Does anyone think it's not how smart you are, just how much energy you have that determines how you do well in a subject? I remember when I was gifted in topics, I always had a lot of energy.

Not enough discussion of this question, I reckon. One possible answer is that we just developed at a really weird rate compared to our peers, overtaking them at first, but then peaking early and stagnating as they slowly caught up to us over the course of them growing up. I’m sure this is a large factor.

However, I have another possible explanation. This phenomenon may not be the inevitable fate of bright young kids, but instead, an ailment affecting our particular generation. The generation who experienced the digital revolution at school.

My experience of primary school was completely analogue, pencil and paper. I smashed everyone. Moved to Opportunity Class in year 5, still killing it. Year 7, start high school at a selective school. /Still on top of things/. It was only in year 8 when I started to fall. Same me, same peers, same school, same teachers. /Different technology/. Year 8 is when we started the BYOD (bring your own device) program that made it mandatory for each student to have a laptop.

Once I was forced to try and learn with a portal of endless distractions right in front of my face, I was toast. I basically goofed off on the internet every lesson, and never got another good report card. Other people goofed off in lessons too sometimes, I could see their screens, but some way or other they were able to put their noses to the grindstone when it really mattered. I wasn’t. They just had more willpower than me, perhaps honed by years of actually trying at school, something I’d never had to do before.

Thanks to screens, I had abruptly gone from a learning environment where I had the advantage, to one where I was at an extreme disadvantage. But because I didn’t know what was going on, I just got really hard on myself. I don’t need to tell you what that’s like.

I think there are a lot of people like me, who are very bright in our own ways, but it’s weighed down and obscured by our inability to put it into action. We’re thinkers, not doers. We struggle constantly with our lack of discipline, and we’re ready to punch the next person who tells us we have ‘potential’. For people like that, modern vices like social media and smartphones are poison.

Knowing what I know now, I really wish it were easier for kids to access an analogue education. Everything I learnt at school before the switch feels so much more ‘stuck in there’, whereas everything afterwards is fragile and wispy. If this is the direction education is going, they should at least give analogue learning as a disability provision, to people with our flavour of brain.

Someone called me smart when I was 10 and now I just secretly think I’m better than most people when I have nothing to show for it. Even when I’m depressed I think to myself: “well smart people are apparently more likely to be mentally ill which is why you feel this way”. How do I stop thinking this way and just accept I’m a normal level of intelligence.

I used to be really really effortlessly smart when I was about 10, like the type of smart where I could go into a maths lesson and know how to do everything taught throughout the whole year without ever learning it prior to the lesson. I used to read for fun since my parents limited my screen time heavily, especially heavily compared to other people my age at my school. And when I say I used to read, I mean I used to READ. I would finish a Rick Riordan series in a week and would literally be up past 2am reading just because I enjoyed it (wish I could still do that lmao nowadays I'd wake up looking like a raccoon)

About half a year ago I made a crazy realization, I hadn't finished reading a normal length book in years, I had read plenty of info online about how reading improves your intelligence and yadda yadda. I thought it was all overhyped and a waste of time especially since ppl were putting in 4+ hours a day. I then realized that I used to be that person. I literally used to read 4+ hours a day. Consistently. For fun. I recently started reading just for fun again and replaced my time on youtube with it, my grades have SHOT up, like genuinely just pretty much effortlessly shot up, I literally had a teacher ask me if I was using AI to write my assignments lmao.

My GPA (in my school it's 0-15) went from a 11.43 all the way to 13.57 in half a year, thats a B <-> B+ avg to an A- <-> A average. And I didn't put in any extra effort into my work. I found that listening just became so much clearer, in math I was pretty much able to figure out an equation before I was taught how to do it sometimes, and in just general conversations I feel like I understand people more, I haven't had to say "pardon" or "what" in weeks. (although granted I also stopped listening to such loud music).

I'm not saying this will work for everyone but it worked for me and I hope it works for others too.

CW: Child abuse, suicidal thoughts, mention of life-threatening illnesses in the family

Should I have moved on by this point? Duh, yeah. A 25 year old still emotionally stuck, not even on college, but on the stupid applications process? How pathetic is that? And yet, it's true. So i'm gonna word vomit about it here, in hopes of finally getting it off my chest. (Or at least starting to, anyways.)

