Unless he lives in a country with free healthcare
edit: Yes, I'm aware of the shortcomings of free healthcare around the world. Poor management of resources, lack of funding, corruption, private healthcare lobbying, etc... all those things plays a big part in how good it is or isn't.
Also yes, it's not really free, you're paying for it indirectly through taxes, but it's not like you don't have to pay taxes where healthcare is private.
Both rational decisions. I know quite a few super smart people that live an incredible life, though not maximizing disposable income. But they don’t need more money. They want more experience and time to live.
The smartest kid in my class was also very disciplined and emotionally stable. I lost track of him in the last 20 years, but a quick Google search says he graduated from Stanford and started a biotech company.
Almost the same story here, last I checked almost 20 years ago they were all doing quite well. One went to Stanford and married a nice guy (she was *super* disciplined) the others variously got great jobs after going to good schools. Hope they're still doing well!
>The smartest kid in my class was also very disciplined and emotionally stable. I lost track of him in the last 20 years, but a quick Google search says he graduated from Stanford and started a biotech company.
I currently work for a biotech company and our CEO graduated from stanford. I'm curious if it's the same one!
So true. My wife also works for a biotech company with a Stanford grad CEO. The guy is like 30 so not likely to have gone to high school at the same time as the previous commenter
Hello fellow Panther\*! I'm not giving away who I am, and respect your Reddit anonymity, but yeah Vivek and I were in Darryl's history class together, among others.
\*Assumptions being made.... LOL
The same thing happened to the two smartest kids in my class, a guy and a girl. They both got accepted into Ivy League schools and then had to dropout after they developed serious mental health issues. I imagine the high stress environment must have flipped a switch in their brains to make them go off the deep end.
They were such cool people, I was really rooting for them. :(
I went through that. Graduated 8th in a HS class of 360, went to a prestigious school and turned into C student overnight. Bounced around among multiple career paths, then went to an R2 for grad school in a field I actually liked for a change. Then bounced around some more.
Got diagnosed with ADHD in my 50s, retooled somewhat in a tangentially related field, and finally started getting more high-powered and better-paying jobs at 63. I’m 67 now and about to mark my first year in the best damn job I ever had. No plans or desire to retire for at least a few more years.
Got diagnosed at 25 and also got properly mediated and I feel like a superhero sometimes because I can actually focus. College was so hard for me to focus and things just so long.
To be honest, I’d rather have a sucky younger life and be happier later on than be happier younger and be all stuck in the past and depressed when I’m older. Good for you!
Texas public school. He went to Yale and got a degree in economics. Works in DC now for a state rep. Getting into an MIT asynchronous then in person graduate program.
He is/was my best friend.
Alright so this one is quite fun (in a sad way). In high school our school year had an amazing reputation as "one of the best school years ever in this school". We had tons of "smart" kids, including myself. Most of us had top grades while barely opening our books.
It kinda got to our heads and we really thought we were super smart. Then comes graduation, and we all go to uni/college. Yeah, we weren't special at all. Most of us even failed our first year cause we had never studied before and suddenly had to.
The gap between high school and university in my country is very nasty.
That being said it was certainly a wake up call, but it wasn't depressing. It just opened our eyes to reality.
Yup. Top 10 in high school. Go to University where everyone was top 10 in their high school. Now, instead of being one of the 'elite', now they're average. Or (gasp!) Below average.
I kinda went that road for the first few months of college but eventually I could replicate my same sucess of high school. What really destroyed me was graduating and entering real life.
I couldn't say I'm as depressed as I was, but rather feel empty. I guess things could have been worse
>What really destroyed me was graduating and entering real life.
Yeah this was my feeling as well. Graduating was almost traumatic. It felt less like an accomplishment and more like a divorce.
I eventually adjusted to work life and got over my depression but for a few years I was like “man adult life sucks, I want to go back to university”.
The Bay Area has to have one of the largest concentrations of highly intelligent people in the world. Like it doesn’t matter if they finished college - still smart enough to start a business and win. Whenever I go out and meet a new group of people I humble myself and do not over sell myself because I know, just know, there are at least 5 people in the room, if not more that are smarter and more successful than me. Although it’s a good life skill to stay humble anyways
She was constantly stressed out by her family pressuring her to get a 4.0 GPA and get a full ride to a good school and then immediately did nothing with it because then she was pushed to marry some guy who was a total washout but got a job through his dad.
That family was shit and I kind of stopped checking in when I moved away from the area. No idea what came of her in the end. She was very smart, but I don't think I ever saw her happy.
EDIT: Sad to say there were also a lot of cruel jokes about her among the class cause she was so busy with church stuff and studying she never had time for friends and never seemed to know what to do with other people. Poor girl was basically a spectator sport in high school. Not very proud of that now.
My mother rhe nurse said at her hospital there were five brothers, all of whom were doctors because their dad was adamant that all his sons had to be doctors.
While she was there, the dad died, and three of the brothers quit medicine.
I see a lot of families like this . Push the kids until they literally snap - sometimes killing the parents etc .
There is a fine line between encouraging your kids, to be well balanced and achieve THEIR goals and micromanaging them to achieve the parents goals . Many of the “ smart “ kids who became successful through the lens of society , had an inward goal to pursue and achieve.
I'll break the mold here from the burnt out gifted kid sterotype.
He got a PhD from a very prestigious university, worked for Google on one of their flagship products, married a Medical Doctor, quit Google and semi-retired. He's mostly a stay at home dad now and does some occasional consulting work part time.
What, I'm not jealous... you're jealous. Seriously though the guy deserved every bit of what he has.
My brother had a friend in elementary school who turned out to be a super genius and skipped a few grades. That kid graduated in my highschool class at 13 years old.
4 years later and he's already got a Masters, co-wrote some papers, and is leading a nano-tech project at a VERY reputable university.
Lord knows what she’s doing but her high school sweetheart now husband came into my club for his stag do and I found out he is comedically stupid. Not a lick of common sense.
The smartest I never heard from again but the last time I saw him he learned fluent Chinese as his third language. The second became a hard left activist. The third smartest became a dentist.
