I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected
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Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected
#2this little extract is one that i identify with a lot:
Christina Kimont, 38, speaks of a similar experience. “The fact that I can be immediately good at something has left me as a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, so to speak, and left me rather adrift when it came to finding my life’s purpose.”
Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected
#3This paragraph sums it up:
"My first hint that this was a skewed view came in university. I very quickly learned that, while I may have been the “best” in all of my high school classes, I was now in a place where my peers had been the “best” in theirs as well — and in most cases, their best was better than mine. This realization automatically dulled some of my drive to succeed. I would never gain the admiration and accolades I had received my whole life up until this point, so where was the desire to try? Still, I managed to get by receiving relatively good grades without an extreme amount of effort."
I too was gifted. I too had problems in college upon realizing I wasn't the smartest guy in the room anymore - sometimes by a long shot. Fortunately I had a couple things to save me. One was an article pointing out that most of the millionaires, using being a millionaire as a proxy for success, were all average or "C" students in school. The article theorized it was due to the "smart" kids getting lazy because things came too easily for them. The other was I grew up in a lower class household and my father worked on the side on home improvement projects - kitchen, bathroom and family room remodels. I had to work with him since he often needed help. Unfortunately I had learned to apply a strong work ethic to work, but not to school. Once I made that adjustment everything turned out fine. I ended up graduating summa cum laude. Has my life turned out as I expected? No - and that's a good thing. But that's also another story!
Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected
#4The biggest realization for me was that this system is an inverse funnel and as we move towards the top, the advantage of your gifts are diminished.
This made me dropout from the academics and do something little of my own which I felt better in doing and I continued at my pace, didn't worry about competitors etc..and it turned out quite well than my student self who wanted to be ahead at any cost.
I was brought up in an environment where everyone told me I am better than others around me, this made me put more and more work untill I couldn't.
Now, I don't believe I am better than others, nor I want to compete with others.
Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected
#5Well when I went to work on a startup where everybody was smarter than me, I found I had won and found my place. I guess seeing the cup half full helped from that point on ?
Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected
#6Sounds like engineering class, where every kid in the room is “that kid who is good in math”.
My kid just got into the the local youth symphony (tough competition), and as I explain to her, every kid in that symphony is probably 1st chair in their school, and now one of you will be last chair.
You can be smarter than 99% of the people around you, and there are still 60M people in the world smarter than you.
Maybe you really are not “gifted”. Must be a western thing. My two examples above have a large percentage of Asian students. After reading the “Tiger Mom” book, there certainly wasn’t any coddling in that child rearing.
Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected
#7One trick is to find two things you are reasonably gifted at and you're more likely to be remarkable if you work in the area where those two things meet.
For example, if you're an 80th %ile programmer and 80th %ile automotive mechanic, there is surely a niche that connects the two where you would perhaps be 95 %ile merely by how unusual it is to being good at both things.
Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected
#8Friends working for Google told similar tales. Until they worked at Google they had a pretty high idea of their own abilities and then they were outclassed to the point that some of them just gave up entirely. Being the best during your youth isn't always an advantage.
Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected
#9One trick is to find two things you are reasonably gifted at and you're more likely to be remarkable if you work in the area where those two things meet. For example, if you're an 80th %ile programmer and 80th %ile automotive mechanic, there is surely a niche that connects the two where you would perhaps be 95 %ile merely by how unusual it is to being good at both things.
I'm having a hard time imagining that from your example. For example I have several successful project cars, I've built a custom wheel balancer from an accelerometer, and am currently programming the fuel injection and spark on a car from scratch yet I don't know if a career in that would really make me any more income than my current Software Engineering manager role.
Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected
#10Most of articles speaking about gifted people talk about gifted people being sad and not having a good life when in reality gifted people are in average more successful.
Explanation is easy, to be diagnosed as gifted you need to consult a doctor, and you will consult a doctor only if you think you have issues. So gifted people are most of the time not even aware they are gifted.