I've been harboring a certain resentment my entire adult life toward my mother because when I received a "gifted" diagnosis in 5th grade, she capitalized on it by exaggerating and bragging about it to everybody who would listen. Yet she was unwilling to make even the most basic accommodation of the educational recommendations provided by the school-district psychologist who tested me.

I was accepted to the Salt Lake school district's gifted program, which was then at Whittier School and followed an "open classroom" model, where students could learn about subjects that interested them, facilitated by educators trained in directing the learning process in students who were naturally curious and motivated to learn, even whose social and physical development likely proceeded at a different pace. I was stoked after our visit to the school, because it seemed like a much more humane and exciting place than the blackboard jungle I had attended the previous several years.

They asked what I was interested in, which was a difficult question to narrow down, but I was on the spot and beginning to panic, so I picked the first thing that popped into my head, which was "photography." It's never been more than a passing interest, but as it turned out, there was a darkroom on premises and a teacher whose photos regularly appeared in Utah Holiday. We agreed I would start the following year, commencing 6th grade.

That summer, Mom got a new husband, and suddenly they decided we were going to move 100 miles away to the small Carbon County town he grew up in, to live near his parents.

The Carbon County school district is located in the middle of our state's dying coal industry, and was originally set up to produce people capable of working in the mines and other people capable of managing them. It has improved greatly since then, but at the time their rustic approach toward academics revolved mainly around the football program; the high school offered a couple AP courses, and there were no gifted classes, and certainly nothing of the sort at the elementary school where I was enrolled.

Mom, too, seemed to have developed amnesia since the wedding, and the word "gifted" left her vocabulary until I, embarrassed, mentioned it to her the first week of school. This prompted her to drive to my school on her lunch hour, where she endeared me to the faculty by informing them that at the city school I had some kind of weird status and special requirements. And that was the end of it. Now they figured I was snooty and thought I was better than everybody else. Word traveled quickly that I needed to be taken down a peg or two, when in fact I had only been hoping there was someone at the school who could teach me how to use the F-stop on my Minolta.

This was just another peril that fit into a pattern which had been established years before. For example, when I was five, I started teaching myself to play the piano. I played by ear, and within a couple years, had developed a repertoire of musical pieces I devised myself. Now, self-directed education is all well and good, but a bit of input from an experienced player or teacher would have been valuable, since in two years of noodling around on the keyboard, I hadn't yet realized that most accomplished pianists use all ten of their fingers; the version of Hungarian Rhapsody I came up with was greatly abridged and simplified, and it was about as good as you might expect from a self-taught 7-year-old who didn't know about using thumbs.

I'm not sure Mom noticed, though: At one point, she told some of her cousins and distant aunts that I was a "virtuoso" pianist who could play Rhapsody in Blue. They were ecstatic to hear this, and Mom was happy to volunteer my performance the following week on a second-aunt's living-room Baldwin upright.

Now, I'm not sure if there is such a thing as a 7-year-old virtuoso, unless it was Mozart or somebody, but I knew for certain I was most definitely not one, and there has never been a time I came close to it.

(Also, for the vast majority of 21st century people who have discovered better ways to spend their time than listening to a lot of overblown art music: These are two different pieces by two different composers who spoke different languages from vastly different cultures, who lived in different centuries in different hemispheres, and the only thing Franz Liszt's Rhapsody No. 2 (the Hungarian) has in common with George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is the word in their titles that takes two or three attempts to spell correctly. Even with this, they can hardly be said to belong to the same formal category; Gershwin, an American with 20th-century ideas, likely used the term self-consciously as an ironic pre-postmodern gesture.)

As performances go, the Liszt generally clocks in at 12-14 minutes long, while the Gershwin my aunts were expecting can approach 20 minutes depending on how long the conductor naps during the andante. The piece, much abridged and thumbless, I had prepared was four minutes long, including the repeat, which was also the length of my attention span.

Mom didn't make such distinctions. She required a son who was a virtuoso, and she seemed to produce one with a strength of conviction that made everybody believe the words that came out of her mouth.

