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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

#81

Post by toyg »

wickoff wrote: post #70

I think that the standards the author is judging herself by are messed up and harmful. She is healthy, married, is raising a child, is an educator, presumably has a good standing within her community. She checks like 9 out of 10 boxes you can judge a human by and yet it's still not enough. What the hell? Does everybody have to excel now? Everybody has to be a millionaire, own a company, be a scientist, athlete or an…

> is an educator

> North America

Hardly a good box to tick, by most reports.

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

#82

Post by polote »

imtringued wrote: post #58
polote wrote: post #10

Most 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.

Okay but what does that have to do with the article? Just by reading the title you should know that the author was diagnosed as gifted during childhood and the problems only started manifesting in early adulthood. Your hypothesis doesn't apply here.

Because the article basically assumes that all gifted people are like her. And that being gifted is not so much an asset.

Which is statically wrong. But there is a category of gifted people, and the girl in the article probably belongs to it, which considers that being gifted is so bad and that people who say the opposite just don't understand what being gifted is. I'm gifted and I have no issue with that, like said in the threads they need to stop assuming that because they are gifted everyone owe them everything, work hard like anyone else if you want success

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

#83

Post by gpvos »

My problem is that even in university, the vast majority of problems I was set were tractable, and I could oversee all of them with almost no effort. This only bit me when I had to do my final term project/thesis, since that was a problem no-one else had worked on before. I was a bit ambitious, after all I knew I was smart, but I just couldn't figure out how to start on it, so it took way too much time and was finished unsatisfactorily. The same problem haunts me in work since, and makes it very hard for me to find motivation.

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

#84

Post by hestefisk »

bradleyjg wrote: post #38
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.

I have a hypothesis that at least in the US smart people that want to continue with the same sort of “do the work you are assigned and be rewarded” become doctors. There are entrepreneurial paths in medicine but an excellent student that wants to can go from medical school to a residency, followship, and then a hospital position and earn enough to be in the 1% without ever needing to fight for it in the office politi…

As someone who is very close to two doctors, I can tell you that networking and elbows matters just about as much as any other career.

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

#85

Post by harryh »

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.

Be careful relying on studies in this area. The "growth mindset", like much of psychology over the last several decades, is subject to the replication crisis.

At the very least, the size of the effect is almost certainly quite small.

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

#86

Post by sanxiyn »

bitexploder wrote: post #74

One of the worst things you can do, as a parent, is tell your kid they are smart. I have two kids and one of them is obviously “gifted”. The other is still pretty far ahead. Smart is a bad word in my house. Gifted is not something that is ever uttered. We (as parents) work very hard to instill a sense of hard work, effort, and purpose into our kids lives. They do BJJ, a martial art that is very hard, even if you are…

"I think I am smart." That's really cute!

I mean, it's pretty much impossible to hide smartness. If you are smart, you will know. I am not attractive, but I also heard that if you are very attractive, it's pretty much impossible not to realize that.

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

#87

Post by bitexploder »

vfc1 wrote: post #37

Probably the simplest would be to not designate a child as gifted. It marks them as different, which can act almost like a social stigma. Just let them grow up at their own rhythm, and see what happens. If they are good at school, they can always take online video courses on things that they enjoy. For example, have them take as many courses as they want on https://brilliant.org or Coursera on any topic they like. Le…

One challenge is kids will figure out they are smart all on their own. As a parent you have to almost actively repress the notion in a kid’s head that they are “smart”.

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

#88

Post by AdrianB1 »

Being "gifted" is sometimes badly misjudged. I have a friend who was the best in his school, then we was at the bottom of his class in high school. All his confidence disappeared when he found that "best in school X" can actually mean nothing because school X may be quite bad by comparison. The one eyed person that is the king in the land of the blind is the best comparison. Second, even having a high native intelligence does not guarantee you will not waste your life doing trivial jobs where you don't contribute a lot to the society and it is not regarded as a good use of your capabilities. "Yes, I am the smartest burger flipper in McDonalds, I am awesome". Imagine Einstein deciding to become a plumber.

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

#89

Post by BjoernKW »

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.

Hard work in itself isn't necessarily valuable. Smart work is.

It's vital to learn early on that you have to put in the work if you want to achieve anything at all. Merely being gifted or naturally good at something certainly is not enough.

However, I'd say it's just as important to understand the purpose behind any kind of work and to be able to question how things are usually done.

Achieving the same or better results with less work is what will set you apart.

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

#90

Post by danielecook »

kdelok wrote: post #47
jshaqaw wrote: post #36

Part of the issue here is defining what it means to “achieve”. I was a gifted child and graduated at the top of my fancy Ivy League university. Did I go on to conquer the world? No. And many days I stress and feel bad about that. But that’s mostly when I allow myself to judge myself by the external validation system of society. Society values a big bank account or fancy awards which is fine. A happy life spent with f…

It's great that you encourage this attitude in your kids. I had a similar high-achieving story until I experienced some mental health issues during my PhD. I came out the other side realising that what made me happy wasn't a high-octane, top-of-my-field job, but a bunch of other stuff that I went for instead. I mainly feel lucky that I was well-placed to do that, even if some might say I'd wasted some potential.

Glad you figured things out - but I’m very curious about what you switched to.
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