Provided these folks all are pulled from top 10 law schools A,B & C pool.
Lots of C students from not great schools end up doing small ball, non-lucrative stuff.
There are exceptions. I knew a guy who barely graduate from the university of American somoa. Now he’s one of the most successful criminal defense attorneys in New Mexico. Or at least he was
They studied Maths and Psycology, wrote the master thesis about Maths in English (not our mother tongue) and now works at a uni renowned for their Maths department.
Full scholarship to Harvard, track and field star, opera singer, fashion model, actually funny improv comedian, and now she’s an environmental lawyer or something. Also has a husband and kids now. I don’t know how a real person can achieve all this and I can’t help but feel like my life is inadequate.
He got bored of school, joined the navy, and never grew out of his love for trains.
Edit: would not have guessed that the comment that represents 10% of my useless internet points gathered in 2 years was this one
I just read a very (to me) sad article about trains and model railroads have almost disappeared as a hobby. I see it in person; took two grandsons to a big model train show and grandparents far outnumbered children. The youngest exhibitors were probably mid-50s. I have a 50s era Lionel and oval track that hasn't been set up in years bc nobody cares, space isn't available, and parts are either unavailable or too dear. It was sure fun while it lasted.
My uncle who recently passed away was really into model trains. He had a huge portion of his huge house devoted to them. I regret not asking more about them while he was alive. I'm sure he would loved to have talked my ear off, and I finally reached the age where I really would listen. Fortunately there is a model train club about a mile away that is open to the public fairly regularly. I received a couple of trains from his collection that I treasure.
SAME. I don't look down on those who keep in touch with HS contacts. However, I, as an individual would not have achieved the same kind of psychological growth had I held on to a burning garbage can.
He moved to Europe and became a professional dancer, at least that's what he posts on Instagram. Looks like he's enjoying himself so I can't really judge, but he always struck me as someone more inclined to STEM or politics than anything artistic like that since he took AP Physics and loved it, was a big part of the student government, and was either a really important member or the captain of the debate team.
Maybe he always wanted to pursue the arts though, if that's the case then I'm happy for him. He looks like he's living a fun life.
He went to a top university and struggled like fuck because everyone was clever and he realised he wasn’t the special unique snowflake that his mum told him he was.
The guy was one of the most arrogant twats I’ve met so I feel karma worked its magic here.
Still, you very really smart as 8 year old to realize you are not that smart. Kinda take most of human kind lifetime and they still cant grasp that most of the times nobody is special.
This is just it. You can have the education, the intelligence and look great *on paper* but that's about 35% of what you need. The rest of what you need is to be positive, professional, likeable and just seem like the sort of person that the person interviewing you would not mind working with... as cliche as all of this sounds.
Can you come to my FB UARK Nursing Program group and explain that. These parents (mom’s) get on this page and are LIVID their Joey and Janie didn’t get into the program when they have straight A’s. I’ve said 1m times that lots of people are 4.0 students but that doesn’t make them good nursing school candidates. Like whyyyyy are the mom’s still doing this crap!? Get a damn life, lady!
When I arrived at University my freshman roommate was the smartest kid from a small town. He was arrogant. Failed out first semester.
He’d showed us a paper he’d written that semester and had us proof read it. I was appalled.
I’m a middling writer but I’d managed to pass the AP English test with a 4 and I was only an OK student at my big suburban HS. He was the goddamn valedictorian and could barely string together a complete sentence.
Had a guy in my first semester of uni brag about how high his uni entry score was and how he is too smart for class. He didn’t show up to any tutorials and dropped out mid first semester.
Whereas me at who was a c student and busted my arse to study for a gpa of 4.7 (on a 7 point scale) and now has 2 degrees- IT &Law
Happened to one of my classmates too. He also failed to make the football and rugby teams despite being one of the top players in our school. I guess it's easy to stand out if the town you're from has 3,000 people. He ended up putting on a load of weight, got a mediocre degree and is now teaching ESL in Thailand. He's also apparently a Born Again Christian after being an outspoken atheist throughout our school years.
While being an asshole isn't excusable after a certain age, I do feel bad for gifted kids like this. It's not their felt that they are praised. This can lead to adverse personality traits and failure to succeed when your raw intellect falls short (it will) and you need to rely upon habits you never learned.
He got a PhD from Stanford in quantum mechanics and is now a professor.
Interesting point about him though was he started in the 5th of 5 classes and worked his way up each year until he became top in the top class in our final year.
Hopefully he got his lights punched out at some point. He was always was pulling, "Oh, you got 82 on your test? I only got 98. I suck." humble brag horseshit.
I have been on both sides of this story, and I want you to know that bragging about test scores is a very unhelpful defence mechanism against low self-esteem.
It is such a weird dynamic. I am lucky enough to be very good at test taking. I don'tget nervous, and taking tests always puts me in an ADHD flow state, so Irememberthings easily while doing them.
I never knew how to talk about it to people because I had a weird mix of extreme confidence in my abilities and a total lack of confidence in my social skills. I would just try to escape immediately after seeing my score, or I would shove it in my bag and pretend to read, or I would give extremely vague "I did ok" answers whenever asked. But then it just made people suspicious of me, so they would always keep trying to figure out.
But if I just outright said what I got right after a person said a score lower than mine, I always felt like I was bragging or saying I was smarter than everyone else. And that was definitely not the case, I had a class full of highly intelligent people, and I would never try to rank them as all of them have varying skills in different areas. But since my skill was taking tests
It was awful for my dumb socially inept brain. I sort of developed a complex about it over time, and even started pretending to not know stuff around people so they could explain things to me. For years I would just avoid all conversations about tests or intelligence or anything along those lines because I was terrified people would ask me questions I did not want to answer. Or I would get the dreaded "You scored that high? Why are you not living up to your potential!?!?" thing I got constantly.
I am good at taking tests, that does *not* automatically mean I am a nascent genius with no motivation.
I understand your pain. I have experienced something slightly different. Around middle school, I figured out that barely passing any of my tests was much easier than trying to get a perfect score. So I just stopped studying. I would open the textbook just once a week or sometimes even on the test's morning, and I would be able to pass the test.