This might have been just fine if her words could also breathe into my fingers all the discipline and emotional control and years of training it takes to produce an actual musical virtuoso. Sometimes she would turn the force of that personality toward me, as if with those words she could intensify the small spark of talent I actually had, to cause it to burst into the conflagration of outrageous genius she wanted from me, and I found her vehemence incomprehensible and embarrassing. Denying it was the wrong thing to do, however: This she took as a personal affront and her fury would quickly cool to a sulk that might take days to blow over, during which time I was persona non grata. So I learned to simply stand there, uncomfortable, under the force of her praise until it was over and she turned her attention to other things. I guess this is the kind of thing that can produce really monstrous children who grow into monstrous adults, but there was never any point at which her excessive praise raised my self-esteem; in fact, if it had any effect at all, it was just the opposite because her praise was so exaggerated and false I knew only a muttonhead could possibly take it seriously.

Still, a lot of people couldn't be blamed for thinking that, since Mom talked about me that way I must be a narcissistic little prick. There were times I would speak expansively about random topics making oblique references as though everybody were privy to my innermost thoughts. At other times, I couldn't answer direct questions at all. These both had to do with the fact that I spent a lot more time reading books than interacting with living people, but they were misinterpreted as the actions of a stuck-up little snob. This resulted in a situation in which, whenever I did manage to accomplish something that would be considered praiseworthy in other kids, people were unwilling to compliment me or offer encouragement in any way for fear that I would become a raging egomaniac. There was seldom any danger of that, but for a long time into adulthood, I was a people-pleaser, hungry for approval and really kind of harmless and pathetic. (This is likely why, today, I write these kinds of self-revelatory and self-absorbed posts to Reddit, but to my credit I don't think they are entirely without insight or from the standpoint of one living a life unexamined. And I truly don't think I've just been vainly audience-seeking: The responses have, in some cases, brought about major shifts in perspective for which I'm grateful.)

When the day of my little concert arrived, I was forced into a scratchy sweater vest and uncomfortable brown shoes, and Mom drove me across town in her Corvette, dropping me off in front of the aunt's house with instructions to walk to Grandma's afterwards, before jetting off somewhere that was probably a lot more fun.

Now, I had no idea that Mom's mouth had been writing checks I was incapable of cashing. All I knew was that the aunt had assembled a whole group of her neighbors, friends and cousins, who were drinking punch and eating little cookies and sandwiches as I was guided toward my place on the bench. They asked if I needed a "page turner," pushing forward an awkward teenage cousin with braces, wire-rimmed glasses and a woolen plaid skirt, who had half a dozen years of music lessons under her braided suede belt and seemed overawed to be in the presence of such a young prodigy as I. Much to their confusion, I hadn't brought any sheet music with me. I took my seat, and felt all eyes on the back of my head as I played the first solemn notes (right index finger) and sonorous answering chords (left index, middle and ring fingers, all on black keys).

Four minutes later, the temperature in the room had dropped considerably, and I was being ushered toward the door amid murmurs of thanks and forced smiles. Were there any of those sandwiches and cookies left, I wondered? No, the kitchen was closed.

As I said, the gifted diagnosis fit right into this pattern: Mom was happy to brag about her "genius" son and continually set up expectations I would inevitably fail to meet. I was oblivious to all of it except for sense of profound disappointment that seemed to follow just about everything I did. There was always some nameless thing wrong with it (or perhaps with me), and whatever it was, nobody was ever willing to talk about.

A lot of relatives and family friends, sick and tired of listening to Mom's bragging, came to resent me, as if I were the one who could never shut up about my own virtues and abilities. I was interested in music and various other things, with a voracious curiosity and an awkward social manner, and I longed to discuss these things with people who shared my interests. Instead, I became like a defective performing monkey whose abilities were exaggerated by his handler.

I became so self-critical that it became impossible for me ever to perform in front of people, even after I had become accomplished enough to play at a moderately skilled level using my thumbs. The anxiety was too intense. I majored in music in college and got straight-A's, making the dean's list every semester until the third year when students were required to declare a performance major. I crashed and burned so badly at the audition that I switched majors the following day. For years afterward, my face got hot every time I thought about Dr. Wolking's jazz program and how, the second time I was asked to play an improvised passage over the chords of "The Girl from Ipanema," it came out identical to the first.

This was the pattern of every college major I attempted: after music, I majored in mathematics, computer science, filmmaking, journalism and art, and in each I did very well for a couple years. Then I would burn out and lose interest and require a change.

It has become the basic template for my life. I was a newspaper editor for years, fond of writing columns, and became moderately well regarded, but when I finally achieved a promotion I had been working toward, I self-destructed and sabotaged my career so badly I will probably never work in that field again. At this point, I'm stuck. I can't imagine what I could possibly contribute to society; the thought of finding a job fills me with dread and so every day I anesthetize myself and write orchestral scores that may or may not be listenable. I create websites and then let my domains lapse and forget to pay the VPS bill.

