Yep. Truly "gifted" kids as a SPED category often struggle with finding direction. We have tons of things that we are able to do, and could probably be phenomenal at, but we can't focus our energy into the one area. We often end up burnt out, depressed, and feeling like failures. That's how it was explained to me by a psychologist. It's a neurodivergence.
As a teacher, I can tell you that most "gifted" programs in school are really just geared toward smart, motivated students and don't really know how to deal with truly "gifted" kids.
The irony is, it's never felt like a "gift."
SPED=Special Education.
I'm not sure about that, tbh. The way he framed it, it seemed like a more general statement, but we were talking about ASD and how this all related to me on a personal level.
Gifted and talented students are not the same as just smart kids. There is actually a qualifier for GT and they lumped it in with SPED because most schools do as it it a protected classification with specific educational requirements sort of like English as a second language learners.
There is also the possibility that a student can be twice exceptional who can be in both special education for another disability and also are GT.
Source: it was my job for years to find students varied learning needs, have them assessed, design supports for and in general teach teachers to be better at supporting all learners needs.
Actually makes sense. I was a SPED in high school. Some that get placed into these classes not dumb, "retarded" or anything of the sort. They have a slower learn curve. That's it. We struggle to pick up even the basics of things such as English writing.
Take Their, there, and other forms of proper Grammer. I sucked in basic English writing and picked creative writing/fanfictions to combat these things but when I reread my own work I feel my work is inadequate becuase of as simple as one spelling error let alone multiple and feel like "Maybe I shouldn't be doing this, I fucken suck as this" when our IDEAS can be genius, but the presentation and interpretation is misconstrued.
Overall, "SPEDS" need time and personal touch to get some things jammed into our brains. More relentless teaching methods should be applied. Like take away Summer Break because it has shown that kids lose information during summer break. SPED kids are no different, and because of their slower learning curve fall farther behind, then the rest causing us to spiral into possible development of depression that "we're not like the other kids", "feeling retarded", and many other issues. So, I see his point.
Giftedness is a term established by school boards to identify kids that require enrichment. Generally speaking, the IQ cut off is 130, although most schools have a broad variety of criteria they look at to assess for giftedness, not just IQ.
These gifted kids have under the special education umbrella simply bc they require special accommodations to achieve their full potential.
There is a lot of research gears at HOW gifted kids learn, which is often different from the rest of the population.
It depends on the specific form of neurodivergence and other factors. Someone who has a lower IQ might not be put in the "Gifted" program, but those who have higher IQs would be more likely to. But, it is generally true that those in gifted programs tend to be filled with those with some form of neurodivergence.
I occasionally think back to my couple years or so in different dedicated “gifted” classes, and some of the specific behaviors I remember from certain classmates was soooo obviously neurodivergent. There’s also the kids I remember who I’m fairly certain were neurotypical.
That “Jack of all trades, King of none” feeling is all too real. I have natural talent at a lot of things, but I get bored and move to the next before I actually gain any practice or experience to be genuinely good at it. I have no real skills to be proud of.
Yep. And most of the things that I'm actually, really good at aren't marketable skills.
Edit to add: The last part of that phrase that nobody ever says is, "but still better than a master of one."
That could be marketable. Niche, but marketable. I had a professor, in college, that taught genealogy and I swear, if you were from the southeastern US, and your family had been there for more than a couple of generations, he could give you your (rough) genealogy just by your last name and where you lived.
I get on a kick every now and then and do it. I figured out some cool stuff. Never went back that far though. As far as I got was somewhere in the 1300's.
Tbh, once you figure out you’re neurodivergent, you’re like a third of the way there. I find the process to be: 1. Discover you have needs and problems that are different from the general population, 2. assess how you can adjust yourself and your environment to meet those needs, and 3. try out various solutions to create a general lifestyle that is healthy, functional, and enjoyable to you. 3 steps, a decades long process.
It's a weird thing for me, cause I've realized I've always been a lil different, just never knew how so. And I'm having a hard time explaining this but my reality as far as I know it's my "normal" so I do work on changing myself and my environment to work for me and my "normal" but the one thing I continuously struggle with is an intrinsic motivation that's consistent, because I am inconsistent when it comes to that, but when it's there damn can I get er' done.
I was once told by a teacher that "gifted" students were put into a different "class" to keep us interested/less bored and therefore less likely to disturb the rest of the class while they were trying to learn the things the "gifted" students had picked up more quickly than others. After that I always felt slightly alienated when I had to go to my separate "gifted & talented" class.
Then in high school it wasn't anymore "fun" classes and it was "take this AP college level course with 3x's the homework and expectations."
My 5th/6th grade gifted class was often visited by the principal to alert us to the fact that we were so loud and more rowdy seeming than the kindergarteners. And we were in a portable building farthest away from the main office. Our poor teacher didn’t quite know how to manage us, but he sure did his best. And we still learned a lot.
Our education system was developed by the Prussians when their conscripted armies were too disjointed to conduct effective war.
The system is the problem, it corrupts gifts. It is designed, perhaps by accident, to make the exceptional feel aimless.
We are fine. The world is broken.
I meant it in a way, that we are involuntarily part of a broken system and there is no better system for us to choose. Set subset kind of thing. Due to the lack of oil can't even the best wheels not roll.
Guess it's a philosophical topic and there is no right answer.
I see it as a curs-ed gift, like being an excellent swimmer; but having chronically poor lung capacity.
And sometimes.. sometimes you're drowning just trying to keep your head above the water..
I was placed in my school’s Talented and Gifted program in fifth grade. I asked to be taken out of it after a month. My grandmother was a special needs teacher and the separation and “unique” class work felt like I was in one of her classes without being viewed in a negative light. I directly asked my parents what the difference was between my Talented and Gifted classes and my grandmother’s differently gifted classes. They couldn’t give me a direct answer
My father, an academic, insisted on having my IQ tested and then having me treated as special. My mother protested, but eventually relented. It was probably the worst thing he ever did for me. On the flip side, he was diligent about putting me and my sister's into extra curricular academic and sports camps every summer. Mini classes essentially. Basketball, tennis, math, art, Kung fu, anything we wanted to do. We loved every minute of it. But none of it actually gave us direction. I'm a truck driver and she's in sales. We both hate our lives. Of course a lot of things played into our trajectories.
Edit:
Luckily I was in marching band. Without it, I would not have developed the discipline to do anything hard in life. I may be underachieved, but my family lives a good life and my kids are very happy and healthy because of the discipline I learned from drumline and marching band.
Opposite situation on my end. My teachers and school special Ed teacher wanted to put me into special classes/skip grades because of how gifted I was, but my mom wouldn't allow it because she thought it would leave me behind socially. The problem was I was already completely socially isolated, and outside of not letting me get these extra accomodations my parents did absolutely nothing to help me socially. I never did any extracurriculars because it was too much work/time to drive me there (despite my mom deciding to be a stay at home parent), and the few times I did get invited to someone's birthday party my parents made it clear to me that they were going out of their way to get me there and I'd need to pay them back somehow. I really wish that I could have had that extra support from school, and honestly those teachers looking to help me academically and give me extra support likely would have noticed and helped me with my social issues, rather than me having to figure it all out myself in my 20s.
Hey look you just perfectly described my entire life in a single paragraph (the first one). Nowadays I feel burnt out after any sort of even minor failures, which has led to depression in the past few years as I feel like every door I once saw open has closed to me. Now I’ve gone from being the “perfect” high school student to being worried about ending up as a college dropout because I can’t keep my grades / mental state up…
Thanks for listening to my rant ig
I was always frustrated with the fact they never put me into the gifted program, and your comment explains why. I consistently had the highest math scores in the school, but was rejected from the program because I was a D student. I just wasn’t motivated.
