At 8, Moshe Moshe Kai Cavalin enrolled in Los Angeles Community College and three years later graduated with an Associate of Arts degree. At 14, he graduated from UCLA with a Math major.
Now 16, Moshe is a celebrity of sorts in the US and believed to be a genius, child prodigy and ‘gifted’ – all at one go. He spoke to PaGaLGuY and kind of dismissed, what he terms as ‘too much of fuss’ around him. “It is no big deal, everybody is smart in his own way,” he said.
That Moshe was different as compared to other kids, his parents noticed when he was just 3. “My parents found out that I could learn things very quickly from the beginning. For instance I memorised multiplication tables at 3 and learned precalculus at 7. I was just picking up things much faster and more easily than other kids,” Moshe told this website.
First day at college, his classmates thought he was the son of a student and aghast when they realised he was not. But over time, they learnt the joy of interacting with a ‘kid’ in class. And Moshe too got into the habit of learning in a classroom with people double his age or at least much older that him. And when Moshe turned into a celebrity, people found it a privilege to study with him.
“But it is not about being a genius. It is more of doing things with total commitment,” Moshe said when asked about his achievements.
The teenager also has a habit of going after stuff which does not interest him too much. Take for instance the subject Astrophysics at college. “I was able to reach the stars, but others can reach the ‘Milky Way,” was how he termed his performance in the subject then. However, he took interest in the subject because he found his teacher at East Lost Angeles City enthusiastic about it. And he got an A in it. And it was this same teacher Richard Avila who pushed him to write a book about the little things that made Moshe so different from others.
Moshe wrote the book ‘We Can Do,‘ when just 12, making him one of US youngest authors. The book was first published in Chinese since his mother is Chinese and later was translated into English. The book did well in many parts of Asia besides the US but Moshe hardly got time to promote it. “I was busy studying,” he said.
“The book is 100 pages of just guideline which explain how others can also achieve what I have. It is all just hard work, no genius stuff,” he reminded.
Moshe thinks his life went the way it did academically mainly because he was relatively smart in Math. “It was very easy to motivate myself to work hard in in the subject and take advanced courses in it. And I am not so good in other courses like English, Chemistry,” he added honestly.
And mind you, Moshe is not just academically brilliant. He has won many national championships in Karate, Gung-Fu, Wushu and Weapons. He also plays the piano and an expert scuba diver. Besides, he flies planes but in his words “he flies the Cessna planes, the smaller ones not the big Boeing planes.”
The youngster has framed a few rules for himself – two of them being, no more than 4 hours of television per week and no video games. And he has also learnt to take every day as it comes and not dream too grand. One of his dreams is earning a doctorate.
When not studying or scuba diving or target shooting or martial art training or flying a plane, Moshe is like any other teenager. He has friends, parties and basically just loves life.