True.

This legend combines one of the ultimate academic wish-fulfillment fantasies -- a student not only proves himself the smartest one in his class, but also bests his professor and every other scholar in his field of study -- with a "positive thinking" motif which turns up in other urban legends: when people are free to pursue goals unfettered by presumed limitations on what they can accomplish, they just may manage some extraordinary feats through the combined application of native talent and hard work. And this particular version is all the more interesting for being completely true!

Urban Legends Reference Pages: College (The Unsolvable Math Problem)


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