It might partially be because of my chinese culture, but my parents afforded me a very impressive mathematics education, starting from when I was very young.

By age four, I knew the multiplication tables up to 20.

In the 4th grade, at Forestridge Elementary, our math teacher, Mrs. Gibson, had a mini-competition, seeing who could finish a set of problems the fastest.  The prize was something trivial (I remember it being some Dallas Stars memorabilia), but either way, I finished in about half the time of the second fastest time.  I felt pretty proud at the time, but when I think of it now, it's kind of nerdy.

Around that time (9-10 years old), my parents enrolled me in an extricurricular math program, called Kumon.  If you can't tell from the website, it's kind of hardcore.  I was doing 9th grade level math (algebra II) in 6th grade, and pre-calculus in 7th.  In 6th garde, I was in the Math Team, and we competed against three other schools in word problems, with one team section and two individuals ones.  I got 2nd place in both the individuals and led my team to 2nd in the team part as well.

Anyways, the point is, I was pretty good at math when I was younger, and this helped me in my science classes in high school, and eventually led me to choose engineering as a beginning major at UT.  When that didn't work out too well, I knew I still wanted to do something related to Mathematics, but with a more grounded, practical approach.