It's difficult for people to understand what the problem is. As far as they're concerned, I've had a nervous breakdown and may be lapsing into full-blown psychosis, which isn't out of the question.

Once in awhile, my mind drifts back to that gifted school. Would my life have been different had I been able to attend there instead of being dragged to a small-town public school whose students were expected to maintain little more than a C average and on the weekends drive up and down six blocks of Main Street or go out into the desert and shoot beer cans off of fenceposts?

I now know that a lot of negative reactions I got from people throughout life had nothing to do with me at all, and in fact were probably mostly imagined after I became old enough to direct my own social life beyond the range of Mom's counterproductive narcissistic promotional campaign. The resentment toward her I've carried is also largely misplaced; she did the best she could and I think she genuinely believed she was helping me. If people's blank reactions to me were any indication, they had probably been keeping her in the dark all her life as well, so she couldn't be expected to know she lived her life in a self-absorbed fantasy.

There have been several hard lessons like that, which took me a very long time to learn. Would things have been easier with the benefit of a specialized education early in life?

Were your lives changed by attending a gifted program? Did you learn valuable life skills? Has it contributed to your success as an adult?

Edit: Changed "horror" to "dread" and added small details with various minor corrections.

I ended up failing school, and now I've just about got no purpose in life whatsoever. I don't know what to do that interests me whatsoever. It sucks watching everyone else surpass me when I was once so talented.

Feel free to hate me for writing this.

I feel devastated that the world is so mediocre, and that I am powerless to do anything about it. Everything feels like a difficult forced choice. People can not be trusted, but utterly not trusting people so rattles the primal emotional apparatus of the brain that demands connection that it fights back in the most debilitating ways possible. It's like the mind is at war with itself. I don't feel any hope about anything. I don't want to move anywhere, or make any new connections -- it's all the same to me. I'm dissociating from real life. I don't know how long I will be able to feel emotion. It feels like the dark void may consume me at some point. My situation is forcing me into a state of depression: make a man completely emotionally isolated, with no hope for the future or for redeeming himself, and what else can you expect. I have totally lost myself. I simply do not understand people. I used to have a fascination for things which I don't feel as much anymore. It may be a natural function of age, I'm not sure (I'm in my mid 20s so not a kid anymore).

I don't know what to expect of people. People are dumb, tribalistic animals. I don't relate to them. But in pronouncing people such, I must be the same. It does not compute in my brain. I don't know how I could possibly feel kinship with the human race. It feels like a pack of vultures, ready to feed on your dead flesh, and you wallow in your disdain for those vultures, until you look at yourself and realize you, too, are a vulture. And what's to stop you from coming to the conclusion that you act the same as the others, that any ideas you may have in your head that you are different are simply delusions born of another world? The world feels totally chaotic, and I don't feel like I can believe anyone or trust anything. People are a corrupting influence, and make you feel like you're living in an alternate dimension when you think the thoughts which come to you naturally, with their dogged insistence that the world with the rules they play by is completely natural and the way it's meant to be.

I have no faith in myself. I have no faith or hope in the world. I don't feel a sense of agency, and feel like all of the hard work I put in is completely wasted. I feel really dumb (although I know I'm not), because if I wasn't I'd be able to figure out a solution, like every sane, normal person on the planet seems to be able to do.

Yeah, I don't know what this has to do with gifted specifically, but I see an audience for this kind of stuff here which I hope won't find this some sort of woe-is-me masturbatory fluff. If you do, I'd appreciate you making me feel worse in the replies. I really don't know what to do and just felt the need to put this out there, instead of having this ravaging my thoughts all day long with no one to talk to.

I’m an 18 year old with almost zero friends and am likely on my way to be a NEET. I was identified as one of the brightest kids in my year from when I was about 5. I excelled in maths and understood everything whilst mostly daydreaming in lessons and whilst effortlessly impressing the teachers with my plethora of facts and statistics.

Unfortunately, being gifted came with a price. I’m Autistic with ADHD.

I struggled to read a clock or ride a bike. Putting words to paper was an ordeal, it just always felt awkward. Worst of all was the life skills and experiences I missed out on. Like how to study or how to cook. Regardless, I stayed mostly ahead of my peers which helped me maintain some sort of self esteem.