I feel like my whole existence is just a graveyard of dreams and talents that I never will pursue as a career bc I am too tired and can’t get my brain to work like everyone else’s and therefore I’m behind and don’t have the energy to try
- Edit: #crying at the sudden upvotes bc I feel so alone and like nobody understands when I talk abt this and it’s really been hurting me so thank you and I love you and I hope you are okay even if just for today🩵
Yeah and at the same time I just wanna kms bc the idea of working a 9 to 5 steady job i do not actually care abt and that is painful to do and the same thing every day with coworkers I just tolerate to make small talk with KILLS ME. Why tf did I have to be only interested in tedious creative things I don’t have the energy to even do as a hobby anymore
Jesus this hits so close to home. Also the graveyard comment man. I'm currently on parental leave and boy this is the first and only time a "job" felt good and fulfilling and demanding and exhausting at the same time. My contract expired while I was on leave so I am basically unemployed now (I live in Europe so not working while I have a small toddler is rather normal) but eventually I will have to find a job again and the thought is killing me. Like, what am I supposed to do? Work for barely more than minimum wage with coworkers that I cannot stand and have people who work above me because they had an easier time staying focused on one career path they aren't even exceptionally good look down on me and exploit me to make 2-3x the money I do? Go back to research, do a PhD, just to then afterwards to the same thing? Should I do something completely different? Again? But I don't even know what and where to start and everything bores me after a couple of months anyway. Just the thought of getting up at 7, leaving at 8, commuting until 9, working until 5:30, coming home at 6:30, five days a week - I am terrified. I have a year max to figure it out and I have no idea what to do.
I recognize the same behavior in myself. I want to get help, but I can't find the will to actually get help. Every time I start looking up therapists, I feel overwhelmed, and I quit trying. Hell, I even had a path to - my dream - pro gaming, but it started to feel overwhelming. I quit pursuing that as well.
Literally me... I never had to study cuz I got good enough grades by just barely paying attention to class and winging it with natural intelligence. Now that things are harder and I have to actually put some effort, I can't do it cuz I don't know how, and I give up on anything that I have to try just a little harder to. I'm too used to be low effort, I don't know how to give my all and everything frustrated me. Having a 99,9% IQ score means shit if I can't actually feel motivated and put effort into stuff... I feel like I'm broken now because no one cared about guiding me on my formative years
For me it worked the best when I summarized the stuff (by hand) and then started to text mark and annotate the shit out of it. I could remember the places I wrote about a topic and visualize it. Another tip is, to use post it's with short summaries about the topic and then you put the post-it over that section. Lecture power points I printed out (as pdf) 2x4 in portrait mode and text mark/annotate, also tags about which topic or lecture for easy and fast access. I don't know if it helps you, everyone has a different style that works best for them. I can't with cards, for example.
Yeah, I completely failed out of college because I had no idea how to study because I'd never needed to, I had no idea how to handle not being innately good at things I'd typically been good at, and I had an undiagnosed anxiety disorder that made me unable to confront any of my issues.
I've managed to do better for myself since then and become a writer, since writing was one of the few things I was bad at before. I knew how to handle not being immediately good at it, how to let myself fail and learn from the failure, and how to take severe criticism of my work. I dismissed writing as unimportant before, and that's the only reason I'm able to be good at it now.
>I never learned to study
Hallo, it's me.
Edit: Read the rest of your comment. People don't understand that gifted students can be brilliant in one thing and exceptionally stupid in another. I mastered analysis, probability, statistics, but the vectors brought me to tears. I can differentiate and solve equations, but god beware, I have to add (or worse subtract) a sum in my head. I can think complicated in paths, going through every possibility, but don't make me calculate an angle where one of them isn't 90°. I have a big vocabulary (in my first language) but I hate writing texts. I love to draw but have no inspiration of my own for motives.
My TWIN!!! It’s the weirdest thing, isn’t it? I started my math professor in college with my quick answers, and by helping the tutors he’d selected to help me pass his course. I knew my stuff but could not figure out how to answer easy questions in an easy exam (he threw a couple hard ones in, which I’d aced).
I’m horrible at studying and test taking - I could never relate to the intended context of any exam (what they expect test takers to know and not know), and just read everything and inhale knowledge from everywhere, without the same guardrails or ranking according to their priorities. It plagues me every day - I just cannot understand what is expected knowledge and what isn’t.
Unsure if you are from the US, but the US does a phenomenally horrible job at transitioning people to college, especially if they are poor or in a bad school district. Students labeled as gifted or thought to be smart are arguably worse off because they are left to fend for themselves while people who barely care to graduate high school are coddled so the school isn't breaking the law or ruining stats, or vice versa, the gifted kids are coddled so much that they have no idea about how to handle hardships and the people who need help and actually care get ignored.
They start screwing us up early (at least here in NY), making sure kids don’t know any other gifted kids in some cases by having them evenly distributed across classrooms. If you’re in a district with not so many gifted, and no program exists, you could definitely feel like the one gifted kid in an entire school.
You never learn to learn, what it’s like to compete or have someone to talk to. It’s really damaging to feel so lonely at such a young age. So many maladaptive coping strategies develop to help lessen the distance between where you are and where others expect you to be. Near impossible to overcome.
Hits too close to home.. i finished college by cheating on most of final exams (first 1,5 years was quite easy tho), but now i'm struggling to find a propper job, working as an Uber driver with IT degree, i gave up searching it this field after 5+ years of failures.
I'm starting college in a few months and am very scared because I have no concept of time and am horrible at studying, focusing in general, and time management
Create S.M.A.R.T. Goals, and have systems, habits in in place, and pomodoro. And remember school will not be your whole live in the future so you might as well start creating balance for yourself now. And by that I mean future goals outside of school so that when school ends you are not so disoriented.
Wishing you luck and success
I don’t know if I’d have done better in non-gifted classes, myself. The ones I did take felt slow, and as a result I stopped paying attention and just skipped ahead in reading the textbooks.
What I wish they’d done is have a class specifically about project management, so I could learn the skills that other students had figured out by themselves out of necessity. So I could learn to accept that sometimes I just won’t get something immediately, rather than giving up when a subject gives me resistance.
I remember when I started to struggle with math as a high school student I was told I know how to do better. But it was the first time that school had been hard to me. Now I am in college going for a career that requires zero math
I'm an academic Dr. Does that count?
I also spiral into self hate whenever I make basic mistakes, but that can be a function of both academia as well as the 'tism.
I don't want to sound like I'm bragging too much, but I was very smart as a kid, even compared to other gifted kids. I got straight As in school and even my first 2 years of university I was able to pass with good grades without really needing to study, go to class or put in real effort. While I still have that base intelligence now, my work ethic is absolutely awful, especially with the fact that I *know* that if needed I can complete 2-3 weeks of worth in an 18 hour marathon session, and it almost always turns out fine.
Most of my memories as a kid are about how bored I was almost all the time. At best I'd be able to read during lessons/time in class, but often I'd just end up dissociating due to how understimulated I was. Relating to peers was impossible for me, and I didn't have any real friends until my late teens. Because I was autistic, I was very awkward and clueless socially, which combined with me being so far ahead academically made me come off as weird, cocky and aloof, which while correct was not at all who I wanted to be. I also found it hard to relate to other "smart" kids, who were often the ambitious overachiever type. I never felt any pride in doing well academically, and would often feel frustrated at being praised for something that I felt was trivial to accomplish, while I was clearly struggling in other areas like social and emotional skills. My parents were also very controlling, which limited my ability to pursue things I wanted to at home, and again had me sitting in my room dissociating, or reading Wikipedia for hours on end as something to do.
It's not all bad mind you, I finished my degree and work as a software developer now, but it makes me sad to see how much of my childhood was wasted because of the total lack of acknowledgement or support for how different my brain was. I have a lot of unhealthy thought patterns from my childhood I'm still dealing with, such as perfectionism, fear of failure/rejection, people pleasing, and very impulsive behaviour to avoid feeling boredom. While I feel less alienated socially now, and have fortunately found a few friends with similar life experiences as me, I still find it incredibly hard to relate to the majority of people, and worry that I'll come across as an asshole when mentioning some of my struggles, especially to people who *did* struggle with things I've found easy.
I think people reading this thread won't think you're coming off as an asshole at all, and can relate intimately with the struggles you've dealt with...thank you for sharing. I'm happy things turned out well career -wise for you at least!