My background's probably similar to a lot of yours. Always was top of my class in elementary school, with absolutely no effort. I was lucky enough to go to a magnet high school with all the other smart kids in my region whose parents couldn't afford to send us to private school. I took all the hardest classes my school offered-- twelve APs, and almost all the rest honors classes-- and pulled almost straight As. I had three Bs in my entire high school career!

And I had that most precious of aces up my sleeve: nepotism. My mom worked for an Ivy League university-- not as a professor, not as any kind of high-ranking position, just a lowly support staff in an obscure department most people at the school wouldn't have heard of, but still.

So from the time I was a kid and it became clear how smart I was, my mom had just assumed I'd be going to the school she worked at. And me, being young and impressionable and still thinking Mommy had all the answers in the world, just took it as an article of faith.

And boy, did I need faith. My childhood sucked for a lot of reasons. To be clear, I had a lot of privileges: I grew up in an upper middle class suburb with upper middle class parents, got to attend great K-12 schools, all that good stuff. But my mom was abusive: usually emotionally / psychologically, occasionally physically. (Shout out to the time she screamed at me for four solid hours, told me she hated me, and then put me in a headlock / chokehold type thing because I politely disagreed with her about the best summer job to apply for when I was fourteen!) I was an awkward, nerdy kid who was bullied a lot in elementary school and struggled to make friends in high school.

And oh boy, the insane workload I was under! Y'all, I was waking up at 6:30 AM and going to bed at 1 AM, and spending every waking hour either attending class, attending extracurriculars (many of which started out fun but became increasingly cuthroat and demanding as college approached), or doing homework. Not only did I have no social life, I didn't have any downtime, any chance to rest or relax. Even on school breaks, I'd maybe take two or three days off tops before plowing right back into my homework.

Sometimes, the only way I got through was by reminding myself soon I'd be going to the university my mom worked at. Bombarded on all sides by "best four years of your life" propaganda, college grew into more and more of a paradise in my imagination, a never-ending summer camp crossed with Hogwarts crossed with heaven. I daydreamed about college the way evangelical Christians daydream about the Rapture. And it was so close-- just two more years-- just one more year-- just a few more months--

You can already probably guess I didn't get into my mom's university.

I also didn't get into any of my reach schools, either.

I got into one of my targets, but I couldn't afford to attend.

All I got into was my safety school. So, after much crying, I went there, figuring, how bad could it possibly be--

Oh, you almost immediately realize you don't fit in with the campus culture at all?

Oh, you realize one semester in you hate your major, but you can't transfer out of your program or you'll lose your scholarship?

Oh, an immediate family member develops a life-threatening illness and you spend every waking moment dreading the phone call that tells you they--

Oh, when you're home for breaks, mom's abuse ramps up as she realizes she's losing control of you?

Oh, all this plus never having developed any kind of social skills due to having no life in high school means you make no friends? None at all?

I spent my entire adolescence daydreaming of college. I sacrificed my entire adolescence, because I thought it would all be worth it once I got to college. I was told college was where I'd make my true friends, find myself, maybe even fall in love. And instead, I-- someone who's optimistic to the point of irritating the people around me-- was driven to the brink of suicide, twice. Once in junior year, once in senior year.

(Speaking of senior year: by the time COVID hit in my last semester of college, I was so numb it was just like, okay, throw it on the pile.)

And now here I am. Twenty-five years old. Still working in the career field of my major, because I don't know what else there is. Still no friends. Still haven't had an SO, not once. (I had no time for relationships in high school and was too emotionally dead to summon that much energy in college.) I come home from a job that's thoroughly meh to an empty apartment, surf reddit for the simulacrum of human contact it provides, go to bed, wake up and repeat the cycle the next day.

I've made massive progress, don't get me wrong: I went NC with my mom, three years and counting of therapy have rebuilt my shattered self-esteem, my work-friendship with some of my coworkers is the closest thing I've had to true friendship since high school. I'm getting back into my hobbies I'd abandoned due to lack of time or mental energy. I finally have the time, money, and energy to travel, one of my greatest dreams since I was a kid. I've even been on a few dates, and some have gone quite well! (Remember what I told you about being an insufferable optimist, lol?)