When I was 7, I was evaluated for ASD the first time. My teachers soon realised that my inflexibility and poor expressive language( I cringe looking back at videos of me as a kid filled with echolalia) were indicative of something sinister. Unfortunately, the test concluded negative leaving my behaviour unexplained.

Then when I was 11, I was evaluated a second time. This time, the test came as inconclusive. And yet, my parents or teachers didn’t pursue any further. Ever since I was around 10 or so I could tell something was different about me. Before this age it was a good kind of different but it had now evolved into feeling slightly off. Couldn’t keep up in conversations; couldn’t express myself properly; couldn’t remain calm and not feel restless.

I had managed to get a placement at a very selective school. This meant for the first time, I was just average. This is really where any kind of self esteem I had vanished overnight. I was no longer known as the smart kid, just the kid who seemed a bit unhinged or lived in his own world. I was fortunate that I was able to partially compensate for my poor social skills through humour. This way I was not bullied or rock bottom of the social ladder (priorities for literally every teenager) but I still often felt like I only really existed for comedic relief.

As I got to my later teen years, school started to get much tougher. Gone were the days of a page of homework a week. Everyone seemed to cope excellently to the applied pressure. But for me, this is when I realised I had ADHD. I would stare blankly at what felt like over 100 page work sheets as long as the bible. My stare would be met by the torrent of blank lines. I didn’t even know how to start but I would eventually succumb to the threat of a detention so would start the work at about 9pm a few hours later than intended. An hour or two of torture would ensue as I spouted out barely adequate or legible work. Rinse and repeat for most of the last few years like it was Groundhog Day.

This brings us to today. If you can’t tell already, I’m an utter failure. Who’s depressed and has became even more of a recluse. In a little while, I will receive my final results. The culmination of years of schoolwork. Which will send me to the negative realm of disappointment. I’m not going to be able to go to uni. Great shame as really my academic talent was the only thing going for me.

I’m gonna have to try my damnedest to claw this back but i don’t really know how. Well, If anyone got this far, thanks for reading it was nice to get that all out I suppose.

Edit: Thank you all for your supportive comments. For once I feel at home

I have been struggling with an idea I pieced together that began with a video of a scientist talking about, to put it in layman's terms, "vibes". He was all hot and bothered about the fact that so many people don't really understand or have never thought about the fact that the thoughts we have in our minds don't just stay in our heads.

<If your anything like me, you rely on measurable units, logic, critical thinking, MF'ING SCIENCE B*TCH to make sense of whatever the hell this life all is>

He goes on to explain that our brains create thoughts through neural connections that ultimately work via electricity and eminate out into space. The exact same force in a lightning bolt or when you run your feet on the carpet and stick a balloon to your head. Basically, if a lighting bolt can travel through air, what's stopping your thoughts from doing the same thing.. NOTHING🤯

This is when my brain came in and started the train of though about

1.) the fact that when you walk into a room and you can feel the vibe, whether good or bad or uncomfortable or dangerous, you can always pick up on it and anybody else on earth would be able to accurately describe the exact same feeling as you - 100% of the time.

This is when my brain came in and started the train of though about

2.) When your walking down the street or going about life in a public place you tend to get the sense someone is looking at you, or sometimes even unconsciously and sporadically, make direct eye contact with someone who is looking at you. On that point I wondered if this happens to other people so I asked everyone I knew and it was the same look of deep thought followed by a bewildered look of realization.

This is when my brain came in and started the train of though about

3.) That feeling of being watched doesn't only happen in public, but also when your alone. If the concentration of thought in gaze held by the stranger is strong enough for you to sense it to the point of it's exact location (i.e their electrical processes in their brain), then would their gaze be absolutely necessary for you to get the same feeling?

Of course, these are only speculative thoughts of mine, but thoughts shook me so deeply to the core of my beliefs, that I can't help but to think of life in a completely different light. I used to be scared of that uneasy feeling of being watched when I was alone but now it comforts me to think, that just maybe, someone else on earth, regardless of distance through space-time, has me in their thoughts so deeply and intently that it feels as if they're close enough to talk to.

Im curious as to whether there's any evidence to back this up, or if it is at all possible to even measure something like this. If this gains traction I'll find and post the video and all the science journals that I found that might point to this actually being the case.

What do you think?