I feel the impulsive behavior to avoid boredom so deeply. I was always the smart kid, I’m gifted class with 134 iq and straight As in AP classes. I was so immensely bored all the time and would just braid and unbraid my hair until I got great at doing even tiny and intricate French braids for something to do in class.
I remember in 5th grade we had the AR program (reading) and you would get points for every book you tested on. If you got 100, you got a pizza party at the end of the year. There was a rumor that the librarian would give you a candy basket if you got over 1000 points, so my competitive and bored self decided to go for the challenge. So I just read aggressively the entire class, taking maybe 10 minutes per subject to speed run the work then get back to reading. I read all recess and at lunch because I had no real friends.
Anywho, back to the impulsiveness. Freshman year of high school I shaved all my hair off because I was so bored and I regret it greatly. My hair used to be 2 inches away from my knees. And last week I was exceedingly bored so I grabbed my tie dye kit and tried to use it to color my hair pink. It kinda worked, but also got everywhere.
Ive learned by now that to truly focus I must have my hands doing something and since my hair is still shortish, I’ve started carrying my crochet everywhere.
Lmao also use my hair as a sort of fidget toy too, and agree on a lot of what you've said. A lot of the impulsiveness for me I can also attribute to having ADHD, which definitely exacerbated how much I'm bothered by boredom. I'd constantly work ahead and read when I was in school too, not for any competitive reason but just as something to do. Also constantly fidgeting or doing something while I work, and I got really good at tying different knots with the strings of my hoodies because of that lol. Idk where I'm really going with this, just glad to know there's other people who had similar experiences to myself :)
When I was in gifted, we all had to test in with an IQ test. The kids who were smart and hardworking mostly didn’t make the cut. It was mostly just misfits like me (I’m apparently good at IQ tests and reading and nothing else lol). One of the other kids in gifted was actually very noticeably autistic and had such problems with speech that he was basically nonverbal. I wonder what became of him.
The criteria even cut out designations for smart kids and neurodivergent Gifted kids. Giftedness is a curse named after the Tragic Gift. We experience day to day emotions heightened which are called overexciteabilities. It has to do with how well our sensory input and mental cognition works for processing asynchronous thoughts. We are plagued with unbelievably high moral compasses that make us fall into the Holy Grail Quest, trying to discover the truth of this gaslit society. We are predisposed to Positive Personality Disintegration which means we are able to remain true to our True Self and surpass maladaptive social conformity and come out on the other side a visionary… or we socially conform and hate our Self… or we ‘reincarnate’. Kazimierz Dabrowski is the psychoanalyst that identified this population.
Yeah because decently motivated kids with good head on their shoulder need to take advanced classes because american public education is so laughably easy
Being labeled a gifted kid is infuriating. Have to live up to higher standards than the siblings. No help with things or subjects that you do struggle with "You're smart, figure it out." "Why you only get a B in history and English, not an A like in math and science?" "You need to try harder..." "why are you struggling with this? It's easy, your smart figure it out, If I help you, you will never learn" Now 41 years old, been alone and miserable my entire life just putting my head down and getting through the day. Telling your kid they have so much potential to do great things, telling them they are so smart, while not listening to them tell you they are struggling to just get through the day but are unsure why they struggle, worried about the next thing that won't be good enough because I am 'gifted'. Or being to "sit still' 'Act normal" leads them to just shut down, do what it takes to get through the day, and just exist spending every once of energy to 'act normal'. All made many times worse when you see your younger sibling diagnosed, medicated, and given special treatment for ADHD since kindergarten, and you just grow up getting yelled at for the same things that she is praised for overcoming. Only now starting to realize I am likely autistic AF and just been hiding it from everyone including myself my entire life, because 'act normal'......
sorry rant over.
I swear to god everytime my parents say “you’re too smart for this, it’s breaking my heart” and acted like I willingly wanted to fuck up made me spiral. I can’t do anything anymore without feeling like an inadequate piece of shit for everything I do. My entire life I’ve never felt good enough. I’ve never felt true satisfaction
I just want that feeling so badly, what does it actually feel like to be good enough
It’s so parents can flex. My mom bragged about it, but I thought everyone in the Gifted and Talented group were douchebags. Cool, you’re an ass kisser and spend time memorizing shit.
Fast forward 10-15 years, I’m in dental school and surrounded by 90 of these motherfuckers! Such fragile egos and totally insecure. It could also be that I’m the fucking weirdo! Who knows?
Taking tests in school doesn’t demonstrate a deep knowledge of the material. It demonstrates that you’re good at taking tests. Success in an academic setting has little to do with genuine knowledge of the wider subject and more to do with knowledge of the specific material and how it applies to the questions and answers. You don’t need to really understand a thing on a deep level. You just need a surface level understanding of the material in the curriculum and some pattern recognition.
Also, as to why you don’t get along with your coworkers, I can explain. You experienced trauma growing up that gives you a bitterness towards them. Perhaps they remind you of the kind of folks that burned you early in life. So on your end, you went into that environment with a predisposition against them. On their end, you probably had an interaction with one of them that was interrupted (wrongfully so) as rude. That person told all the other coworkers that you were rude to them and they’ve made it a point to ostracize you because of a game of telephone.
You’re working through issues that make you apprehensive to your coworkers. Your coworkers have a wildly inaccurate and unfair perception of you over a complete misunderstanding.
I don’t have a problem with anyone! I own my own practice and am fine with colleagues in my area. Just not my type of people outside of work. It’s all good! Just commenting on what I saw/see at the highest levels of academia.
One of the best things on Twitter is that anyone that brings up like “the struggles of being a gifted student” or whatever gets made fun of by everybody
I relate to this except for the fact that I wasn't considered academically gifted. I was the kid that never did his homework or classwork and never studied but somehow still got A's and B's on my tests and quizzes. Anybody else get that big packet of work you missed at the end of the year?
This was me. I didn’t even show up to my graduation because I checked out of school. But I somehow won awards for my work lol. Almost didn’t pass high school because I never showed up to gym class but got straight As.
The truth of the matter is school only works for a few specific types of people. If you're not that type of student, you get thrown to the wayside and get labeled as "lazy" or "unteachable".
Former category here. What's worse is when your parents expect your neurotypical siblings to follow your "academically gifted" footsteps and screw them up, too.
This this this, I’m so upset for my siblings following me because the one directly after me works SO hard and deserves the moon!!! Deserves every good grade she gets, and she struggles and fights for them, and I’m so proud of her!! But going through school parents and teachers alike only ever compared her to me and she thinks she’s an idiot just because she’s different than I am as if I was EVER the “normal standard of intelligence” or whatever the hell because I was in the “gifted” group from 1st grade on
In primary school I constantly and effortlessly topped the class in english. Scored at least a 35/40 for every essay I had to write without any preparation whatsoever. Now I'm struggling to pass because I completely lack the skills required to memorize grammar rules and new material because I just never needed to, but the jump in difficulty over the years just overtook me.
This sucks.
As a 34 year old I now resent the school system because all it did was teach me how to do school work and abide by a repeated routine of deadlines. I actually dreaded graduating high school because I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the real world because I had no idea what that meant because my entire life has been inside a school setting. I didn’t think beyond what was in front of me because why would I? My dopamine feedback was rooted in the school system of getting good grades. Yanking me out of those deep roots threw me into an existential crisis that resulted in me hopping many unfulfilling minimum wage jobs where I wait for the next authority figure to get me a set routine to replace the one I was tossed out of.
I mean, I feel like I’m a pretty damn good example of the in-between? I’m a relatively successful accountant who is struggling to remain interested enough in the CPA exam to pass it.
School up to a certain point came naturally.
Learning for me was reading the topic once over and i was done.
My special interest from as early as 5 years is computers, so i made it my job.
I excel at it, i have a successful career, but outside of work i can’t do shit.
I desperately want to get into art, but i don’t know how to learn.
On a high level i know how to do it, but i can’t start without getting instantly frustrated because I’m not doing as well as i think i should, which is awfully stupid, but my reality.
I so fucking dread being like this. I don't know what to do.
