Early Years

Abstract

My academic career got off to a very inauspicious beginning: I was held back in kindergarten. After my first year in school, my family moved to a different district, which had a higher age requirement for children entering the first grade. My parents tried to argue that an exception should be made for me, since I had already had one year of kindergarten. However, the school authorities pointed to the undeniable signs of my developmental immaturity — most obviously, that I stuttered — and I was forced to repeat the year.