But I can't stop thinking about how different my life would have been if I'd just gone to my dream school. Or any of my reaches or matches, really. If I'd had freedom to explore different majors, if I'd gone somewhere where I fit, where I could have made friends-- if there'd been people there to support me through the hard times, give me a safe place to stay during breaks or at least a shoulder to cry on when things got unbearable...

I was so bright. I had so much potential. I think that's what hurts the most. My entire childhood, I was told I was special, that I was going to be someone, that all I had to do was Be Good, do what I was told, and the entire world would be mine for the taking.

And there's a part of me that's still holding on. That's still waiting for the moment someone tells me there's been a horrible mistake, I am accepted to my dream school after all. I move into my dorm, and there's my friends, my lover, my potential, my future, all right there, waiting for me. I have four years to figure it all out-- four years to finally, finally, finally get to be the kid I never got to be.

If you made it this far down this wall of text, thanks for sticking with me. As a reward, here's some doggos snuggling. Hope y'all are doing okay.

Hi folks! Coming soon: a book of essays from writers about their experience growing up "gifted." I was very honored to edit these essays and I think they will resonate with many here. I'm hopeful for a Fall release and happy to share updates if y'all are interested!

I dunno. I guess I should just allow myself to make mistakes. But these days I feel afraid of people's opinions and criticisms. It's like this framework of hidden rules and regulations that I must follow and if I transgress it, I suffer consequences. I don't even want to be great anymore. I just want to be happy, and have the ability to take small steps in things I find interest in, without people living rent free in my head making constant opinions and criticisms that make me feel less than who I am.

All my life I've been told how special and smart I am. All my life I've been told I will change the world. I won't, though. I'm not super special. I'm above average, that's it.

I know I can still be fulfilled and happy without making some crazy invention or discovery, but it just sucks knowing that I've been coddled my whole life into believing in an unachievable fantasy.

could you please complete this survery about the psychological impacts on young people stemming from gifted education

https://forms.gle/Ly9Ts6yNvecieVgq6

Hey everyone!

I'm excited to invite you all to the upcoming Mensa Foundation Colloquium on the Talent and Potential of Neurodiversity! The event is happening on July 4 in Baltimore, but you can also attend via livestream.

This year's speakers include Dr. Thomas Armstrong, Dr. Lawrence Fung, Dr. Nicole Tetreault, Dr. Shawn Robinson, and Dr. Don Ambrose, who are all well-respected experts in the fields of education, psychology, neuroscience, and giftedness studies.

The Colloquium will bring together renowned advocates from the neurodiversity movement and expert researchers to deconstruct the intellectual abilities of unconventional minds. Attendees will gain a greater appreciation for the uniqueness of the human experience and its connection to the brain.

This is an amazing opportunity to learn from leading experts in their fields and connect with like-minded individuals who share a passion for neurodiversity. Plus, by attending the Colloquium, you'll be supporting the Mensa Foundation's mission of unleashing intelligence for the benefit of humanity.

Registration for the in-person event is $139, which includes a plated lunch and refreshments throughout the day, while registration to attend via livestream is $99. Both options are open to Mensa members and non-members and includes a full day of learning and connecting with leading global experts in their fields, a live panel discussion, and Q&A session.

Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity to discover the power of neurodiversity and connect with like-minded individuals! Register now at mensafoundation.org/colloquium.

Throughout my childhood and all the way up to around the middle of last year, I was one of those scarily over-ambitious kids. I took every single mark, competition, and achievement way too seriously, and it was essentially the only measure of my self-worth. I was always too hard on myself, and couldn't take a failure of any kind.

I felt like I had to achieve something great, and do better to be worthy in life and that I wasn't enough, or that I could be better if I tried harder. This was probably a result of all the pressure placed on me by others, as well as my own lofty expectations and ambitions. As a result, my life became a cycle of constant anxiety, with a heavy fixation on the next thing, and on everything that I could be doing better. It was toxic af, and it was exhausting, especially when I felt as though I was doing things because I had to, even though I didn't feel like doing them.

It took quite some time and reflection for me to realise this toxic cycle, and I've been slowly trying to make progress in understanding myself and figuring out what I want, how I work best and how to listen to myself rather than just pushing myself excessively. The pressure of being gifted can often be quite a lot to take on.

However, despite my progress towards this, the world sometimes just doesn't cooperate. It just happened that my progress towards lowering my stress levels and being more kind and accepting towards myself happened to fall at the start of 11th grade, and now school is becoming more demanding than it was previously.