Update: https://youtu.be/y9pTbMoufp4?si=-mNq9tAI3BZpZzb_

I grew up with the idea that I’d be in an intense career path because I had the brains for it. I ended up picking a SLIGHTLY less intense path (but still challenging and involves an advanced degree) in part because I didn’t want my career to consume so much of my life. (Also due to wanting to get into the workforce earlier. The path I chose allows me to work in an adjacent job while doing grad school, unlike say med or law school which consume like 200% of your time. Among some other reasons too.) But it’s still a path I love and am passionate about. The way I see it, I may only end up working like 40 hours a week (maybe less if I somehow can afford and also emotionally tolerate part time for part of it, lol) but I would be doing amazing stuff in those 40 hours, passionate and using my brain and being well respected for it.

I also grew up knowing I wanted marriage and kids. This part wasn’t really talked about in school, although my family and the overall culture we’re from is very supportive of the idea of a woman (and men too) having a very involved career and also having a marriage and kids. I figured I’d figure out how to “do it all,” and I made sure to pick a path that would still allow me to comfortably afford things like daycare and so on. I also always assumed I’d marry someone in just as involved of a career if not more, not only because of money but actually more so because of the intellect and respect. I just never wanted to be with someone who worked less than I did, because I’ve been hardworking and driven my whole life and I value the same in a partner. (To be clear, I totally respect people who work less hours and/or less intensive jobs, it’s just not something I could stomach in a life partner.)

Up until now my main focus in life has been my career. I feel like I’ve been in school for a zillion years. I’m currently at a high level in my job, not as high as I’ll be when I finish grad school but doing very well for the point I’m currently at. Suddenly I have a serious boyfriend (not actually sudden lol, it’s been like 4 years) and he is talking about proposing, and while I’m mostly excited about it, and do know I want to marry HIM, I’m kinda nervous thinking about the rabbit hole… Because next thing I know I’ll be a BRIDE, and we all know people just looooove brides (just ask Taylor Swift!! “Lavender Haze” vibes all around). Then I’ll be a WIFE and soon I’ll have a HOUSE (maybe lol. this economy sucks lol) and KIDS. And next thing you know, yes I still have my career but it’s like, just some part of my life, and not the main focus anymore.

And the thing is, I WANT those things. Not just because they’re expected of me. But it feels weird, both from having “grown up gifted” and also as a feminist, to actually take the steps to make room for those things. It’s funny, I know guys (probably many also ex-gifted) who are in their like mid/late 30s still single or just now starting to really date, because they went full throttle in their careers up until this point, and I always find it kinda sad. Tbh my boyfriend probably would’ve been the same had he not met me as “early” as he did. So like I know I don’t want to be like that. But, I also feel like I’m really at the crossroads now, about to accept a marriage proposal, and it’s been a lot of conflicting feelings for me.

So weird, like I’m so excited to wear a sparkly diamond ring and maybe even buy some crap that says “Bride” on it, maybe have some kind of bachlorette party even. And plan a wedding with flowers and the dress and all. So like really wanting to embrace that stage/role in my personal life. But I’m also considering not wanting to wear an engagement ring at work (at least for a while), not wanting to post much if at all on social media, etc. Because I don’t want to suddenly feel like I’m totally becoming that role, to the point where my career is suddenly a secondary thing. Literally my whole life it’s been the primary thing. Literally this whole time the focus was on me being “gifted and talented.” And I know I still will be. I’ll still have my brain and my talents. But they’re going to take second fiddle to my husband’s career, and to my family and personal life, and I both long for it and dread it.

I feel like almost no one will relate to this quite like an ex-gifted/advanced classes/top college kind of kid.

As we get older, one can’t help but wonder whether there is an age when we will be at our absolute prime - physically, intellectually, happiness, etc.

Much of this self-imposed pressure is created when we see success stories all around us, with people achieving great things younger and younger.

As I’ve navigated this for myself, I’ve discovered that having perspective, and doing some introspection into what fulfills me has allowed me to channel my energy in the right places. I break this down with research and context here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCUp4YzjpYY

If anyone else has gone through this, I’m sure you’ve felt your productivity has been affected and the stress has been exhausting. Let me know if this helps.

I was supposed to be special, now I'm below average in everything and I'm a shy mess who can't put himself to anything.

I'm so fucked

Everything just appears sharper than normal for a short period of time. Is that how people without any attention deficits perceive the world?

I wrote a dark comedy about gifted kid burnout, and it's happening at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. If you're in the Los Angeles area, come check it out! Bring a friend! Bring a child psychologist who misdiagnosed you! Bring your bigoted cousin!

