My First Educational Treatise and What I Learned

My mother was my first critic of my first educational treatise, written when I was a senior in high school. During my junior year, I had tried unsuccessfully to get transferred out of a geometry class taught by a teacher whose reputation had preceded her for years. In retrospect, she was a very bright woman who had emotional problems and spent the class talking about this, that and anything other than about geometry and left it to us to read the book, do the problems, and make presentations on the board.  At that time, however, I wanted someone who taught.  The math department head was more than familiar with her problems but when I asked for a transfer had told me that 1) I wasn’t a teacher and 2) I had only had her for three days; thus: how could I judge?

My father (who was not familiar at all…