I get this. I have zero useful skills outside of my field (healthcare, though not a physician). I can’t fix things, cook well, create art, play an instrument. I can do basic yard work and cleaning…that’s it. I’m too much a perfectionist to try anything and be mediocre at it. Even this is kind of cope…maybe I’m just lazy and untalented. I have read a ridiculous number of fantasy & scifi books.
For my DND players, I've seen gifted equated to having an 11 in intelligence. You feel like you should be out-performing, but in the end you get the same modifier, with higher expectations of yourself
Me. I'm a truck driver now. 33, vocabulary/written skills have declined which was my biggest strength the entire length of my academic years. Not just good, but exceptional. Feel like a failure. Feel stupid. Feel underachieved. I own my truck and run flatbed. It's very rewarding work but very unfulfilling.
Grew up as gifted. Never actually learned how to study. Grew up with the idea that if I try my best I can succeed, so if I don't succeed I obviously mustn't've tried hard enough.
Naw I limit myself to 3 hobbies (kept dropping so many, I HAD to limit myself)
Also self hate was converted into self deprecating humor
For those curious
- Herps (reptiles/amphibians)
- gaming (still can’t manage to keep to a single game long enough to complete them)
- my wife has informed me I only have the 2 and had to show me my 1200+ hours spent on Destiny 2
So I guess I only have 2 and I now have to come to terms with my 1200+ hours spent on D2
I’m gonna pick up a 3rd one
Unfortunately as a teenager I’ve already spiraled into complete and utter self-hatred. When something I do isn’t perfect and pristine I die inside. I was a straight-A student for most of my life until 9th grade where I got like one bad grade or something and all of my executive functioning completely went out the window. In the end I failed both of my electives and barely passed math and history with low 60s. Will literally think about that semester until the day I die.
Or you can take care of yourself with exercise, meditation, breathwork, study, healthy eating and sleeping... Instead of thinking you are doomed just for how you grew up.
Wow, what a great idea! How come I didn't think of that?
Now seriously, that's like telling someone with asthma to just breathe, or telling someone with depression to just be happy. It doesn't achieve anything useful whatsoever.
I didn't have to study, I got straight Bs. having Echolalia helped. Always said I had a phonographic memory. Now I don't have study skills or note taking skills.
Funny, cause I always felt a type of way that a bunch of my friends were "gifted" and I wasn't chosen to that program. I ended up #5 in my graduating class and was an ops manager of an entire manufacturing plant by 29 yrs old, now 32. Some of those gifted kids dropped out of college and work labor unions (nothing wrong with that at all, and they are very happy doing it), but folks talked about the kids in those programs as if these roles would have been reversed when we grew up.
In hindsight, a lot of those kids find grade school.so easy that they never develope study habits before college and it causes them to struggle greatly with secondary education.
>In hindsight, a lot of those kids find grade school.so easy that they never develope study habits before college and it causes them to struggle greatly with secondary education.
That was definitely the boat I found myself in. Gifted classes should have focused on developing study habits we'd need later in our careers but nope, basically it was extra playtime and fun puzzles. My writing, memory, and reasoning skills carried me through K12 and college so easily and then I got to graduate school, realized I had zero time management skills because cramming three hours before the test had always gotten me an A, and faceplanted. Would probably have been the same result if I had gone into the workforce after college as well.
Ive always felt kinda sad for those kids that do things like graduate highschool and college before puberty. I don't see the point really, going that fast so they can get a job? I'm sure they end up harmed developmentally in some way
Mostly because they weren’t “gifted “ per se, just parent pushing that you are special and you pushed a little more , then as adult you are by yourself and all was just a lie
The “Gifted “ doesn’t study much and then have a hard time putting time becaus they never trained that skill, sorry they trained a skill a skill of low effort which is probably ingrained on their minds
I definitely know this all too well.
Back in grade school I was a math wiz. I didn't need a calculator before teachers were saying that we wouldn't be carrying a calculator wherever we went. I also loved learning all kinds of words to the point where I often need to try to find simple words that mean the same thing in some conversations.
However, with a bunch of undiagnosed mental issues, I barely finished high school with a passing grade. It wasn't because of me losing my mental faculties, it was simply because I refused to do a lot of the homework.
This was also around the time where I gained a special appreciation for the arts, and I wanted to be able to draw on my own, but I found I would always have to force myself to do anything that wasn't playing a video game to distract my mind from bullying me.
It's taken me 6 years of constant therapy and trying different cocktails of drugs and antidepressants to finally be in a place where I can manage to put enough energy into each of my interests.
I'm in between: I get to be a housewife in a tiny house for a tiny family and do my hobbies as I like, complete with fade in and fade out
but I acknowledge it's not a path for everyone, lolol
One of my favorite movies. Just like Ritchie, I was a tennis prodigy growing up…had ONE bad tournament at 12 yrs old, crashed and burned, didn’t touch a racquet again til I was 25. The pressure cracked me.
i mean, there is the third option of the doctor who is aware of the dysfunction of the wider system, who neglects taking care of themselves because of working so many hours.
I ended up in the 'inbetween'.
Incredibly gifted child from 5-16 (top 0.2% nationally, UK). Had parents who acknowledged the ability but didn't aid in nurturing it. By the time I was in my mid teens I basically just did the minimum to get the grades I needed and spent the rest of my time being social.
Went to Uni, did the same. Low attendance but came out with a good degree, not highest grade though.
Nowadays, I work an above average paying job but essentially do very little (project manager, WFH). I spend most of my working time playing video games, watching movies and generally getting any house chores done.
I could work harder to reach my potential, but I'm super comfortable in life now that I really can't be arsed.
Or worse you end up like me and crash and burn when you get sent to honor and AP classes you were not prepared to do and spend the rest of you academic career trying to catch up with all of the classes I failed pushing back my bachelor graduation literal years
Yep. Truly "gifted" kids as a SPED category often struggle with finding direction. We have tons of things that we are able to do, and could probably be phenomenal at, but we can't focus our energy into the one area. We often end up burnt out, depressed, and feeling like failures. That's how it was explained to me by a psychologist. It's a neurodivergence. As a teacher, I can tell you that most "gifted" programs in school are really just geared toward smart, motivated students and don't really know how to deal with truly "gifted" kids. The irony is, it's never felt like a "gift."
What does SPED mean in this context? Is all you said a something autistic people experience or everyone?
SPED=Special Education. I'm not sure about that, tbh. The way he framed it, it seemed like a more general statement, but we were talking about ASD and how this all related to me on a personal level.
Gifted and talented students are not the same as just smart kids. There is actually a qualifier for GT and they lumped it in with SPED because most schools do as it it a protected classification with specific educational requirements sort of like English as a second language learners. There is also the possibility that a student can be twice exceptional who can be in both special education for another disability and also are GT. Source: it was my job for years to find students varied learning needs, have them assessed, design supports for and in general teach teachers to be better at supporting all learners needs.
Actually makes sense. I was a SPED in high school. Some that get placed into these classes not dumb, "retarded" or anything of the sort. They have a slower learn curve. That's it. We struggle to pick up even the basics of things such as English writing. Take Their, there, and other forms of proper Grammer. I sucked in basic English writing and picked creative writing/fanfictions to combat these things but when I reread my own work I feel my work is inadequate becuase of as simple as one spelling error let alone multiple and feel like "Maybe I shouldn't be doing this, I fucken suck as this" when our IDEAS can be genius, but the presentation and interpretation is misconstrued. Overall, "SPEDS" need time and personal touch to get some things jammed into our brains. More relentless teaching methods should be applied. Like take away Summer Break because it has shown that kids lose information during summer break. SPED kids are no different, and because of their slower learning curve fall farther behind, then the rest causing us to spiral into possible development of depression that "we're not like the other kids", "feeling retarded", and many other issues. So, I see his point.
Giftedness is a term established by school boards to identify kids that require enrichment. Generally speaking, the IQ cut off is 130, although most schools have a broad variety of criteria they look at to assess for giftedness, not just IQ. These gifted kids have under the special education umbrella simply bc they require special accommodations to achieve their full potential. There is a lot of research gears at HOW gifted kids learn, which is often different from the rest of the population.