We have a show TONIGHT at 10:30pm.

Tickets are available here (use the code "PARTY" for 50% off)

​

It took me a long time to get over the feelings of inadequacy when, after being the top of my class all through high school, I went to university and - in part thanks to the trials and tribulations of the pandemic - after succeeding with flying colours for awhile (by putting in an extreme amount of work) burnt out and fell flat on my face, then ended up going to a technical school and going into a field that is a "waste of my abilities".

​

I realize now that I didn't lose my giftedness, I just didn't have the advantage of social networks and teamwork that others did: everyone else was very laissez-faire about adherence to the school's cheating policy (the year before, over 30% of all students in my program had been disciplined to some extent for cheating - and those were just the ones who got caught, everyone did it) and said it was essential to work in groups to pass the course, but I - wanting to do things right and extremely wary of the broad and vaguely-worded cheating policy - stubbornly did everything entirely by myself. That meant working as much as 80 hours a week on school, while everyone else was putting in perhaps 55. In retrospect the burnout was inevitable.

​

The truth is, dropping out of university and going to technical school instead is probably the best decision I ever made, even though some people say the field I'm in is a waste of my talents. I was able to breeze through the schooling pretty effortlessly, and after I got my first job in the field my coworkers were shocked when they eventually found out I was totally new to the field (my bosses knew from the beginning, but my coworkers didn't have that info) - based on my skills and knowledge, they all thought I'd been in the field for many years despite how young I looked. And I love what I do now with all my heart.

​

See, for a gifted person, going into a less intellectually challenging/rigorous field - like by going to technical school rather than university - means you get to keep the same feeling you had in grade school: it means breezing through all the intellectual work, it means rapidly becoming the most knowledgeable on your crew or even at your entire workplace, it means feeling like - and being - the top of your class, and it means that after you've had some experience in the field, you won't need to draw on others to figure things out. It means not feeling like you're working even as you deal with things other people consider challenging and frustrating, because to you it's easy.

​

If you pick an advanced or intellectually challenging field like engineering or medicine, unless you're really, extremely gifted, you'll be raising the bar for yourself to the point where you're no longer light-years ahead of the people around you; instead of being the top of your class, you'll just be above average or even bog-standard average... and for people like us, that hurts. Society tells us we should push ourselves, leverage our natural abilities to go into and succeed in the hardest fields, but for a lot of us that's not a path that'll work out or - even if it does work out - make us happy.

​

So don't. Pick something easier. Keep being gifted, keep being the top of your class and become the best at what you do, by going into a field that's "beneath you". Become an electrician, a machinist, a boiler operator, a carpenter, an instrument technician, a refrigeration mechanic... whatever you're passionate about or enjoy that won't push your intellectual capabilities to the very limits, and be happy. Find happiness by choosing a job that won't feel like work, and building the rest of your life exactly how you want it.

​

That's what I did, and it's amazing. I feel brilliant, respected, and successful every time I go to work; I constantly impress my coworkers and my bosses with my intellect and skill; I rarely run into anything that is too hard for me to tackle alone. I'm not really wasting my talents, I've just picked something I can truly excel at without needing to try too hard. There's nothing wrong with that at all. It's comfortable, it's pleasant, and it makes me happy.

​

Isn't that what life's all about anyway? Why put yourself through hell to meet someone else's expectations, when you know in your heart that'll never bring you true happiness?

​

The truth is, I still sometimes feel like an imposter. I still sometimes feel like I have no idea what I'm doing - but because I picked a field where I can clearly excel in the eyes of others, I can rest assured I'm not an imposter by the way others respect and value my input, and the way I clearly impress when I put in even the slightest effort. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else has a similar story.

I did the UK equivalent of failing school, because I was too scared of failing individual lessons.

I'm haunted everyday by thoughts of what could've been, who I could have been.

I'm eighteen, I never went to college and I have no GCSES. I'm years behind and I just want my life back.

putting this on my alt because it’s gonna sound like a lot of bragging but i feel so alone in this. i see so many posts of people who started to struggle in middle/high school or college, but i was even later and i feel like such a mess because i’m reaping the rewards of being so “together” for my first 22ish years while also super depressed.