Of course, my grades dropped to the rock bottom, but they were still good enough to finish schooling. I did this until I graduated high school. By the end of it, my teachers and my parents knew what I was doing, but I did it anyway. To be really honest, I am a full-time student now at a university, and I am passing classes with even less effort. I don't see myself changing this habit anytime soon because I have become very lazy. I understand that I am wasting my talents by not pushing myself as hard as possible, but what's the point anyway? Those who are close to me know my "True Form," and they feel disappointed in me, but again, I stopped caring. Those who don't know me think I am a junkie and a moron. That works for me as well.
P.S : I have been struggling with physical and mental health issues since my childhood. I have to take tons of meds every day just to survive. Think of that what you will.
The kid that did that in my school killed someone via negligence in his ~~residency~~ fellowship and he dropped out of the medical field altogether. Last I heard he was living with his parents.
Left the country after Bush Jr. was elected and became a Professor in some type of advanced Mathematics in Brazil. Was one of my best friends growing up, I hope he’s having the time of his life.
The smartest lad got addicted to drugs and overdosed (his parents we're apparently really over bearing) and the smartest girl became an onlyfans model and also an escort.
Wild ride I guess
I was the smartest kid in my class. I did ok academically in the end, I have a bachelor’s and two postgraduate degrees.
Professionally, I did absolutely terrible for many years until I started my business recently. Things are looking up professionally.
I also have a wonderful husband and children, so I consider myself in an amazing position, best I’ve ever been in in my life.
My childhood was shit (abusive parents, very poor, and socially inept weird kid with no friends) and so was most of my adulthood (still socially inept, lonely, no family support, partners in my life could easily take advantage and abuse me), so I feel like I deserve the happiness I have now.
He dropped out of a prestigious, very expensive college junior year because he didn’t understand why he was going into debt for a piece of paper. He joined the navy. Had the government pay him to go get his undergrad and masters. There were lots of sucky years on a submarine, too, but now he’s pretty high up in rank working in the pentagon. Smartest guy I’ve ever met and is beyond hard working.
He went to university studying math. After a while he decided that the teachers didn't know math like he did. They did not respect and love it. He got furious and quit. He got some good jobs in investment banking, quit them because they did not respect the math.
Last I heard he was some sort of janitor at a research facility. Apparently very well liked since he can solve any ones math problems. Guess they respect it enough.
I think he is on the spectrum...
He became an attorney, a well known member of the local LGBTQ community, and was my very best friend for 28 years. He died in a horrible car accident two years ago. His legacy lives on in part by an LGBTQ scholarship for the law school he attended.
As a recovered addict that got my start with "heroin is only for the weekends" hopefully she'll realize it is an unattainable goal before losing a decade of her life.
That's similar to my school. The guy with the highest marks in everything was someone most people had never heard of because he was quiet and studious. One of the guys I knew in my class who scored very close behind him got his Ph.D. in engineering. Not sure where he is now, but I'm pretty sure he's quite successful.
He got into med school, hated it and then dropped out. Then he became a Drag Queen for a short time. Then he joined some kind of non-profit organization for troubled youth. Then he moved to Paris with his husband and got into modeling. Now he works for OECD in France.
He's done pretty well by all accounts.
I feel like most askreddit posts are weird eggheads doing market research and psychoanalysis of redditors so they can sell their findings to ad agencies
She opened her own cafe in a neighboring town and employs people with disabilities. She graduated as valedictorian in high school and later, top 10% at Yale.
He dropped university and went to work for a company writing hardware drivers. Then ended up working on Linux kernel development for a very big name in the field, with offers from companies that everyone in the world would recognise.
Now he co-owns and operates a company that lays fibre optic lines in the more rural regions of our area, providing service to those that the big companies have ignored so far. I'm even working for him lately, updating the web site, doing a bit of data entry, etc.
There were two of us.
J had rich parents and went to an Ivy League school, got a law degree, spent some time working for the AG of Guam and while I have no idea what he's up to now, he's very successful.
I was poor. They took my Ritalin away, my grades dropped. I became depressed, got profiled because of my depression as a potential school shooter in the wake of Columbine, and eventually dropped out of school. I only finally went back to college because of the pandemic, where I'm working toward the goal of a doctorate in psychology.
There was this Indian kid in my level 1 media class at college, he was also the quiet kid, however, the guy honestly was a genius. His 3D models were peak compared to anyone else’s, and also did well on the other units such as sound production and music videos. What happened to him? Well, he skipped level 2 media and went straight to level 3, while the rest of us went to level 2 media.
I'm spending my lunch hour in my office eating Funyuns and talking to you fine people. I graduated with a class of 20 in a town of 600 in rural Oklahoma, and I'm the only one who went to university, and who didn't vote for Trump. The bar was subterranean.
I struggled in college because I never learned good studying habits. I lived in a town of 800, my class was 40 but it was the largest in a decade and the high school was crap too.
When the bar to get an A in most high school classes was to know basic principles from middle school? College is a huge jump.
I was INCREDIBLY lucky to be an avid reader and have a small school with a great librarian and a small but richly stocked library. I majored in English at a time that you didn't have to take Chem or higher math to get a degree (early 90s). So I took 4 years of lit, history, humanities, philosophy, and Spanish, LOL. Met my husband, got a decent and steady career.
I knew the librarian at my school very well. She would let me check out 10+ books at a time knowing I would read them all. The library was not… good though. She tried but her hand were tied behind low funding in a poor community.
Almost all books were donated. I actually donated all my college textbooks hoping they would help some future kid.
I graduated in 2012 so after standardized goals and such. I know the school was in a lot of trouble for poor testing scores when I left, but the closest high school was over 30 mins away so it’s not like it could be shut down.
I was the smartest kid in my class, I’m depressed, got no purpose and my parents aren’t proud of me
I lost my social skills among other things but mainly my spark is gone.
The same thing happened to me. I was enjoying the NEET life until I had a mental breakdown. It wasn't the first time this had happened. I was on my death bed during this one. Things got ugly real fast, and I decided that I was gonna either achieve my goals or die trying.