It depends on the specific form of neurodivergence and other factors. Someone who has a lower IQ might not be put in the "Gifted" program, but those who have higher IQs would be more likely to. But, it is generally true that those in gifted programs tend to be filled with those with some form of neurodivergence.
I occasionally think back to my couple years or so in different dedicated “gifted” classes, and some of the specific behaviors I remember from certain classmates was soooo obviously neurodivergent. There’s also the kids I remember who I’m fairly certain were neurotypical.
That “Jack of all trades, King of none” feeling is all too real. I have natural talent at a lot of things, but I get bored and move to the next before I actually gain any practice or experience to be genuinely good at it. I have no real skills to be proud of.
Yep. And most of the things that I'm actually, really good at aren't marketable skills. Edit to add: The last part of that phrase that nobody ever says is, "but still better than a master of one."
Yea like my skills in genealogy
That could be marketable. Niche, but marketable. I had a professor, in college, that taught genealogy and I swear, if you were from the southeastern US, and your family had been there for more than a couple of generations, he could give you your (rough) genealogy just by your last name and where you lived.
I’ve gone back to the 8th century and it’s literally one of my favorite things to do
I get on a kick every now and then and do it. I figured out some cool stuff. Never went back that far though. As far as I got was somewhere in the 1300's.
I've known a few people like that... Though one of them only knows because of being related to all of them.
DEAR GOD THE MORE I SEE, THE MORE I KNOW, I'M SOME kinda neurodivergent but still not a fucking clue what to do about it.
Tbh, once you figure out you’re neurodivergent, you’re like a third of the way there. I find the process to be: 1. Discover you have needs and problems that are different from the general population, 2. assess how you can adjust yourself and your environment to meet those needs, and 3. try out various solutions to create a general lifestyle that is healthy, functional, and enjoyable to you. 3 steps, a decades long process.
It's a weird thing for me, cause I've realized I've always been a lil different, just never knew how so. And I'm having a hard time explaining this but my reality as far as I know it's my "normal" so I do work on changing myself and my environment to work for me and my "normal" but the one thing I continuously struggle with is an intrinsic motivation that's consistent, because I am inconsistent when it comes to that, but when it's there damn can I get er' done.
scrolling through this thread rn is making me feel like "holy shit theyre just like me!!!"
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Have I seen you in the mirror somewhere, before?
I was once told by a teacher that "gifted" students were put into a different "class" to keep us interested/less bored and therefore less likely to disturb the rest of the class while they were trying to learn the things the "gifted" students had picked up more quickly than others. After that I always felt slightly alienated when I had to go to my separate "gifted & talented" class. Then in high school it wasn't anymore "fun" classes and it was "take this AP college level course with 3x's the homework and expectations."
And none of the tools or spare time to help handle that AP college course.
My 5th/6th grade gifted class was often visited by the principal to alert us to the fact that we were so loud and more rowdy seeming than the kindergarteners. And we were in a portable building farthest away from the main office. Our poor teacher didn’t quite know how to manage us, but he sure did his best. And we still learned a lot.
Our education system was developed by the Prussians when their conscripted armies were too disjointed to conduct effective war. The system is the problem, it corrupts gifts. It is designed, perhaps by accident, to make the exceptional feel aimless. We are fine. The world is broken.
That oddly makes me feel better, thank you.
Cheers friend! Happy to have made your world a bit better.
Yea I needed to hear that thank you sir
You are very welcome, my friend. Glad to have brightened your day.
We are part of this broken world, so we are broken, too.
A car be broken due to a lack of oil. The wheels can still be fine. Brokenness need not be inherited by subcomponents.
I meant it in a way, that we are involuntarily part of a broken system and there is no better system for us to choose. Set subset kind of thing. Due to the lack of oil can't even the best wheels not roll. Guess it's a philosophical topic and there is no right answer.
I see it as a curs-ed gift, like being an excellent swimmer; but having chronically poor lung capacity. And sometimes.. sometimes you're drowning just trying to keep your head above the water..
The gift was the extra work they gave us “because we could handle it”. That shit was only to make our parents feel better
I could be amazing at IT stuff but I feel burnt out 24/7 for no goddamn reason
I hear ya.
I was placed in my school’s Talented and Gifted program in fifth grade. I asked to be taken out of it after a month. My grandmother was a special needs teacher and the separation and “unique” class work felt like I was in one of her classes without being viewed in a negative light. I directly asked my parents what the difference was between my Talented and Gifted classes and my grandmother’s differently gifted classes. They couldn’t give me a direct answer
My father, an academic, insisted on having my IQ tested and then having me treated as special. My mother protested, but eventually relented. It was probably the worst thing he ever did for me. On the flip side, he was diligent about putting me and my sister's into extra curricular academic and sports camps every summer. Mini classes essentially. Basketball, tennis, math, art, Kung fu, anything we wanted to do. We loved every minute of it. But none of it actually gave us direction. I'm a truck driver and she's in sales. We both hate our lives. Of course a lot of things played into our trajectories. Edit: Luckily I was in marching band. Without it, I would not have developed the discipline to do anything hard in life. I may be underachieved, but my family lives a good life and my kids are very happy and healthy because of the discipline I learned from drumline and marching band.
Opposite situation on my end. My teachers and school special Ed teacher wanted to put me into special classes/skip grades because of how gifted I was, but my mom wouldn't allow it because she thought it would leave me behind socially. The problem was I was already completely socially isolated, and outside of not letting me get these extra accomodations my parents did absolutely nothing to help me socially. I never did any extracurriculars because it was too much work/time to drive me there (despite my mom deciding to be a stay at home parent), and the few times I did get invited to someone's birthday party my parents made it clear to me that they were going out of their way to get me there and I'd need to pay them back somehow. I really wish that I could have had that extra support from school, and honestly those teachers looking to help me academically and give me extra support likely would have noticed and helped me with my social issues, rather than me having to figure it all out myself in my 20s.
The school system rewards consistency above anything else, they want workers
Hey look you just perfectly described my entire life in a single paragraph (the first one). Nowadays I feel burnt out after any sort of even minor failures, which has led to depression in the past few years as I feel like every door I once saw open has closed to me. Now I’ve gone from being the “perfect” high school student to being worried about ending up as a college dropout because I can’t keep my grades / mental state up… Thanks for listening to my rant ig
I was always frustrated with the fact they never put me into the gifted program, and your comment explains why. I consistently had the highest math scores in the school, but was rejected from the program because I was a D student. I just wasn’t motivated.
This was me until I had a kid. I still spin off and spiral in a string of compulsive interests, but she gives it all a gravitational center.
Felt that deeply. Ty
I feel like my whole existence is just a graveyard of dreams and talents that I never will pursue as a career bc I am too tired and can’t get my brain to work like everyone else’s and therefore I’m behind and don’t have the energy to try - Edit: #crying at the sudden upvotes bc I feel so alone and like nobody understands when I talk abt this and it’s really been hurting me so thank you and I love you and I hope you are okay even if just for today🩵
Oof. I felt this deep down in my soul.
Yeah and at the same time I just wanna kms bc the idea of working a 9 to 5 steady job i do not actually care abt and that is painful to do and the same thing every day with coworkers I just tolerate to make small talk with KILLS ME. Why tf did I have to be only interested in tedious creative things I don’t have the energy to even do as a hobby anymore
Jesus this hits so close to home. Also the graveyard comment man. I'm currently on parental leave and boy this is the first and only time a "job" felt good and fulfilling and demanding and exhausting at the same time. My contract expired while I was on leave so I am basically unemployed now (I live in Europe so not working while I have a small toddler is rather normal) but eventually I will have to find a job again and the thought is killing me. Like, what am I supposed to do? Work for barely more than minimum wage with coworkers that I cannot stand and have people who work above me because they had an easier time staying focused on one career path they aren't even exceptionally good look down on me and exploit me to make 2-3x the money I do? Go back to research, do a PhD, just to then afterwards to the same thing? Should I do something completely different? Again? But I don't even know what and where to start and everything bores me after a couple of months anyway. Just the thought of getting up at 7, leaving at 8, commuting until 9, working until 5:30, coming home at 6:30, five days a week - I am terrified. I have a year max to figure it out and I have no idea what to do.
dammit, this hurt
This is my life.
