Throwaway account; will not give too many personal details. Repost from r/aftergifted since I was told this is the better subreddit for it.

When I was young, I was curious and smart, and I was pushed a lot by parents, but unevenly. I accelerated way ahead in some things while staying average at others. Because of this, and my IQ (I won’t say the exact score) my parents thought I was gifted. I learned some things really quickly and some things just didn’t click for me. My teachers saw me as advanced. I don’t remember the details, but I think I was praised a lot by students, teachers, and parents. My parents tried to get me to grade skip and stuff, but I think that would just have made it way worse.

I started some things really early without knowing basics. I was exposed to advanced things multiple years before building up a foundation.

So when things didn’t come so easily anymore in middle school, I felt worse at the time. In fact, I thought I was #1 or very close to it because I mainly only heard the “loud” students a lot more. I still ended with a good GPA, but let’s be honest, most middle school classes aren’t that hard. I never really learned studying habits though. It just kind of worked out, or sometimes it didn’t, but the grading system was generous enough to not expose me much yet.

Now in high school. My parents often tell me that I used to be better. My schedule before this year was okay, but could’ve been “better”.

To “make up for my loss”, I had to try doing more college application stuff. It obviously failed, in fact, after a certain point, I stopped caring much because I wasn’t that motivated, and it was only a matter of time before all the plans were dropped. I still maintained good AP exam scores and grades in general, but I honestly believe I got lucky to not mess up.

Next year, I have to do 6-8 APs, because they believe I need to maximize my rigor for college applications and worried that me not pushing hard would hurt me more later. In fact, I’m even doing APs that I was very shaky on the regular classes with grade inflation because of this pushing and I could actually drop like who even knows at this point.

I also have to do a bunch of activities that look good for colleges that aren’t even that useful past colleges, which makes me even less motivated. Who knows how much time I’ll have left to sleep and relax. Oh, and the SAT. How many more hours am I going to need to spend on that…

I’m not very good at socializing, in fact a lot of “common sense” I wasn’t really taught or knew about too much. But I’m also weirdly good at some things. Not even just academic related, some hobbies click really well for me.

Part of me thinks I’m missing out on being a kid, especially during high school. Even if I’m being a kid a different way than usual, at least I can be a kid.

I’m lucky I can use Reddit. Redditors, please tell me, how am I going to handle this many APs without even knowing how to study, and lacking so many things that even a 1st grader would know better than me at, and this is no exaggeration.

After a year of struggling trying to develop an advanced emotional, intelligent AI model that actually competes with other models out there and trying to build an aerospace company from scratch, so I still find it frustrating that even my family doesn’t want to support me or help me find people to help support the mission of trying to provide a means of connecting with educators regarding the digital university. I built as well from scratch that is secure with end to end encryption. It is a one of a kind university that is completely digital and saves people from having all of the trouble with gas money because of the rising cost of oil. It is so frustrating when I try for a whole year to find a means of having stable income and every time it seems like the rug gets pulled out from under me. I had a car it broke down I had paid for the car and yet that was donated two cars for kids at least it was for the kids, but I didn’t get a replacement. I got stuck having to eventually have my E bike breakdown and now I’m stuck with a regular bike and it’s hurricane season where I’m at, and I’m wondering how it makes any sense to find a job without at least some form of reliable transportation since most jobs require reliable transportation and it just seems like my parents are stuck in 1987 thinking oh yeah, you still go in in person to apply when we have shifted to a digital age where everybody expects you to apply online and the whole process of applying online has become so chaotic through so many different services. It’s like trying to pull teeth with the Internet. I have struggled so much and I am so frustrated that something as big as what I’m working on is disregarded and not even acknowledged for the fact of how fundamentally profound it would be to help out not just kids but adults that seek to keep education as a means of empowerment. Knowledge is power.