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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (73181)	8/25/2003 8:06:53 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

The very first news item I read this morning turned out to be relevant to our discussion. The bolded text is an example of how nice people behave. Boy genius excels in med school The Associated Press Sho Yano, whose IQ exceeds 200, is the youngest person ever to attend one of the University of Chicago's professional schools. 1st year a breeze for 12-year-old at U of Chicago By Martha Irvine THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CHICAGO - Sho Yano's mother hands him his lunch for school in a brown paper bag - a turkey sandwich and cookies included. "You don't need any bones today? No bones?" Kyung Yano asks her quiet, spectacle- wearing 12-year-old, who shakes his head "no" as they head out their apartment door. She wants to make sure he isn't supposed to take his samples of spinal bones and a human skull to class, where he's learning about human anatomy. It's the kind of morning many young students and their parents experience - except for one thing. Sho isn't in junior high. He's a first-year medical school student at the University of Chicago, where he's the youngest ever to attend one of the university's professional schools. If he weren't also getting his Ph.D. along with his medical degree - thus, pushing his age at graduation to 19 or 20 - he'd also be on course to become the youngest person to graduate from any medical school. According to Guinness World Records, a 17-year-old graduated from medical school in New York in 1995. But Sho is utterly uninterested in setting records. He also shuns the labels often used to describe him - "prodigy" and "little genius" among them. Yes, he has an IQ beyond 200. And yes, he graduated in three years from Chicago's Loyola University, summa cum laude. But for him, going to school is about learning as much as he can. "And there's a lot of stuff to know," he says, as he thumbs through one of his extra-thick medical books. While many kids his age have been spending their summers at camp or at the beach, Sho has been dissecting a human cadaver and learning the intricacies of the 12 cranial nerves. So far, having scored A's on his first few quizzes, he's handling the course work better than some who are a decade or more older than he is. In some ways, Sho is still a typical 12-year-old. He has a pet rabbit and sometimes squabbles with his little sister, Sayuri. At school, he's more of the little brother figure. His classmates tease him, for instance, about finding a girlfriend. But they also go out of their way to include him, often socializing in their homes instead of bars - or choosing movies to watch that are rated no higher than PG. Still, pathology professor Tony Montag says he sometimes forgets that Sho is younger than his classmates. "Of course, to me, they're all kids. So he doesn't seem particularly different than any of the students," says Montag, who teaches Sho and other first-year students. Born in Portland, Ore., Sho spent most of his early years in California, where his father, Katsura, now runs the American subsidiary of a Japanese shipping company. Sho lives in the university's family housing with his mother, who originally came to this country from Korea to study art history, and 7-year-old Sayuri, a talented student in her own right who wants to be a cardiologist. From early on, his mom says, it was apparent that Sho was gifted. She recalls trying to master a waltz by Chopin on the piano while 3-year-old Sho played below her. Frustrated, she went to take a break, only to hurry back in amazement a few moments later as she heard Sho playing the piece. By age 8, he scored a 1,500 out of 1,600 possible points on the SAT. He started college at age 9. He says he chose medicine because he wants to help people. "I wish I could find a big step," he says, his eyes widening slightly, "like a treatment for cancer."