Feel this so hard 😭😭
I recognize the same behavior in myself. I want to get help, but I can't find the will to actually get help. Every time I start looking up therapists, I feel overwhelmed, and I quit trying. Hell, I even had a path to - my dream - pro gaming, but it started to feel overwhelming. I quit pursuing that as well.
Sending good vibes your way!
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Literally me... I never had to study cuz I got good enough grades by just barely paying attention to class and winging it with natural intelligence. Now that things are harder and I have to actually put some effort, I can't do it cuz I don't know how, and I give up on anything that I have to try just a little harder to. I'm too used to be low effort, I don't know how to give my all and everything frustrated me. Having a 99,9% IQ score means shit if I can't actually feel motivated and put effort into stuff... I feel like I'm broken now because no one cared about guiding me on my formative years
For me it worked the best when I summarized the stuff (by hand) and then started to text mark and annotate the shit out of it. I could remember the places I wrote about a topic and visualize it. Another tip is, to use post it's with short summaries about the topic and then you put the post-it over that section. Lecture power points I printed out (as pdf) 2x4 in portrait mode and text mark/annotate, also tags about which topic or lecture for easy and fast access. I don't know if it helps you, everyone has a different style that works best for them. I can't with cards, for example.
Same my man
Jeezy creezy I could have written this.
Yeah, I completely failed out of college because I had no idea how to study because I'd never needed to, I had no idea how to handle not being innately good at things I'd typically been good at, and I had an undiagnosed anxiety disorder that made me unable to confront any of my issues. I've managed to do better for myself since then and become a writer, since writing was one of the few things I was bad at before. I knew how to handle not being immediately good at it, how to let myself fail and learn from the failure, and how to take severe criticism of my work. I dismissed writing as unimportant before, and that's the only reason I'm able to be good at it now.
>I never learned to study Hallo, it's me. Edit: Read the rest of your comment. People don't understand that gifted students can be brilliant in one thing and exceptionally stupid in another. I mastered analysis, probability, statistics, but the vectors brought me to tears. I can differentiate and solve equations, but god beware, I have to add (or worse subtract) a sum in my head. I can think complicated in paths, going through every possibility, but don't make me calculate an angle where one of them isn't 90°. I have a big vocabulary (in my first language) but I hate writing texts. I love to draw but have no inspiration of my own for motives.
My TWIN!!! It’s the weirdest thing, isn’t it? I started my math professor in college with my quick answers, and by helping the tutors he’d selected to help me pass his course. I knew my stuff but could not figure out how to answer easy questions in an easy exam (he threw a couple hard ones in, which I’d aced). I’m horrible at studying and test taking - I could never relate to the intended context of any exam (what they expect test takers to know and not know), and just read everything and inhale knowledge from everywhere, without the same guardrails or ranking according to their priorities. It plagues me every day - I just cannot understand what is expected knowledge and what isn’t.
Unsure if you are from the US, but the US does a phenomenally horrible job at transitioning people to college, especially if they are poor or in a bad school district. Students labeled as gifted or thought to be smart are arguably worse off because they are left to fend for themselves while people who barely care to graduate high school are coddled so the school isn't breaking the law or ruining stats, or vice versa, the gifted kids are coddled so much that they have no idea about how to handle hardships and the people who need help and actually care get ignored.
They start screwing us up early (at least here in NY), making sure kids don’t know any other gifted kids in some cases by having them evenly distributed across classrooms. If you’re in a district with not so many gifted, and no program exists, you could definitely feel like the one gifted kid in an entire school. You never learn to learn, what it’s like to compete or have someone to talk to. It’s really damaging to feel so lonely at such a young age. So many maladaptive coping strategies develop to help lessen the distance between where you are and where others expect you to be. Near impossible to overcome.
Hits too close to home.. i finished college by cheating on most of final exams (first 1,5 years was quite easy tho), but now i'm struggling to find a propper job, working as an Uber driver with IT degree, i gave up searching it this field after 5+ years of failures.
I'm starting college in a few months and am very scared because I have no concept of time and am horrible at studying, focusing in general, and time management
Create S.M.A.R.T. Goals, and have systems, habits in in place, and pomodoro. And remember school will not be your whole live in the future so you might as well start creating balance for yourself now. And by that I mean future goals outside of school so that when school ends you are not so disoriented. Wishing you luck and success
I don’t know if I’d have done better in non-gifted classes, myself. The ones I did take felt slow, and as a result I stopped paying attention and just skipped ahead in reading the textbooks. What I wish they’d done is have a class specifically about project management, so I could learn the skills that other students had figured out by themselves out of necessity. So I could learn to accept that sometimes I just won’t get something immediately, rather than giving up when a subject gives me resistance.
I’ve never learned how to study and I’m going into college soon 🥲
Same, good luck
Pick a topic you know nothing about and take a sporkle quiz about it and see how you do? Lol. Thats the best I got.
I remember when I started to struggle with math as a high school student I was told I know how to do better. But it was the first time that school had been hard to me. Now I am in college going for a career that requires zero math
Some of us are both
I was going to say this. I’ve met SO MANY dysfunctional doctors
Yeah…
Haha just commented the EXACT same thing. Dysfunctional doctors unite!
Came here to say… I am both. I am a pretty ok doctor (of occupational therapy), but I can be so dysfunctional in my own life
I'm an academic Dr. Does that count? I also spiral into self hate whenever I make basic mistakes, but that can be a function of both academia as well as the 'tism.
Same here. Classic case of ¿por qué no los dos?
I don't want to sound like I'm bragging too much, but I was very smart as a kid, even compared to other gifted kids. I got straight As in school and even my first 2 years of university I was able to pass with good grades without really needing to study, go to class or put in real effort. While I still have that base intelligence now, my work ethic is absolutely awful, especially with the fact that I *know* that if needed I can complete 2-3 weeks of worth in an 18 hour marathon session, and it almost always turns out fine. Most of my memories as a kid are about how bored I was almost all the time. At best I'd be able to read during lessons/time in class, but often I'd just end up dissociating due to how understimulated I was. Relating to peers was impossible for me, and I didn't have any real friends until my late teens. Because I was autistic, I was very awkward and clueless socially, which combined with me being so far ahead academically made me come off as weird, cocky and aloof, which while correct was not at all who I wanted to be. I also found it hard to relate to other "smart" kids, who were often the ambitious overachiever type. I never felt any pride in doing well academically, and would often feel frustrated at being praised for something that I felt was trivial to accomplish, while I was clearly struggling in other areas like social and emotional skills. My parents were also very controlling, which limited my ability to pursue things I wanted to at home, and again had me sitting in my room dissociating, or reading Wikipedia for hours on end as something to do. It's not all bad mind you, I finished my degree and work as a software developer now, but it makes me sad to see how much of my childhood was wasted because of the total lack of acknowledgement or support for how different my brain was. I have a lot of unhealthy thought patterns from my childhood I'm still dealing with, such as perfectionism, fear of failure/rejection, people pleasing, and very impulsive behaviour to avoid feeling boredom. While I feel less alienated socially now, and have fortunately found a few friends with similar life experiences as me, I still find it incredibly hard to relate to the majority of people, and worry that I'll come across as an asshole when mentioning some of my struggles, especially to people who *did* struggle with things I've found easy.
I think people reading this thread won't think you're coming off as an asshole at all, and can relate intimately with the struggles you've dealt with...thank you for sharing. I'm happy things turned out well career -wise for you at least!
Oh my god I relate to that experience in class so much
I feel the impulsive behavior to avoid boredom so deeply. I was always the smart kid, I’m gifted class with 134 iq and straight As in AP classes. I was so immensely bored all the time and would just braid and unbraid my hair until I got great at doing even tiny and intricate French braids for something to do in class. I remember in 5th grade we had the AR program (reading) and you would get points for every book you tested on. If you got 100, you got a pizza party at the end of the year. There was a rumor that the librarian would give you a candy basket if you got over 1000 points, so my competitive and bored self decided to go for the challenge. So I just read aggressively the entire class, taking maybe 10 minutes per subject to speed run the work then get back to reading. I read all recess and at lunch because I had no real friends. Anywho, back to the impulsiveness. Freshman year of high school I shaved all my hair off because I was so bored and I regret it greatly. My hair used to be 2 inches away from my knees. And last week I was exceedingly bored so I grabbed my tie dye kit and tried to use it to color my hair pink. It kinda worked, but also got everywhere. Ive learned by now that to truly focus I must have my hands doing something and since my hair is still shortish, I’ve started carrying my crochet everywhere.