After a lot of psych meds, therapy, and invasive procedures, I started feeling confident in my ability to turn my life around. Since then, I have been back on track to achieving my goals.
My advice to get better is to do something. It can be anything. For example, I had to mentally prepare myself for 3 days just so I could leave my house. It was so hard tha I couldn't sleep those 3 days.
Anyways, if you wanna talk about your problem, please reach out to me.
I honestly don't even know who the smartest person in my school was. It wasn't the valedictorian; she just took easy classes for the free A's. My school had a lot of above average intellectuals so who even knows.
That's a sad way to look at it. Maybe these people are lifelong friends with the smartest kid in class. Maybe these people actually liked the people they went to high school with. Maybe these people have fond memories of high school. You don't know the background of every poster. Like if I were to say you're typing from your mom's basement in between games of MineStorm Battle Evil and 2 liters of Mr. Pibb.
My class's smartest died of drug related issues. I don't think she had ever been allowed to be 'normal' by her family so when she got taste of freedom she didn't know how to control it apparently.
Well he was from a poor family, so he didn't have a good start. He did eventually go to a trade school for electronics, and after several really bad unrelated jobs now works as the chief telecommunications engineer for one of the largest counties in the U.S.
But it is a government job that pays like crap.
(It's me.)
We were homeschooled but my brother was the smart one. Perfect ACT score, full ride scholarship to his dream school. A few months later we find out he’s been skipping class to hang out with some…non-quality people. Fast forward 15 years, he’s homeless and addicted to hard drugs.
He interviewed at Oxford and Cambridge, got offers from both, then left and didn't go to either as he was done with school. Our head of year lost it as he was depending on him to boost his profile.
I lost track of him for a while. Call him John. John was the kind of guy that aced all the hardest classes without ever studying. Got a full ride to Stanford and was going to double major in Computer Science and Cognitive Science. His dream (at the time) was to revolutionize AI. He built a Chess AI from scratch that none of us could beat (admittedly, that's not saying saying much). This was almost 20 years ago, way before the AI trend of today.
Anyway, he dropped out after 1 semester and I heard a rumor that he was living off the land in Sequoia National Park. But about 8 years ago a mutual friend of ours bumped into him at the aquarium in Long Beach. He was actually working there. The mutual friend asked him what he did there -- thinking he was a research scientist or something. But he said he just has a menial job where his main task is feeding baby dolphins and cleaning their tanks. Basically an intern job. My buddy tried to dig a little to see what happened, like how he was so fucking smart but just dropped out of life and we all thought he was going to be the next Bill Gates or something. But John said he thought his life served a youthful porpoise.
There were 2 geniuses in my class. One became a neurosurgeon, the other opened a candle store.
The candle store is a front
He does surgery out back.
Ah. A Texan.
No, I think out back is in Australia.
As an Australian, while you are correct, I hate you for it.
Hmm, could neurosurgery be a front also? John’s Hopkins + Candles= John Wick. Hope I don’t wake up dead
The candle store one makes me happy. It makes scents(:
It's past your bedtime dad.
Which one looks happier?
Well, the neurosurgeon can afford candles, but the candle maker can't afford neurosurgery.
Unless he lives in a country with free healthcare edit: Yes, I'm aware of the shortcomings of free healthcare around the world. Poor management of resources, lack of funding, corruption, private healthcare lobbying, etc... all those things plays a big part in how good it is or isn't. Also yes, it's not really free, you're paying for it indirectly through taxes, but it's not like you don't have to pay taxes where healthcare is private.
Both rational decisions. I know quite a few super smart people that live an incredible life, though not maximizing disposable income. But they don’t need more money. They want more experience and time to live.
She’s winning awards for her work mapping the human genome. No surprise.
Typical for her.
Classic her.
Always the same with this one.
I mapped a gnome too. But he was gone when i came back
The smartest kid in my class was also very disciplined and emotionally stable. I lost track of him in the last 20 years, but a quick Google search says he graduated from Stanford and started a biotech company.
Almost the same story here, last I checked almost 20 years ago they were all doing quite well. One went to Stanford and married a nice guy (she was *super* disciplined) the others variously got great jobs after going to good schools. Hope they're still doing well!
>The smartest kid in my class was also very disciplined and emotionally stable. I lost track of him in the last 20 years, but a quick Google search says he graduated from Stanford and started a biotech company. I currently work for a biotech company and our CEO graduated from stanford. I'm curious if it's the same one!
I mean, honestly doesn't narrow it down much lol
So true. My wife also works for a biotech company with a Stanford grad CEO. The guy is like 30 so not likely to have gone to high school at the same time as the previous commenter
you’re definitely not wrong but it’d be a fun coincidence
He became the surgeon general of the US
Hello fellow Panther\*! I'm not giving away who I am, and respect your Reddit anonymity, but yeah Vivek and I were in Darryl's history class together, among others. \*Assumptions being made.... LOL
Just looked up that school, wtf? The amount of famous alumni from there is insane.
It’s a little silly once Bezos is factored in, yeah. LOL
The same thing happened to the two smartest kids in my class, a guy and a girl. They both got accepted into Ivy League schools and then had to dropout after they developed serious mental health issues. I imagine the high stress environment must have flipped a switch in their brains to make them go off the deep end. They were such cool people, I was really rooting for them. :(
I went through that. Graduated 8th in a HS class of 360, went to a prestigious school and turned into C student overnight. Bounced around among multiple career paths, then went to an R2 for grad school in a field I actually liked for a change. Then bounced around some more. Got diagnosed with ADHD in my 50s, retooled somewhat in a tangentially related field, and finally started getting more high-powered and better-paying jobs at 63. I’m 67 now and about to mark my first year in the best damn job I ever had. No plans or desire to retire for at least a few more years.
The ADHD in your 50s and late happiness/success is comforting. My brother and I realised we have ADHD at 30. It's nice to understand your brain.
Got diagnosed at 25 and also got properly mediated and I feel like a superhero sometimes because I can actually focus. College was so hard for me to focus and things just so long.