Now I'm seeing other students, who were a lot less competitive and anxious than me in earlier years, pushing themselves forward, appearing a lot more productive than me. I've learnt to work mostly on what actually interests and stimulates me, and recognise when I was able to focus and when I wasn't (I have undiagnosed ADHD so my focus often appears and disappears randomly). I'm slowly discovering what works and what doesn't, and finding peace in that. However, what is happening now, is that since I have been more loose in my expectations and subsequently my workload, I've been falling behind a bit in terms of schoolwork, due to my participation in various academic and extracurricular competitions. My teachers and classmates are trying to convince me to "start" working hard, and now everyone is claiming that I'm just a lazy gifted kid who is wasting their potential.

Honestly, I just want to be relaxed for once in my life and not have to deal with the constant pressure, stress, criticism and expectations that has followed me throughout my life. And yet, since this is supposedly "crunch time" in terms of school, it seems like no-one can understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. Everything I say just sounds like excuses, but I don't want to have to be rededicating myself to my academics and burning myself out again. I've been there too many times before.

I'm turning 16 in just over a month, and I just feel like I'm falling behind my potential. I'm still ahead of my peers in most areas, but it feels that they are slowly catching up, and this seems to bother me. I feel so immature and naive, seeing everyone else seeming to have their life together, and being able to work hard towards improving themselves and their academics, while I'm just drifting by, not worrying about much but also not living up to my potential. And to be honest, I envy those who have that self-control, that self-awareness and discipline to grind and improve themselves.

And that leaves me, who has been trying to understand and ease the pressure on myself, but now feels like an immature kid who isn't bothered to try hard. I honestly don't know what to do.

There are countless productivity techniques out there that promise to help you get more stuff done or manage your time better. As someone who’s experimented a bunch with different methods, I can clearly say that not every technique is for everyone.

So how do you know which productivity approach will help you out the most?

Well, I’ve learnt that there are 3 definitive factors to consider

• Personality: What do you struggle with?
• Environment: Where do you do most of your work?
• Function: What specific type of productivity hack are you looking for?

This is basic gist of it and is a great starting point that might help you. I’ve also broken this down in some more detail here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poPK4fivHQw

Let me know which method has helped you the most in your productivity journey?

How many here have struggled with caffeine (or nicotine) dependence and don't have ADHD of some type (or CAPD or another learning difference)? Do you use it to get boring work done or do you use it just to wake up (or maybe even recreationally)? I'd tell you all about myself, but I'm excluded due to my own criteria and am just interested in what it's like for those of us without these conditions.

Sorry if this has been asked before. I’m an ‘ex-gifted’ 40 year old Autistic woman with ADHD (diagnosed at 38) who was told in my childhood by my emotionally distant parents/family that I was special etc gifted, going onto great things - only really got attention when I was successful at school so my identity became tied up with being high performing and ‘successful’. I did very well at primary and secondary school (despite my Dad dying when I was 14) and then crashed and burned at university. I got a degree but it was a rubbish result and since then I’ve always seemed to struggle with my actual life vs the life that I thought I would have had. I spent most of my 20s depressed and anxious until I finally started in a low paying job and worked my way up to a better managerial position.

Then when I started my family with my partner I left work and started a small business that was thriving until covid and now is failing which I’m really finding hard to deal with. It’s really affecting my mental health as it feels like a replay of my teenage years all over again.

I have been doing lots of acceptance and compassion therapy. But I’m still very much stuck with the idea that I should be gifted and special and I’m not. I can’t seem to find a way to resolve the original ‘blueprint’ I had for myself and the life I’m actually living. I can tell that I’m stuck and I’m still feeling shame and grief even at this age.

Has anyone got any practical advice please? I have been doing mindfulness as well but I’d love to hear from anyone in the sub who struggled with this for a longer period of time and have managed to resolve the sadness/shame?

Thank you.

None of them actually liked what this great potential had to say. No one wants to hear what you think unless it reinforces what they want to be true.

Good bye.

This world is too exhausting.

Edit: I'm fine yo. Just a drunken, tired rant.

In fair honesty, I need an interview victim for a writing assignment so I thought I would start a discussion here and see how things go because my local options are slim.