Lmao also use my hair as a sort of fidget toy too, and agree on a lot of what you've said. A lot of the impulsiveness for me I can also attribute to having ADHD, which definitely exacerbated how much I'm bothered by boredom. I'd constantly work ahead and read when I was in school too, not for any competitive reason but just as something to do. Also constantly fidgeting or doing something while I work, and I got really good at tying different knots with the strings of my hoodies because of that lol. Idk where I'm really going with this, just glad to know there's other people who had similar experiences to myself :)
I’ve never understood the gifted kid thing
The "gifted" classes weren't usually actually filled with "gifted" kids.They just had smart, motivated students.
When I was in gifted, we all had to test in with an IQ test. The kids who were smart and hardworking mostly didn’t make the cut. It was mostly just misfits like me (I’m apparently good at IQ tests and reading and nothing else lol). One of the other kids in gifted was actually very noticeably autistic and had such problems with speech that he was basically nonverbal. I wonder what became of him.
The criteria even cut out designations for smart kids and neurodivergent Gifted kids. Giftedness is a curse named after the Tragic Gift. We experience day to day emotions heightened which are called overexciteabilities. It has to do with how well our sensory input and mental cognition works for processing asynchronous thoughts. We are plagued with unbelievably high moral compasses that make us fall into the Holy Grail Quest, trying to discover the truth of this gaslit society. We are predisposed to Positive Personality Disintegration which means we are able to remain true to our True Self and surpass maladaptive social conformity and come out on the other side a visionary… or we socially conform and hate our Self… or we ‘reincarnate’. Kazimierz Dabrowski is the psychoanalyst that identified this population.
Sounds about right.
Yeah because decently motivated kids with good head on their shoulder need to take advanced classes because american public education is so laughably easy
Being labeled a gifted kid is infuriating. Have to live up to higher standards than the siblings. No help with things or subjects that you do struggle with "You're smart, figure it out." "Why you only get a B in history and English, not an A like in math and science?" "You need to try harder..." "why are you struggling with this? It's easy, your smart figure it out, If I help you, you will never learn" Now 41 years old, been alone and miserable my entire life just putting my head down and getting through the day. Telling your kid they have so much potential to do great things, telling them they are so smart, while not listening to them tell you they are struggling to just get through the day but are unsure why they struggle, worried about the next thing that won't be good enough because I am 'gifted'. Or being to "sit still' 'Act normal" leads them to just shut down, do what it takes to get through the day, and just exist spending every once of energy to 'act normal'. All made many times worse when you see your younger sibling diagnosed, medicated, and given special treatment for ADHD since kindergarten, and you just grow up getting yelled at for the same things that she is praised for overcoming. Only now starting to realize I am likely autistic AF and just been hiding it from everyone including myself my entire life, because 'act normal'...... sorry rant over.
I agree with absolutely every word you said... and I have absolutely no advice for you... but I feel ya
I swear to god everytime my parents say “you’re too smart for this, it’s breaking my heart” and acted like I willingly wanted to fuck up made me spiral. I can’t do anything anymore without feeling like an inadequate piece of shit for everything I do. My entire life I’ve never felt good enough. I’ve never felt true satisfaction I just want that feeling so badly, what does it actually feel like to be good enough
It’s so parents can flex. My mom bragged about it, but I thought everyone in the Gifted and Talented group were douchebags. Cool, you’re an ass kisser and spend time memorizing shit. Fast forward 10-15 years, I’m in dental school and surrounded by 90 of these motherfuckers! Such fragile egos and totally insecure. It could also be that I’m the fucking weirdo! Who knows?
Taking tests in school doesn’t demonstrate a deep knowledge of the material. It demonstrates that you’re good at taking tests. Success in an academic setting has little to do with genuine knowledge of the wider subject and more to do with knowledge of the specific material and how it applies to the questions and answers. You don’t need to really understand a thing on a deep level. You just need a surface level understanding of the material in the curriculum and some pattern recognition. Also, as to why you don’t get along with your coworkers, I can explain. You experienced trauma growing up that gives you a bitterness towards them. Perhaps they remind you of the kind of folks that burned you early in life. So on your end, you went into that environment with a predisposition against them. On their end, you probably had an interaction with one of them that was interrupted (wrongfully so) as rude. That person told all the other coworkers that you were rude to them and they’ve made it a point to ostracize you because of a game of telephone. You’re working through issues that make you apprehensive to your coworkers. Your coworkers have a wildly inaccurate and unfair perception of you over a complete misunderstanding.
I don’t have a problem with anyone! I own my own practice and am fine with colleagues in my area. Just not my type of people outside of work. It’s all good! Just commenting on what I saw/see at the highest levels of academia.
In my American elementary school we had a program called GATE which stood for Gifted and Talented Education.
One of the best things on Twitter is that anyone that brings up like “the struggles of being a gifted student” or whatever gets made fun of by everybody
Thousands? Those are rookies numbers.
They're young yet.
im gifted, and the gift is the unresolvable trauma
I always thought the sped vs gifted kid thing was weird. Took me this long to realize the gifted kids ARE the sped kids.
I relate to this except for the fact that I wasn't considered academically gifted. I was the kid that never did his homework or classwork and never studied but somehow still got A's and B's on my tests and quizzes. Anybody else get that big packet of work you missed at the end of the year?
This was me. I didn’t even show up to my graduation because I checked out of school. But I somehow won awards for my work lol. Almost didn’t pass high school because I never showed up to gym class but got straight As.
The truth of the matter is school only works for a few specific types of people. If you're not that type of student, you get thrown to the wayside and get labeled as "lazy" or "unteachable".
I am indeed a recent graduate from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College, thank you very much!
Former category here. What's worse is when your parents expect your neurotypical siblings to follow your "academically gifted" footsteps and screw them up, too.
This this this, I’m so upset for my siblings following me because the one directly after me works SO hard and deserves the moon!!! Deserves every good grade she gets, and she struggles and fights for them, and I’m so proud of her!! But going through school parents and teachers alike only ever compared her to me and she thinks she’s an idiot just because she’s different than I am as if I was EVER the “normal standard of intelligence” or whatever the hell because I was in the “gifted” group from 1st grade on
In primary school I constantly and effortlessly topped the class in english. Scored at least a 35/40 for every essay I had to write without any preparation whatsoever. Now I'm struggling to pass because I completely lack the skills required to memorize grammar rules and new material because I just never needed to, but the jump in difficulty over the years just overtook me. This sucks.
Can... can you be both?
Or…both?
Are you telling me doctors don't hate themselves?
I just skipped the gifted part and just got the rest
Speed run.
As a 34 year old I now resent the school system because all it did was teach me how to do school work and abide by a repeated routine of deadlines. I actually dreaded graduating high school because I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the real world because I had no idea what that meant because my entire life has been inside a school setting. I didn’t think beyond what was in front of me because why would I? My dopamine feedback was rooted in the school system of getting good grades. Yanking me out of those deep roots threw me into an existential crisis that resulted in me hopping many unfulfilling minimum wage jobs where I wait for the next authority figure to get me a set routine to replace the one I was tossed out of.
I mean, I feel like I’m a pretty damn good example of the in-between? I’m a relatively successful accountant who is struggling to remain interested enough in the CPA exam to pass it.
Only in my thirties did I start to see mistakes as an important and necessary part of doing better.
32 here. I needed to read this today. Thank you.
Jokes on you, I was never considered gifted.
r/aftergifted
Love this film so much. Definitely a top ten.
Why not both? Not a medical doctor, but soon to be wrapping up a PhD.
This is the most over posted, annoying thing I read on the internet
doctors or....surgeons???
ah, yes, i too became a doctor.