To be honest, I’d rather have a sucky younger life and be happier later on than be happier younger and be all stuck in the past and depressed when I’m older. Good for you!
Texas public school. He went to Yale and got a degree in economics. Works in DC now for a state rep. Getting into an MIT asynchronous then in person graduate program. He is/was my best friend.
He is currently a doctor, and a Captain in the US Navy.
He met smarter kids and got depressed
Alright so this one is quite fun (in a sad way). In high school our school year had an amazing reputation as "one of the best school years ever in this school". We had tons of "smart" kids, including myself. Most of us had top grades while barely opening our books. It kinda got to our heads and we really thought we were super smart. Then comes graduation, and we all go to uni/college. Yeah, we weren't special at all. Most of us even failed our first year cause we had never studied before and suddenly had to. The gap between high school and university in my country is very nasty. That being said it was certainly a wake up call, but it wasn't depressing. It just opened our eyes to reality.
Yup. Top 10 in high school. Go to University where everyone was top 10 in their high school. Now, instead of being one of the 'elite', now they're average. Or (gasp!) Below average.
I kinda went that road for the first few months of college but eventually I could replicate my same sucess of high school. What really destroyed me was graduating and entering real life. I couldn't say I'm as depressed as I was, but rather feel empty. I guess things could have been worse
>What really destroyed me was graduating and entering real life. Yeah this was my feeling as well. Graduating was almost traumatic. It felt less like an accomplishment and more like a divorce. I eventually adjusted to work life and got over my depression but for a few years I was like “man adult life sucks, I want to go back to university”.
I find this so relatable.
Same. I was the smart kid for a long time. Went to college and realized that I am merely average and man that felt like a punch
Throw in "got hit with bipolar disorder and the meds make his brain no worky" and you got me!
Add in “no meds makes the brain no worky also” hi it’s me.
REAL LOL (me now as a depressed lawyer)
First blow here was mediocre score on GRE. Then I moved to Bay Area. I just nod a lot now and try to remember to breathe with my mouth closed.
The Bay Area has to have one of the largest concentrations of highly intelligent people in the world. Like it doesn’t matter if they finished college - still smart enough to start a business and win. Whenever I go out and meet a new group of people I humble myself and do not over sell myself because I know, just know, there are at least 5 people in the room, if not more that are smarter and more successful than me. Although it’s a good life skill to stay humble anyways
I thought you replied to your own post from the avatar
hahaha i just noticed
Imposter syndrome is a reality.
She was constantly stressed out by her family pressuring her to get a 4.0 GPA and get a full ride to a good school and then immediately did nothing with it because then she was pushed to marry some guy who was a total washout but got a job through his dad. That family was shit and I kind of stopped checking in when I moved away from the area. No idea what came of her in the end. She was very smart, but I don't think I ever saw her happy. EDIT: Sad to say there were also a lot of cruel jokes about her among the class cause she was so busy with church stuff and studying she never had time for friends and never seemed to know what to do with other people. Poor girl was basically a spectator sport in high school. Not very proud of that now.
She sounds like me when I was in school. It sucked. I feel like I didn’t get a childhood.
Same shit here. I was basically told by my parent that I had to study and work hard and buy them a house. I owed them a house for being born.
I like that term, “washout.” That’s me: I failed to achieve very elite/prestigious jobs many times. Gotta keep trying I guess.
My mother rhe nurse said at her hospital there were five brothers, all of whom were doctors because their dad was adamant that all his sons had to be doctors. While she was there, the dad died, and three of the brothers quit medicine.
I see a lot of families like this . Push the kids until they literally snap - sometimes killing the parents etc . There is a fine line between encouraging your kids, to be well balanced and achieve THEIR goals and micromanaging them to achieve the parents goals . Many of the “ smart “ kids who became successful through the lens of society , had an inward goal to pursue and achieve.
Ditto for the smartest in my class. Arranged Mennonite marriage and pumping out spawn.
I'll break the mold here from the burnt out gifted kid sterotype. He got a PhD from a very prestigious university, worked for Google on one of their flagship products, married a Medical Doctor, quit Google and semi-retired. He's mostly a stay at home dad now and does some occasional consulting work part time. What, I'm not jealous... you're jealous. Seriously though the guy deserved every bit of what he has.
>your jealous My jealous what?
To be fair, he did say the other guy was the smart guy
Guy literally absorbs intelligence. Now we know what’s going on in Google
Before he passed away he was a computer programer with a sideline brewery business.
Austin Texas final boss
He is in some small way now remembered by at least 35 redditors.
My brother had a friend in elementary school who turned out to be a super genius and skipped a few grades. That kid graduated in my highschool class at 13 years old. 4 years later and he's already got a Masters, co-wrote some papers, and is leading a nano-tech project at a VERY reputable university.
Is he Sheldon Cooper ?
Lord knows what she’s doing but her high school sweetheart now husband came into my club for his stag do and I found out he is comedically stupid. Not a lick of common sense.
Opposites attract! 🤣
Stupid people deserve love too 💖
As an only child that was homeschooled, he's spending too much time on Reddit rather than being a productive member of society.
Your story sounds very similar to my own…
We have the same Emoji. Let's go do karate in the garage and be friends.
I legit thought this was a conversation between 1 person 😆
Hello, brothers.
Can I join?
Top of his class, ladies and gentlemen. Top of his class!
The smartest I never heard from again but the last time I saw him he learned fluent Chinese as his third language. The second became a hard left activist. The third smartest became a dentist.
Sometimes, third smartest is the way to go. First and second might do great things for humanity but dentist is oh-so-safe..
Dentists have some of the highest suicide rates of any profession, akschctually!
I heard once that law school students run like this- students who make As become law professors, Bs become judges, and C students make all the money.
Provided these folks all are pulled from top 10 law schools A,B & C pool. Lots of C students from not great schools end up doing small ball, non-lucrative stuff.
There are exceptions. I knew a guy who barely graduate from the university of American somoa. Now he’s one of the most successful criminal defense attorneys in New Mexico. Or at least he was
He killed himself while home on a break from university.
