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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

#101

Post by foobarian »

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.

Another similar story here. Got all the way to end of post-doc until I realized I was doing it all for external reasons (immigrant from culture that pushes academics very hard). I definitely won't be pushing my kid the same way. Sometimes I wonder if it is possible to swing the pendulum too much the other way? But I hope to strike a happy medium.

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

#103

Post by amykhar »

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.

On the flip side, you have to challenge them and give them the opportunity to work hard. I think schools get lazy with gifted kids. Gifted kids deserve to be challenged and put to the limits of their abilities the same as non-gifted children, but schools just don't do that. Tracking children by ability in the US has been labeled elitist. Funding often isn't there for enrichment programs. Parents are expected to provide enrichment for these kids outside of school, but it's not always possible either financially or time-wise.

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

#104

Post by bradleyjg »

madengr wrote: post #96
bradleyjg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That path will barely get you to 1% income, and definitely not in all areas. Just another working stiff. The Dr. who runs the LASIK place near me drives a Lambo, and he probably has 10 Drs working for him. It’s rare to strike it rich on your own labor.

My heart bleeds for “barely 1% working stiff”.

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

#105

Post by foobarian »

turk73 wrote: post #62
augustl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately I spent a lot of that free time playing video games. It was fun but i could've achieved way more. I'm currently beta testing a new optimization - I'm only allowed to play WoW Classic after my todo-list is done. One if the items on the todo-list is "do something productive for 30 minutes" (and currently, there's no shortage of things to fill those 30 minutes with). Maybe I can use the extreme gravitati…

You should throw out all the games. I'm serious. I never really began to succeed until I stopped playing stupid games and became a man. Now I'm managing younger guys who can't put down the controller. Last fall I had to fire someone who was clearly staying up all night playing video games and was never prepared for work nor doing an adequate job at it. Sadly, his own sense of privilege prevented him from being able t…

The way I know I made the right call to quit WoW was when I would come home in the days after, and was like 'Oh phew I don't have to play today'.

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

#106

Post by mounds »

barry-cotter wrote: post #71
loopasam wrote: post #11

The popular book "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance", explores this topic in more details, for those interested in the topic.

Isn’t the grit literature just Angela Duckworth rediscovering conscientiousness? > Much Ado about Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grit Literature > Grit has been presented as a higher-order personality trait that is highly predictive of both success and performance and distinct from other traits such as conscientiousness. This paper provides a meta-analytic review of the grit literature with a particular focus…

People can work really hard at doing a crap job. Doing the job right makes more sense to determine positive outcomes. Having some academic shreds to back up the common sense is good too.

Thanks for the share on conscientiousness!

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

#107

Post by amelius »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #91

They called me gifted as a kid. Tested at a genius level IQ (not that it matters). I barely passed high school. I started my first company while in it. I dropped out of my engineering programming. I was teaching other students about computers and was running a business on the side. I am not someone who follows the rules well. My sibling is the polar opposite, they have three Ivy League degrees. They were top 3% of th…

Thanks for sharing, but why do you refer to your sibling as "they"?

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

#108

Post by apatters »

turk73 wrote: post #62
augustl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately I spent a lot of that free time playing video games. It was fun but i could've achieved way more. I'm currently beta testing a new optimization - I'm only allowed to play WoW Classic after my todo-list is done. One if the items on the todo-list is "do something productive for 30 minutes" (and currently, there's no shortage of things to fill those 30 minutes with). Maybe I can use the extreme gravitati…

You should throw out all the games. I'm serious. I never really began to succeed until I stopped playing stupid games and became a man. Now I'm managing younger guys who can't put down the controller. Last fall I had to fire someone who was clearly staying up all night playing video games and was never prepared for work nor doing an adequate job at it. Sadly, his own sense of privilege prevented him from being able t…

As a counterexample, I attribute much of my success to being a compulsive World of Warcraft player in my 20s.

True, founding and being the Guild Master of a hardcore raiding guild wasn't great for my ability to focus on my real job. Main Tanking and leading 40 players through endgame content 3-4 nights a week didn't do any favors for my social life.

But the skills I developed ended up transferring pretty well over to founding and running a remote web dev agency. In fact it turned out that managing paid employees over the Internet is easier than managing volunteers in many regards. When you screw up, your employees tend to go easy on you, because they like their paychecks and changing jobs is a lot harder than changing Warcraft guilds.

I was young and kind of a loser at the time and there was little chance anyone was going to give me anything important to manage. WoW gave me an opportunity to develop a valuable skill set at an early age.

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

#109

Post by loblollyboy »

You guys ever look out an airplane window or do some people watching in a crowded place? There are a fuck ton of people, all competing for the same resources, and with (if you made one of those FIFA-style player attributes charts, about the same overall ability). Im pretty darn good at running, recently did a big race and placed prob in the top 0.5%, the guy who won beat me by 3 mins (over 10% my time). I try and be good at music, really hard, probably not gifted at this, but my shit is way worse than any number of unknown artists. Everyone back home thinks I'm the smart one. All that's done is gotten me some jobs and into programs where I meet much smarter people. There are literally 10s of millions of "gifted" people. We're as common as a pretty girl on instagram. ESPECIALLY in "superstar" cities.

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

#110

Post by cheez »

foobarian wrote: post #101
kdelok wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Another similar story here. Got all the way to end of post-doc until I realized I was doing it all for external reasons (immigrant from culture that pushes academics very hard). I definitely won't be pushing my kid the same way. Sometimes I wonder if it is possible to swing the pendulum too much the other way? But I hope to strike a happy medium.

Yes it is possible to push it too far the other way. The immigrant culture that pushes academics very hard simply needs to be amended to add on the part of life that is fun. I pushed my kids hard, encouraged them to have fun and enjoy life, and now they do that on their own. They make their own goals, set out plans to achieve them, getting parental help along the way, but also encouraged them to have fun.

For example, my daughter recently asked if she should stay home to study for exams that are about 3 weeks away instead of going on a school trip to a different city. I told her to study her ass off precisely so that she could go without any guilt.

She did, and she feels much more rounded and fulfilled.

Don't think that what your parents did was so wrong it needs to be corrected. Think of what was missing and what you can do about it.

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