning it at an earlier age. My parents started teaching me math at the age of four. Education was very important to them, so they wanted me to get ahead the rest of the kids before I even started school. Because of their poor English speaking abilities, however, they were only able to advance my math abilities. Few weeks after my fourth Halloween celebration, my parents pulled out the big orange bucket from the top shelf of the cabinet. I was excited—I had assumed that they were going to give me candy out of pure kindness, but no. Nothing was ever that simple. With a big smile on their face, they announced that they were going to teach me the concepts of addition and subtraction. In order to ensure that I understood the concept completely, my parents ate one piece of candy for every problem I got wrong.  By the end of the lesson, three-fourths of the bucket was empty, and I was devastated. All that candy that I painstakingly gathered on the last day of October was now in the bellies of my parents.

                About a year later, my parents came home from grocery shopping and announced that they had a present for me. Being the naïve child I was, I began dreaming about some snacks or even a new toy. When I finally managed to snap back to reality, in my face were two large posters with numbers on them. Both of them read, “The Multiplication Table.” Just like that, my balloon filled with hopes and dreams popped. After they unloaded all the groceries and stored them to their designated areas, they taped these two enormous posters to the wall of our dining room, and forced me to sit there for a minimum of thirty minutes and study it. Every night before I bedtime, they would quiz me on the multiplication table to see how much I was able to memorize.

                So you see, Asians aren’t born with magical computation skills. It’s just a matter of how much you study (or how much your parents force you to remember).

Sidenote: This was not meant to come off in an arrogant manner; I am not implying I am a genius when it comes to math.