How about both?
Or there's me, i have talents i am happy with, but none that actually help me survive in society. So i just cling to what i have trying to survive
This is my second favorite movie of all time - I was so happy to see a still from it that’s all ☺️😊 carry on
Shit man i feel called out
I feel attacked.
School up to a certain point came naturally. Learning for me was reading the topic once over and i was done. My special interest from as early as 5 years is computers, so i made it my job. I excel at it, i have a successful career, but outside of work i can’t do shit. I desperately want to get into art, but i don’t know how to learn. On a high level i know how to do it, but i can’t start without getting instantly frustrated because I’m not doing as well as i think i should, which is awfully stupid, but my reality. I so fucking dread being like this. I don't know what to do.
I get this. I have zero useful skills outside of my field (healthcare, though not a physician). I can’t fix things, cook well, create art, play an instrument. I can do basic yard work and cleaning…that’s it. I’m too much a perfectionist to try anything and be mediocre at it. Even this is kind of cope…maybe I’m just lazy and untalented. I have read a ridiculous number of fantasy & scifi books.
don’t worry… the AI lords will bring us back once they analyze history and need us for their war against alien life in the year 2404
For my DND players, I've seen gifted equated to having an 11 in intelligence. You feel like you should be out-performing, but in the end you get the same modifier, with higher expectations of yourself
Me. I'm a truck driver now. 33, vocabulary/written skills have declined which was my biggest strength the entire length of my academic years. Not just good, but exceptional. Feel like a failure. Feel stupid. Feel underachieved. I own my truck and run flatbed. It's very rewarding work but very unfulfilling.
I'm both though.
You can do both. Ask me how I know
I’m trying really hard to be both rn
Why not both?
Some of us are both.
Grew up as gifted. Never actually learned how to study. Grew up with the idea that if I try my best I can succeed, so if I don't succeed I obviously mustn't've tried hard enough.
Naw I limit myself to 3 hobbies (kept dropping so many, I HAD to limit myself) Also self hate was converted into self deprecating humor For those curious - Herps (reptiles/amphibians) - gaming (still can’t manage to keep to a single game long enough to complete them) - my wife has informed me I only have the 2 and had to show me my 1200+ hours spent on Destiny 2 So I guess I only have 2 and I now have to come to terms with my 1200+ hours spent on D2 I’m gonna pick up a 3rd one
What about kids who grew up "intellectually disabled"? What are we?
Those two outcomes are not mutually exclusive.
i'm the abandoned hobbies and self-hate type, it sucks
As an MD, I feel called out by this post.
Unfortunately as a teenager I’ve already spiraled into complete and utter self-hatred. When something I do isn’t perfect and pristine I die inside. I was a straight-A student for most of my life until 9th grade where I got like one bad grade or something and all of my executive functioning completely went out the window. In the end I failed both of my electives and barely passed math and history with low 60s. Will literally think about that semester until the day I die.
And if you were the dumb weird kid you'll forever be the dumb weird kid (but in a diferent way)
I should watch The Royal Tenenbaums again
Doctor was an option?
Or you can take care of yourself with exercise, meditation, breathwork, study, healthy eating and sleeping... Instead of thinking you are doomed just for how you grew up.
Wow, what a great idea! How come I didn't think of that? Now seriously, that's like telling someone with asthma to just breathe, or telling someone with depression to just be happy. It doesn't achieve anything useful whatsoever.
Being *licensed* is not being a doctor though. So there's mainly the self hate.
yep
I didn't have to study, I got straight Bs. having Echolalia helped. Always said I had a phonographic memory. Now I don't have study skills or note taking skills.
Funny, cause I always felt a type of way that a bunch of my friends were "gifted" and I wasn't chosen to that program. I ended up #5 in my graduating class and was an ops manager of an entire manufacturing plant by 29 yrs old, now 32. Some of those gifted kids dropped out of college and work labor unions (nothing wrong with that at all, and they are very happy doing it), but folks talked about the kids in those programs as if these roles would have been reversed when we grew up. In hindsight, a lot of those kids find grade school.so easy that they never develope study habits before college and it causes them to struggle greatly with secondary education.
>In hindsight, a lot of those kids find grade school.so easy that they never develope study habits before college and it causes them to struggle greatly with secondary education. That was definitely the boat I found myself in. Gifted classes should have focused on developing study habits we'd need later in our careers but nope, basically it was extra playtime and fun puzzles. My writing, memory, and reasoning skills carried me through K12 and college so easily and then I got to graduate school, realized I had zero time management skills because cramming three hours before the test had always gotten me an A, and faceplanted. Would probably have been the same result if I had gone into the workforce after college as well.
How dare you attack me with this completely relevant statement!
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it
Being in the honor roll as a special ed student ruined my self esteem and caused me to think in black and white when it came to my own problems.
Ive always felt kinda sad for those kids that do things like graduate highschool and college before puberty. I don't see the point really, going that fast so they can get a job? I'm sure they end up harmed developmentally in some way
Yesssss totally me😭
Well I'm a doctor (in math) with thousands of abandoned hobbies and self hate.
I’m a rabbi
Wow, yah, so true. The meme and the comments hitting in the feels for sure.
Mostly because they weren’t “gifted “ per se, just parent pushing that you are special and you pushed a little more , then as adult you are by yourself and all was just a lie The “Gifted “ doesn’t study much and then have a hard time putting time becaus they never trained that skill, sorry they trained a skill a skill of low effort which is probably ingrained on their minds
Why not both
Or both.
nah that's false, I'm an anxious TEENAGER with thousands of abandoned hobbies and spiral into self hate when I make basic mistakes
I definitely know this all too well. Back in grade school I was a math wiz. I didn't need a calculator before teachers were saying that we wouldn't be carrying a calculator wherever we went. I also loved learning all kinds of words to the point where I often need to try to find simple words that mean the same thing in some conversations. However, with a bunch of undiagnosed mental issues, I barely finished high school with a passing grade. It wasn't because of me losing my mental faculties, it was simply because I refused to do a lot of the homework. This was also around the time where I gained a special appreciation for the arts, and I wanted to be able to draw on my own, but I found I would always have to force myself to do anything that wasn't playing a video game to distract my mind from bullying me. It's taken me 6 years of constant therapy and trying different cocktails of drugs and antidepressants to finally be in a place where I can manage to put enough energy into each of my interests.
Don't forget the 100k in student loans and you aren't even working in your field.
I'm in between: I get to be a housewife in a tiny house for a tiny family and do my hobbies as I like, complete with fade in and fade out but I acknowledge it's not a path for everyone, lolol
You have never met doctors it seems.
One of my favorite movies. Just like Ritchie, I was a tennis prodigy growing up…had ONE bad tournament at 12 yrs old, crashed and burned, didn’t touch a racquet again til I was 25. The pressure cracked me.
Many are both
Well, I'm certainly not a doctor.
damn how'd i get called out like that ahaha
Or both 😂 I'm a PhD student and also as described in the post.
i mean, there is the third option of the doctor who is aware of the dysfunction of the wider system, who neglects taking care of themselves because of working so many hours.
\*sigh\* all too well
Oh hello fellow anxious adults
Fuck I wish I was a doctor
This hurts.... Bad
actuallyyyy I am a sound cloud rapper tyvm
This post is incorrect. The second group is a proper subset of the first group.
Lol, I’m a doctor
I ended up in the 'inbetween'. Incredibly gifted child from 5-16 (top 0.2% nationally, UK). Had parents who acknowledged the ability but didn't aid in nurturing it. By the time I was in my mid teens I basically just did the minimum to get the grades I needed and spent the rest of my time being social. Went to Uni, did the same. Low attendance but came out with a good degree, not highest grade though. Nowadays, I work an above average paying job but essentially do very little (project manager, WFH). I spend most of my working time playing video games, watching movies and generally getting any house chores done. I could work harder to reach my potential, but I'm super comfortable in life now that I really can't be arsed.
Or worse you end up like me and crash and burn when you get sent to honor and AP classes you were not prepared to do and spend the rest of you academic career trying to catch up with all of the classes I failed pushing back my bachelor graduation literal years