In the pictures we shared a week back of Yao Ming’s first day in class, we interpreted his face as an open book of frustration and WTF? Turns out we were right on the money, as Yao himself admitted in a press conference he was “totally lost.”
“To be frank, I was totally lost in my first math class. Only a few vague memories of studying it were reawakened. But I had prepared myself for that situation. I believe one will eventually reap a rich harvest as long as one makes improvement little by little, day by day.”
Yao is currently enrolled in the Antai College of Economics and Management at Shanghai Jiaotong University, but will also study finance and journalism.
One probable source of his confusion could be that he started class almost 2 months late. Even the brightest student would understandably be lost if they walked into a classroom with 2 months of catch-up to do, genius or not.
Compound that with the fact that Yao has been out of school and out of scholarly practice for the many years of his basketball career, and we’re inclined to give the guy a break.