Lorraine considers herself bright, especially in mathematics. Because her
dad is a mathematics professor at the university, she has a lot of help
solving her homework problems. In fact, every summer her father has
obtained a copy of the math text for the upcoming year and gone over the
problems with her. When she has difficulty with a certain type of problem,
he has given her hints that make the problem easy. By the time she
encounters the problems in school, she already knows exactly what to do.
But now she's transferred to a new school and her dad hasn't looked over
her new math book. It's the first week of math class. The teacher hasjust
handed out a set of problems. At first, Lorraine is excited. This is a chance
to show what she can do. She soon finds out, however, that she's never
seen problems like these. She doesn't have any experience to call on. Lorraine tries the first problem but can't figure it out. She moves to the
second problem and can't figure out how to solve it either. She begins to
panic and stops thinking about the problems altogether. "Dad didn't show
me how to do any of these." Soon she gives up, thinking to herself, "These
problems are just too hard.