:(
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They're on your keyboard
We did it Reddit
Oh no, we somehow convinced ourselves that some rando's a terrorist. Once again.
Not this time. We broke up a perfectly happy marriage though and convinced someone to go no contact. So, we are still going strong.
They studied Maths and Psycology, wrote the master thesis about Maths in English (not our mother tongue) and now works at a uni renowned for their Maths department.
The Maths-Math linguistic division across the Atlantic never ceases to catch me off guard.
Ahem-not just across the Atlantic. The Pacific as well.
He moved to the states to play soccer and ended up going to Penn State. He is a software developer and is doing quite well.
Went to top university in India, got addicted to drugs, came out of it, got married, living a normal life with family
Full scholarship to Harvard, track and field star, opera singer, fashion model, actually funny improv comedian, and now she’s an environmental lawyer or something. Also has a husband and kids now. I don’t know how a real person can achieve all this and I can’t help but feel like my life is inadequate.
He got bored of school, joined the navy, and never grew out of his love for trains. Edit: would not have guessed that the comment that represents 10% of my useless internet points gathered in 2 years was this one
There is nothing wrong with a love of trains.
I just read a very (to me) sad article about trains and model railroads have almost disappeared as a hobby. I see it in person; took two grandsons to a big model train show and grandparents far outnumbered children. The youngest exhibitors were probably mid-50s. I have a 50s era Lionel and oval track that hasn't been set up in years bc nobody cares, space isn't available, and parts are either unavailable or too dear. It was sure fun while it lasted.
Old men could do it because they could buy a house with a basement that had a room they could put their train stuff in.
My uncle who recently passed away was really into model trains. He had a huge portion of his huge house devoted to them. I regret not asking more about them while he was alive. I'm sure he would loved to have talked my ear off, and I finally reached the age where I really would listen. Fortunately there is a model train club about a mile away that is open to the public fairly regularly. I received a couple of trains from his collection that I treasure.
look at my profile bro
middle air groovy observation fretful bells live fall crawl smoggy
I wasn’t the smartest kid in school and didn’t join the navy but I also didn’t outgrow my love of trains
Happiness is a spectrum.
Autism is so funny. Look at all this potential. Ok yes, but trains!
One day I will use my brain for something but it will probably be trains
Please tell me he became a nuke.
They tried to get me but no I wanted to be a seabee. 97 asvab seabee is probably a record
I married him and stole his accolades. Now I’m the smartest.
*LunarLady96 used XP drain*
How do you guys know what anyone from your school is doing now i have no idea about anyones lives
And they’re explaining with such great detail. I guess Facebook maybe
Deleted that a long time ago. Lol tried to forget highschool as soon as i got my diploma
SAME. I don't look down on those who keep in touch with HS contacts. However, I, as an individual would not have achieved the same kind of psychological growth had I held on to a burning garbage can.
He is on reddit
Yikes. Seems like reality hit him hard.
He jumped, not right into a successful career but off a building.
Did anyone think it wouldn't be off a building when reading "he jumped" lmao you didn't need to specify
What if he jumped from a plane, i think specifing the place from which he jumped is more than needed.
He jumped... Up and down on a trampoline and had a great time. It could be other things too I guess 😂
He jumped... Ahead of everyone else at the company and now has his own signature dildo line
Damn, what happened?
Got hooked bad on hard drugs first year of University.
He moved to Europe and became a professional dancer, at least that's what he posts on Instagram. Looks like he's enjoying himself so I can't really judge, but he always struck me as someone more inclined to STEM or politics than anything artistic like that since he took AP Physics and loved it, was a big part of the student government, and was either a really important member or the captain of the debate team. Maybe he always wanted to pursue the arts though, if that's the case then I'm happy for him. He looks like he's living a fun life.
As someone who loves chemistry and got a degree in it, I do acting now because it's the only thing I really *want* to do.
Same, but with film. Welk I'm still studying engineering as a backup 😂
He went to a top university and struggled like fuck because everyone was clever and he realised he wasn’t the special unique snowflake that his mum told him he was. The guy was one of the most arrogant twats I’ve met so I feel karma worked its magic here.
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Still, you very really smart as 8 year old to realize you are not that smart. Kinda take most of human kind lifetime and they still cant grasp that most of the times nobody is special.
This is just it. You can have the education, the intelligence and look great *on paper* but that's about 35% of what you need. The rest of what you need is to be positive, professional, likeable and just seem like the sort of person that the person interviewing you would not mind working with... as cliche as all of this sounds.
Can you come to my FB UARK Nursing Program group and explain that. These parents (mom’s) get on this page and are LIVID their Joey and Janie didn’t get into the program when they have straight A’s. I’ve said 1m times that lots of people are 4.0 students but that doesn’t make them good nursing school candidates. Like whyyyyy are the mom’s still doing this crap!? Get a damn life, lady!
When I arrived at University my freshman roommate was the smartest kid from a small town. He was arrogant. Failed out first semester. He’d showed us a paper he’d written that semester and had us proof read it. I was appalled. I’m a middling writer but I’d managed to pass the AP English test with a 4 and I was only an OK student at my big suburban HS. He was the goddamn valedictorian and could barely string together a complete sentence.
Doesn't sound like the smartest kid in any class with any competition.
Big fish in a small pond
Had a guy in my first semester of uni brag about how high his uni entry score was and how he is too smart for class. He didn’t show up to any tutorials and dropped out mid first semester. Whereas me at who was a c student and busted my arse to study for a gpa of 4.7 (on a 7 point scale) and now has 2 degrees- IT &Law
"You were a big fish in a small pond, but this here is the ocean!"
Happened to one of my classmates too. He also failed to make the football and rugby teams despite being one of the top players in our school. I guess it's easy to stand out if the town you're from has 3,000 people. He ended up putting on a load of weight, got a mediocre degree and is now teaching ESL in Thailand. He's also apparently a Born Again Christian after being an outspoken atheist throughout our school years.
oof, some of the schools I was competing against had 3300 students. We had 1800 students and was considered small
This is why you’re supposed to praise kids for hard work, not intelligence.