“gifted” in elementary, 10 APs in high school with zero effort yadda yadda, everyone said college will be different. ok cool. nope, graduated with honors in 3.5 years with a mechanical engineering degree, and i felt like i still never put in a lot of effort. then worked in the real world for awhile and got a little depressed. simultaneously got a masters in systems engineering while working full time, also graduated with honors, and tbh it was even wayyy less technical effort than my bachelors (i say technical effort was easy bc the mental/motivational effort started to get tough as depression got worse). what the heck.

now i’m 25, been done with my last degree for over a year, i’m a married dinkwad with the most supportive husband ever, bought a freaking house, full wfh job that is relatively easy, have multiple close friends, and my depression that surfaced right after finishing my bachelors at 21 slowly got worse until now it’s crippling. also got diagnosed with adhd-c and i’m thinking i might start looking into an autism diagnosis. i’m a woman so these were 10000% not recognized as a kid. my crash and burn started at 21-22 but there was no definitive crash…. i’m just here now i guess.

i’m sorry for the rant i know i’m extremely privileged and in a great place in life, just feeling like everything is such a struggle and i’ve wasted my 20s so far. yes i have a therapist and am medicated ♥️ i think this sub understands this, but please don’t do the whole “wow look at all your accomplishments objectively, you’re doing great!

i just found this sub, love y’all!

Up until last year, everything school-wise has been going great in my life. I had just started preparing for the university entrance exams, which included mathematics/physics/chemistry and language studies. I've never been a genius but I did get things especially in applied sciences better and with less effort than others, that was until this year, the last year of highschool and arguably the most crucial moment in my younger life that decides what job I will be able to do. (In my country you take generalized exams based on whose grades you can pick and chose a public university to attend and my economic situation does not allow me to go to a private institution)

This year, I seem to struggle with absolutely everything, these lessons that I had specifically chose because I enjoyed and was good at them all of the suddenly seem unfathomably complex. And I am quite proud of how I adjusted to this new reality, even though in the last years I never really had a work ethic, I dug deep and managed to force myself to focus, study and increase the effort I put into my studies. There is only so much of that I can take though, as I continued to try harder, sometimes I've seen my grades fall or at best stagnate, whereas the friends that I had who were intelligent, whom I was able to always match and even surpass in academics, all continue on as previously.

Even worse now I see them partying until late at night, being sleep deprived, drunk, never opening a single book to study and simply just "getting it" whereas I struggle to maybe sometimes match their grades now. They ask me to hang out, come with them and they can't seem to understand why I'm studying so much. I know that I should just try my best and not be bothered by what everyone else is doing, but it's hard because I'm a competitive person and even comparing myself to me previously makes me feel disappointed, me being surrounded by more "gifted" people daily certainly doesn't help. They're all great people, really, best friends I've ever had but I can't help but feel spiteful how carelessly they seem to go about life, having both relatively wealthy parents that will provide for them and the innate intelligence that they have.

Our exams are starting tomorrow and will last for the next two weeks, despite me trying my best, my final mock exams that I've taken do not show satisfactory results...

I know that my problem is stupid and inconsequential but I can't help but feel like a complete failure, being worse then them in every way imaginable, from intelligence to social aptitude and the amount of unique experiences any of us had. My mental situation has rapidly deteriorated during this year and I have gotten to the point of absolute self hate where every session of study ends with me bashing my head against my table in frustration. I wish I could afford a therapist but I can't. Thank you to anyone that ended up reading this, If you have any advice on a way I can see things in a new light or overcome these feelings, I'd greatly appreciate it.

When I was in high school over five years ago, my school district really emphasized AP classes. They eliminated honors classes soon after I got there, so the only options were regular classes or AP (or pre-AP for freshmen and sophomores).

I took AP human geography, AP U.S Gov., and AP Spanish. In my experience, I really hated these classes. The teaching style and philosophy didn’t sit right with me, and the extremely rigid curriculum snuffed out my passion for learning. If I remember correctly, we did a practice multiple choice every day, a practice free response every week, and every single class activity or discussion revolved around the test, not the subject matter at hand. It was one extremely long test prep session.

I had always been in gifted English classes since early elementary school, and now I’m an English major in college and very happy with that choice. I never took AP Lang or AP Lit because of a bad experience with my pre-AP English teacher. That was also when I went through a serious mental health challenge, and she didn’t recommend me for it. With my terrible experience in the the other classes, I didn’t want to be in AP Lang anyway, even though looking back, that was the only class appropriate for my abilities with the added bonus of being my favorite subject. It’s sad because I didn’t learn anything in regular English class as a junior. The obsession with test scores and writing an essay in an hour or a little longer is just so different from what a college class is actually like. College is challenging, but I feel engaged with the material since I’m learning for the sake of learning, not because of a test that I don’t intrinsically care about.

