1 . Aged 15 in high school, I was talkative and outgoing, often betting that nobody else would do their homework, so I needn’t either. I did not enjoy geometry (几何), although I liked the philosophical approach of our teacher, Mrs Trenholm. She told us that geometry was about humankind’s ability to work things out.

A month or so into the year we started on Euclidean geometry. We were all struggling and I was probably the most vocal (敢于直言的) in class about it. Mrs Trenholm set us homework — to prove two angles in a complex geometric shape are equal. She pulled me aside as we were leaving class and said, “Don’t talk your way out of this.”

I went home, worked on it for 20 minutes and gave up. Later I decided to try again. My handwriting was messy, and I noticed that if I made the diagram neater and bigger, I could see where I probably went wrong. At about 5 am, I got it and felt like my brain had been rewired!

I handed it in the next day. Mrs Trenholm would never embarrass students in front of everyone. So she came to me and handed me the paper with a little check mark in the corner. She looked right at me and asked, “Did you do this?” When I said yes, she nodded and went back to the front of the class, declaring, “One of you now understands Euclidean geometry. Let’s keep going so everybody will get it.”

From then on, I found that if I concentrated and worked hard, I could understand and even enjoy a subject. I went on to study maths and physics at university, took a master’s degree in applied science and became a nuclear research scientist. I became someone who no longer allowed myself the freedom to talk myself out of dealing with problems, or give up when things seemed too difficult.

1. How can we describe the author from the first two paragraphs?

A．He was not skilled at socializing.	B．He always had bets with others.
C．He was absorbed in philosophy.	D．He had trouble studying geometry.

2. Why did Mrs Trenholm pull the author aside after class?

A．To warn him not to talk too much.	B．To give him some tips on homework.
C．To make him take homework seriously.	D．To encourage him to try more approaches.

3. What was Mrs Trenholm’s initial feeling about the author’s homework?

A．Excited.

B．Relieved.

C．Disapproving.

D．Disbelieving.

4. What did the author want to express through the last paragraph?

A．He would go for more freedom.	B．The maths puzzle was a life changer.
C．That lesson taught him to think twice.	D．His university life was pretty colorful.