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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

#21

Post by usermac »

duxup wrote: post #18

The education system provides fairly clear and predictable paths to affirmation, success, and a sort of grade based people ranking system. Life outside that system often very much does not. Everyone has to come to terms with it at some point. I can understand how for someone who school makes a strong impression on them it can be a real struggle without what was such a clear and predictable system.

The first two lines, wow—You very clearly wrote what I've struggled to think of how to convey. Thank you.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#22

Post by [deleted] »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #9
petercooper wrote: post #7

One 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.

[deleted]

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#23

Post by Gikoskos »

S_A_P wrote: post #17

One of the first articles I remember reading on HN was back in 2009. The gist of the article was that you shouldn’t praise your kids for being smart, praise them when they work hard. Rewarding hard work will better serve them in the long run since being smart will plateau at some point. I have a 9 and 11 year old and I still bristle a little bit when my mom says y’all are so smart.

Can you find this article and post it please? I have to show it to someone

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#24

Post by dougmwne »

I think the central problem here is not asking more of gifted people during early school years. I was pretty disengaged with school before college. It just wasn't challenging enough in the right kinds of ways. I flourished when I got to college since I was finally in an environment with unlimited challenge and rewards. I learned to set my own standards for achievement and be less worried about how I would be judged externally. This attitude has continued to serve me well through work and life.

If I ever have a gifted child, I'll raise the bar high early on.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#25

Post by sanxiyn »

I was lucky to have people smarter than me always around me. On the other hand, if you explicitly aim for surrounding yourself with people better than you, you will almost always succeed. So do that.

(I was the best math student in my class, my grade, my school, my city, etc. so I aimed for national math olympiad, and got to #10. Why would you settle for the best in your school?)

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#26

Post by always4getpass »

gaspoweredcat wrote: post #2

this 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.”

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Isaac Newton

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#27

Post by easymodex »

This is very familiar to me. In college I often procrastinated until 3 days before an exam and only then opened the books. I didn't have the best grades because I made a conscious effort to get through with as little work as possible. I felt good about it as other classmates were studying for weeks before. Unfortunately I spent a lot of that free time playing video games. It was fun but i could've achieved way more.

But in the end you have to ask yourself what actually matters to you in life. The end goal is to be happy. I knew I wanted to have kids and enjoy life with friends and have fun. I could have been one of the best in some field, but for what purpose? Scientific achievements are hard, im not ready to commit my life to working at some problem which I may or may not solve. It's not about what you achieve, it's about what you choose not to. Jack of all trades is a sensible choice even though it's sometimes frustrating.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#28

Post by hyperdeficit »

taylodl wrote: post #3

This 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 a…

I relate to this and give a lot of credit to my father for teaching me work ethic that I never knew I would need at the time. School was easy and I never learned to work hard at academic work, but I sure worked hard finishing a basement, chopping wood, shoveling the driveway, and much more. I always hated doing that work, but I would see my dad just continue to power through any project no matter how difficult it got. I would always find ways to take a break, but then I would see him continuing on and get right back in there and help him out.

After getting out of school and finding out that it actually does take time and grit to finish a project I have been grateful for the example that he set. It hasn't been easy learning to work hard at something, and I don't do nearly as well as he does at it, but I have gotten better over time.

Its because of this that my perspective has changed greatly around what makes a person succeed. I help teach people programming in my spare time and one thing I have noticed repeatedly is that the ones who do best over time are the ones who just keep at it even if it is difficult. Too often the "gifted" ones do great at the beginning, but once they encounter a topic that they don't naturally get then they might just give up because they feel it is too hard for them or that they will never get it.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#29

Post by Pxtl »

I went through the gifted program and that's the experience of my peergroup as well, I think. A combination of effortless success in school and ADD left about half of my cohort completely failing in adulthood.

There are, of course, some hotshots with PhDs in cool jobs Toronto, but a whole lot of effortlessly brilliant folks just getting by with joe-jobs. While there's nothing wrong with that life, it does speak to how the kind of success people expected isn't just a matter of intelligence.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#30

Post by lars512 »

Gikoskos wrote: post #23
S_A_P wrote: post #17

One of the first articles I remember reading on HN was back in 2009. The gist of the article was that you shouldn’t praise your kids for being smart, praise them when they work hard. Rewarding hard work will better serve them in the long run since being smart will plateau at some point. I have a 9 and 11 year old and I still bristle a little bit when my mom says y’all are so smart.

Can you find this article and post it please? I have to show it to someone

It sounds a lot like Carol Dweck's book Mindset, or one of the many articles about having a growth rather than fixed mindset.
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