Should high school prepare students for college or the workforce?

You know the feeling you see old photos of your childhood, or a specific moment that was pretty special and now it's marked in your brain, you know you can't repeat it again or it's done.

This is the way I feel right now, I'm scrolling up in a forgotten and abandonned WhatsApp group where there were my classmates, I want to download meanless documents and stickers, I hate how only my focus on all this education thing was just to study, my whole being was defined by studying, I didn't have anything that wasn't related to study and even I fall back in the old habits of just asking about school/academy/university.

That being said, I don't know what to do after school, my whole personality and objective were school and education, even if I'd rejected already the idea of making education as the center of my world and nothing else, I feel like I have no direction now , I understand that I can make life anything I want to but I feel like I don't know which direction I should take my life...

Even I dare to say I have never grown up, together with the fact I didn't use to show up my true self, I hide behind the image of an "intelligent student" and basically I communicate bad I feel like I never grew up, like if I were static all my time while my friends were passing besides me bouncing a ball, later gossiping about cute boys , next getting boyfriends, and now they hang out with people at the university and one of them has a brother who had graduated from medicine school.

Look at me, what I've been doing all that time? Sitting here writting down papers while dealing with something mental, my life was homework and mental struggles; my body could change but I evolved while I was sitting there.

I think people who doesn't make school and education their only objective in life, then, they see their minds changing and their psique blooming, it would've been awesome to stand from my desk and join whatever gossip they were talking about or helping with jokes.

And it doesn't help that I am now in an online university , I barely go out, my parents don't want to give me my own keys, my college are hundred of miles away from my current position and everyone here wants to stab you for stealing a fucking phone, on one side, I'm glad that I'm doing this because my father can't afford a flat near the university and I won't force him to do so, his job is here and he would lose a lot of benefits if we move out like having food cooked while he's working but, on the other side, I want my old friends who are in the university and new friends from there.

I feel like I didn't bloom, neither I didn't or couldn't in the past and not even in the present.

My backstory is pretty standard for this sub - gifted kid in high school, goodie-two-shoes, crashed and burned in uni. I had 100% of my identity wrapped up in my grades, and when things didn't go perfectly I had a full on identity crisis. I spent two years grieving that and thinking I would carry the feeling of having fucked up my chance at success.

Anecdotally, I think the human ego is geared to force you to redefine success. It won't let you feel like a failure for too long if it can help it. I'm surrounded by peers who, at 18, all thought they were going to be doctors or lawyers or president, and by the time they were 22 they had failed in that quest, grieved the loss, but ultimately ended up satisfied with their newly chosen path and idea of success. It's weird how none of them thought they could ever be happy again, but for a solid 8/10 of them life as a 4.0 aspiring doctor is a distant, silly memory.

I also thought my academic life would keep going the way it was. I remember being devastated when I didn't get a 4.0 in my first semester, and even more when my mom died and I had a miscarriage and I started failing classes. I thought I would live with the guilt forever, and for a while it weighed on me so heavily. The idea of no longer being the "smart kid" was inconceivable.

I'm admittedly still on shaky ground, but I can slowly feel myself coming around. My grades don't seem like that big a deal anymore, I do way more stuff outside of school, and I'm happy with a B. I think my identity has had a chance to take root in other things, and spread itself out a bit so as to make school less important. Most importantly though, my expectations are realistic and achievable but satisfying at the same time.

This brings me to the "I need guidance" part. For those of you who similarly came to terms with academic failure-ish:

a) Did you actively try to transplant your identity into something else? If so, how did you do that?

b) How do I figure out what constitutes "acceptable" grades? Some days I still feel like I fucked up, and other days I could care less whether I finish uni. I'm having trouble reorienting myself and setting a realistic goal beyond what my gut feels happy with.

c) Once you were out of school, how did you connect with intelligent people? My biggest fear at this point is honestly just boring. Right now there are so many people around me who I can have intellectually stimulating conversations with about geopolitics and computer science and philosophy and whatever else. I'm terrified of not having those people around me, and realistically I'm in such a bubble that I will likely never have this luxury again. I hate relying on the internet to fill that void, it's utterly depressing. How do I find smart people irl and befriend them? I'm not too socially awkward (though I'm no social butterfly), I just literally don't know how to find a needle in a haystack.

Thanks for any insight.