With some difficulty. That first year in college was the toughest year of my life, in almost all aspects. It was an annealing experience. The intellectual demands, the demand to read tough convuluted prose original texts, in qualtity, was almost simply too much for an 18-19 year old. It really was. Those that survived it, back then, are truly a band of brothers. After that, it became somewhat easier, and the MBA at the Chicago business school, and the JD at the Michigan Law School, were relative bunny slopes for me.
Well, yeah, UChicago is known as one of the toughest undergrad math programs also.
But I was talking about the neighborhood. Illinois' version of Beirut.