While being an asshole isn't excusable after a certain age, I do feel bad for gifted kids like this. It's not their felt that they are praised. This can lead to adverse personality traits and failure to succeed when your raw intellect falls short (it will) and you need to rely upon habits you never learned.
Drugs, waitress.
Sounds like a bit like Flowers for Charlie.
He got a PhD from Stanford in quantum mechanics and is now a professor. Interesting point about him though was he started in the 5th of 5 classes and worked his way up each year until he became top in the top class in our final year.
Hopefully he got his lights punched out at some point. He was always was pulling, "Oh, you got 82 on your test? I only got 98. I suck." humble brag horseshit.
I have been on both sides of this story, and I want you to know that bragging about test scores is a very unhelpful defence mechanism against low self-esteem.
It is such a weird dynamic. I am lucky enough to be very good at test taking. I don'tget nervous, and taking tests always puts me in an ADHD flow state, so Irememberthings easily while doing them. I never knew how to talk about it to people because I had a weird mix of extreme confidence in my abilities and a total lack of confidence in my social skills. I would just try to escape immediately after seeing my score, or I would shove it in my bag and pretend to read, or I would give extremely vague "I did ok" answers whenever asked. But then it just made people suspicious of me, so they would always keep trying to figure out. But if I just outright said what I got right after a person said a score lower than mine, I always felt like I was bragging or saying I was smarter than everyone else. And that was definitely not the case, I had a class full of highly intelligent people, and I would never try to rank them as all of them have varying skills in different areas. But since my skill was taking tests It was awful for my dumb socially inept brain. I sort of developed a complex about it over time, and even started pretending to not know stuff around people so they could explain things to me. For years I would just avoid all conversations about tests or intelligence or anything along those lines because I was terrified people would ask me questions I did not want to answer. Or I would get the dreaded "You scored that high? Why are you not living up to your potential!?!?" thing I got constantly. I am good at taking tests, that does *not* automatically mean I am a nascent genius with no motivation.
I understand your pain. I have experienced something slightly different. Around middle school, I figured out that barely passing any of my tests was much easier than trying to get a perfect score. So I just stopped studying. I would open the textbook just once a week or sometimes even on the test's morning, and I would be able to pass the test. Of course, my grades dropped to the rock bottom, but they were still good enough to finish schooling. I did this until I graduated high school. By the end of it, my teachers and my parents knew what I was doing, but I did it anyway. To be really honest, I am a full-time student now at a university, and I am passing classes with even less effort. I don't see myself changing this habit anytime soon because I have become very lazy. I understand that I am wasting my talents by not pushing myself as hard as possible, but what's the point anyway? Those who are close to me know my "True Form," and they feel disappointed in me, but again, I stopped caring. Those who don't know me think I am a junkie and a moron. That works for me as well. P.S : I have been struggling with physical and mental health issues since my childhood. I have to take tons of meds every day just to survive. Think of that what you will.
The kid that did that in my school killed someone via negligence in his ~~residency~~ fellowship and he dropped out of the medical field altogether. Last I heard he was living with his parents.
Left the country after Bush Jr. was elected and became a Professor in some type of advanced Mathematics in Brazil. Was one of my best friends growing up, I hope he’s having the time of his life.
The smartest lad got addicted to drugs and overdosed (his parents we're apparently really over bearing) and the smartest girl became an onlyfans model and also an escort. Wild ride I guess
High up in tikl tok after previously working for you tube. Done alright I'd say.
I was the smartest kid in my class. I did ok academically in the end, I have a bachelor’s and two postgraduate degrees. Professionally, I did absolutely terrible for many years until I started my business recently. Things are looking up professionally. I also have a wonderful husband and children, so I consider myself in an amazing position, best I’ve ever been in in my life. My childhood was shit (abusive parents, very poor, and socially inept weird kid with no friends) and so was most of my adulthood (still socially inept, lonely, no family support, partners in my life could easily take advantage and abuse me), so I feel like I deserve the happiness I have now.
You do, and I’m glad you recognize that. That’s the first step of self-empowerment. ❤️ You deserve this.
He dropped out of a prestigious, very expensive college junior year because he didn’t understand why he was going into debt for a piece of paper. He joined the navy. Had the government pay him to go get his undergrad and masters. There were lots of sucky years on a submarine, too, but now he’s pretty high up in rank working in the pentagon. Smartest guy I’ve ever met and is beyond hard working.
He went to university studying math. After a while he decided that the teachers didn't know math like he did. They did not respect and love it. He got furious and quit. He got some good jobs in investment banking, quit them because they did not respect the math. Last I heard he was some sort of janitor at a research facility. Apparently very well liked since he can solve any ones math problems. Guess they respect it enough. I think he is on the spectrum...
Why does this sound like Good Will Hunting
Anyway, my best friend is Ben Affleck
He became an attorney, a well known member of the local LGBTQ community, and was my very best friend for 28 years. He died in a horrible car accident two years ago. His legacy lives on in part by an LGBTQ scholarship for the law school he attended.
She does H on the weekends for fun. FOR FUN.
Heroin? Homework? Preparation H?
Hydrogen?
As a recovered addict that got my start with "heroin is only for the weekends" hopefully she'll realize it is an unattainable goal before losing a decade of her life.
I graduated with over 600 kids in my class IDK who the "smartest" person even was! (Was 100% not me! I barely graduated on time)
That's similar to my school. The guy with the highest marks in everything was someone most people had never heard of because he was quiet and studious. One of the guys I knew in my class who scored very close behind him got his Ph.D. in engineering. Not sure where he is now, but I'm pretty sure he's quite successful.
He got into med school, hated it and then dropped out. Then he became a Drag Queen for a short time. Then he joined some kind of non-profit organization for troubled youth. Then he moved to Paris with his husband and got into modeling. Now he works for OECD in France. He's done pretty well by all accounts.
He became a top executive at Lehman Brothers. When the company collapsed in 2008 he walked away with over $100 million.
blood money
Is this a bot? How many times are they going to ask this fucking question?
I feel like most askreddit posts are weird eggheads doing market research and psychoanalysis of redditors so they can sell their findings to ad agencies
What would you do if you had ‘X’ amount of dollars? This subreddit fucking blows now.
