Tom’s story was quite different as well. He wanted to study in a place where there was historic battle or historic event that took place. Growing up in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he learned so much about the bloody battle that took place. He always wanted to get more information about events by actually going to the scene of action and acquiring more information there.
By the end of his senior year in high school, Tom set his eyes on Poland. He was huge fan of literature, and he had already read The Pianist twice that year. He wanted to go to a place in Eastern Europe where the romantic language flowed like that of the books he had been reading. Poland was more than perfect in fitting all of that criteria.
Tom wasn’t the brightest math student. He didn’t expect such a minor setback to be a problem for him because he was an exchange student and also because he went there for the history of the country. He was gravely mistaken. Tom didn’t know that Poland ranked 19th in the world for education. The only way that Tom understood that was through brutal realization a observation.
When asked to solve a problem on the board, he would always find a way to get out of the situation so he didn’t have to embarrass himself in front of the Polish kids. But one day, his teacher insisted that he try the problem, Tom that it was impossible to solve the problem without a calculator which wasn’t allowed to be used in Polish schools. He got shown how to do the problem in his head by a Polish student who taught him tricks and shortcuts to make problems easier. Tom was surprised by the amount of brainpower that Poland kids possessed.
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