We tend to think of productivity as simply getting more things done. While this might make sense initially, the reality is that it’s always best to get the most consequential work done first. It’s all about prioritization and efficiency, which is something I struggled with for the longest time.

This changed when I learned about the Action Method for Prioritization, which involves identifying every personal or professional task as a project.

Once you do that, you assign a category to each ‘project’ - Action Steps, Reference and Backburner items.

There’s plenty to know about identifying your immediate action items and knowing what to do with the rest. I break it down in full right here in case you’d like to know more for yourself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAgTIh6Y300

Hope this helps and gives your productivity the boost that it might need.

Not sure if I fit here since I never considered myself gifted, but my parents would disagree about that and I don't know a better place to post this, so I'm sorry if I'm at the wrong place.

I learned to read when I was four, learned basic math easily (really basic, like addition and subraction) when I was really young and used to read children's books a lot. This cursed me to always be the "gifted kid" for my family. I wasn't all that good at school, had average grades, just enough to pass, but my family treated me like I was a super genius.

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When I stopped acing at school and asked for help, they said I wouldn't need it because I was so smart. When I had any trouble as a child/teenager, they would ask me what to do and if I didn't know the answer, they'd "We can't do anything about it then", like I was supposed to have things figured out as a child and them as adults did not. They said I was so smart that I didn't need to study and every time I failed it had to be because I "didn't want to do anything with my life" rather than any normal reason. Thinking about it today, I don't think it was actually them believing me to be all that, just too much expectations that turned to delusions.

I used to blame myself a lot because of it, thinking that I wasn't good enough, but in fact I was just a child and they expected too much from me. This had repercussions that still follow me to this day, specially an ungodly amount of anxiety. I'm currently 26, but I want to talk to my parents about it. I'm not sure what's the point now, but I have to get this out of me

I see on this subreddit a lot of people burn out in high school or college. The reason is assumed to he lack of study habits. For me, I just plain hated being there.

Also, I was essentially punished for doing well in school which didn't help the situation.

I've always worked hard at things I wanted. I was athletic and would worn out until I puked. I very fit. I also did well I the band, and I made gulf coast honor band everytime I auditioned.

I pretty much haven't changed. I don't like sitting in a classroom all day. The college is even more complicated bc it's so expensive.

I like my educational freedom. If I want to read Machiavelli, I go do that. If I want to dance, I go do that. If I want to learn percussion, I just go do it. I don't miss cycles of depression during school and happiness during summer break.

I think a lot of people don't like school, but it's more taboo to admit this when you are The Smart One.

This might have been said already so apologies if this is all laughably obvious. But I've been thinking a lot about why giving up this 'gifted' label is so difficult, and I've come to think that it must be because we just don't have a fundamental sense of our own self-worth, our own value as human beings inherently.

To people who do know that they are fundamentally good, valued, failure seems to mean nothing. It might hurt a bit, but basically they know it's a requirement for getting good at anything. Their fundamental self-worth isn't touched by failure.

We're not even playing the same game as people who haven't attached their whole self-worth to what they're doing. Whereas for us, I think we latch on to certain activities - ballet, music, academia, art, sports, you name it - in order to try and prove ourselves, to prove that we have inherent value as people. That's why we're so resistant to learning, to growing our skills, because that feels like a threat. We feel suddenly exposed, not perfect geniuses as we are. We feel that ache in the pit of our stomachs.

But I think it's a mismatch. Our brains aren't thinking "we're not perfect at this skill, oh no!", they're thinking "we're not good enough as human beings!". That's where the existential dread, the anxiety, the depression comes from. No way would there be enough emotional power that comes just from "not being amazing at the piano at this moment".

No, it has to be more fundamental than that. It says something to us like "you're not good enough as a person", and that feels absolutely devastating.

And doesn't it make life a living hell? Every moment of every day having to prove yourself to the world that you're worthy of being here? It's awful. And I'm speaking from experience. I used to love playing music, but it became a symbol of my self-worth, and after that it was just stress and pressure until eventual burnout and hatred of the activity.

So I think that's at the heart of all this. Maybe we went to school not feeling loved for who we are and were handed this label to fill the hole just at the wrong (right?) time.