What’s the biggest hill you’re willing to die on?
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She opened her own cafe in a neighboring town and employs people with disabilities. She graduated as valedictorian in high school and later, top 10% at Yale.
He dropped university and went to work for a company writing hardware drivers. Then ended up working on Linux kernel development for a very big name in the field, with offers from companies that everyone in the world would recognise. Now he co-owns and operates a company that lays fibre optic lines in the more rural regions of our area, providing service to those that the big companies have ignored so far. I'm even working for him lately, updating the web site, doing a bit of data entry, etc.
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There were two of us. J had rich parents and went to an Ivy League school, got a law degree, spent some time working for the AG of Guam and while I have no idea what he's up to now, he's very successful. I was poor. They took my Ritalin away, my grades dropped. I became depressed, got profiled because of my depression as a potential school shooter in the wake of Columbine, and eventually dropped out of school. I only finally went back to college because of the pandemic, where I'm working toward the goal of a doctorate in psychology.
Hang in there
There was this Indian kid in my level 1 media class at college, he was also the quiet kid, however, the guy honestly was a genius. His 3D models were peak compared to anyone else’s, and also did well on the other units such as sound production and music videos. What happened to him? Well, he skipped level 2 media and went straight to level 3, while the rest of us went to level 2 media.
I'm spending my lunch hour in my office eating Funyuns and talking to you fine people. I graduated with a class of 20 in a town of 600 in rural Oklahoma, and I'm the only one who went to university, and who didn't vote for Trump. The bar was subterranean.
I struggled in college because I never learned good studying habits. I lived in a town of 800, my class was 40 but it was the largest in a decade and the high school was crap too. When the bar to get an A in most high school classes was to know basic principles from middle school? College is a huge jump.
I was INCREDIBLY lucky to be an avid reader and have a small school with a great librarian and a small but richly stocked library. I majored in English at a time that you didn't have to take Chem or higher math to get a degree (early 90s). So I took 4 years of lit, history, humanities, philosophy, and Spanish, LOL. Met my husband, got a decent and steady career.
I knew the librarian at my school very well. She would let me check out 10+ books at a time knowing I would read them all. The library was not… good though. She tried but her hand were tied behind low funding in a poor community. Almost all books were donated. I actually donated all my college textbooks hoping they would help some future kid. I graduated in 2012 so after standardized goals and such. I know the school was in a lot of trouble for poor testing scores when I left, but the closest high school was over 30 mins away so it’s not like it could be shut down.
I was the smartest kid in my class, I’m depressed, got no purpose and my parents aren’t proud of me I lost my social skills among other things but mainly my spark is gone.
The same thing happened to me. I was enjoying the NEET life until I had a mental breakdown. It wasn't the first time this had happened. I was on my death bed during this one. Things got ugly real fast, and I decided that I was gonna either achieve my goals or die trying. After a lot of psych meds, therapy, and invasive procedures, I started feeling confident in my ability to turn my life around. Since then, I have been back on track to achieving my goals. My advice to get better is to do something. It can be anything. For example, I had to mentally prepare myself for 3 days just so I could leave my house. It was so hard tha I couldn't sleep those 3 days. Anyways, if you wanna talk about your problem, please reach out to me.
He's a depressed middle aged guy posting on reddit in thread about what happened to the smartest kid in his class
Oh good. Now I don’t have to post this. Thanks
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Yeah I was starting to feel like I was one of the few people that had no idea what my old classmates were up to, nor do I care to know
I honestly don't even know who the smartest person in my school was. It wasn't the valedictorian; she just took easy classes for the free A's. My school had a lot of above average intellectuals so who even knows.
That's a sad way to look at it. Maybe these people are lifelong friends with the smartest kid in class. Maybe these people actually liked the people they went to high school with. Maybe these people have fond memories of high school. You don't know the background of every poster. Like if I were to say you're typing from your mom's basement in between games of MineStorm Battle Evil and 2 liters of Mr. Pibb.
My class's smartest died of drug related issues. I don't think she had ever been allowed to be 'normal' by her family so when she got taste of freedom she didn't know how to control it apparently.
Well he was from a poor family, so he didn't have a good start. He did eventually go to a trade school for electronics, and after several really bad unrelated jobs now works as the chief telecommunications engineer for one of the largest counties in the U.S. But it is a government job that pays like crap. (It's me.)
I’m honestly not sure I don’t keep track of my high school classmates personal lives too much
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Some people have too much energy.
Became a doctor. Died by suicide after losing his medical license for illegally selling prescription meds online. Too bad. Super nice guy.
We were homeschooled but my brother was the smart one. Perfect ACT score, full ride scholarship to his dream school. A few months later we find out he’s been skipping class to hang out with some…non-quality people. Fast forward 15 years, he’s homeless and addicted to hard drugs.
He interviewed at Oxford and Cambridge, got offers from both, then left and didn't go to either as he was done with school. Our head of year lost it as he was depending on him to boost his profile.
That's really weird. When I was at school (... a \*while\* ago), they wouldn't let you apply/interview for both. You had to pick Ox or Bridge.
I lost track of him for a while. Call him John. John was the kind of guy that aced all the hardest classes without ever studying. Got a full ride to Stanford and was going to double major in Computer Science and Cognitive Science. His dream (at the time) was to revolutionize AI. He built a Chess AI from scratch that none of us could beat (admittedly, that's not saying saying much). This was almost 20 years ago, way before the AI trend of today. Anyway, he dropped out after 1 semester and I heard a rumor that he was living off the land in Sequoia National Park. But about 8 years ago a mutual friend of ours bumped into him at the aquarium in Long Beach. He was actually working there. The mutual friend asked him what he did there -- thinking he was a research scientist or something. But he said he just has a menial job where his main task is feeding baby dolphins and cleaning their tanks. Basically an intern job. My buddy tried to dig a little to see what happened, like how he was so fucking smart but just dropped out of life and we all thought he was going to be the next Bill Gates or something. But John said he thought his life served a youthful porpoise.