
The Trouble with Bright Kids - gatsby
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/the_trouble_with_bright_kids.html?cm_sp=most_widget-_-default-_-The%20Trouble%20With%20Bright%20Kids
======
Jach
The general idea here, "praise effort, not smartness", is pretty well backed
by the research, I came across a similar study some years ago and they keep
popping up. (Maybe it was the same one?) It's definitely made it into my
mental catalog of parenting techniques should I ever have kids.

It also reflects my own personal experiences I think a lot of above-average-
in-something people go through: at some point in their academic or
professional lives, they hit a wall where their ability isn't enough and they
don't have the mental discipline and other habits to put in the needed effort.
Some things stop being fun and look suspiciously like _busywork_ even if it
will help. (And sometimes it actually is unhelpful busywork.) I know some
people eat up busywork, they just grind through it, personally I can't stand
it and avoid it as long as I can. Nor have I found anyone suggesting a general
solution to gaining a hard-worker attitude if you didn't develop one in your
childhood, and it seems like a hard problem to solve since it's part of the
wider motivation and procrastination problem.

Unfortunately the conclusion of the post is a bit too strong:

"No matter the ability — whether it's intelligence, creativity, self-control,
charm, or athleticism — studies show them to be profoundly malleable. When it
comes to mastering any skill, your experience, effort, and persistence matter
a lot. So if you were a bright kid, it's time to toss out your (mistaken)
belief about how ability works, embrace the fact that you can always improve,
and reclaim the confidence to tackle any challenge that you lost so long ago."

Effort is insufficient, and great effort is not always necessary as those of
us, who breezed through anything others struggled with, know. Ability is
necessary though not sufficient. A 3-and-a-half foot tall person has no chance
of being an NBA All Star, and I've witnessed not-very-smart students pour
hours and hours into things like studying and still fail. Work smarter, not
harder (though that requires you to be smart enough).

I remember Feynman reflecting on his art saying he didn't think it was very
good, that he'd never in a hundred years rival a Renaissance master. Yet he
still did it, probably because it was fun or interesting. Cultivating a spirit
of playfulness and curiosity that produces effort in disguise seems more
important to me than cultivating a spirit of effort for effort's sake.

~~~
kitsune_
Same story here. I was always the "bright kid" in school (and I got beat up
quite often because of this : ) My environment (aunts, grand mothers, parents,
teachers, friends, other pupils), always made sure that I knew this in some
form or another. I was "smart" and excelled in all school classes, without
effort.

One teacher once found personal gratification by grilling me for 1 hour in
front of the class room: He set up an advanced math problem 4 years my senior
and ridiculed me until I started to cry. "See, even you don't know
everything". This happened when I was 11 years old. Yay for education
professionals!

Now, as you said, there is always going to be a wall ahead. My parents have no
college background so I was pretty much left alone after I finished high
school. I enrolled with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Computer
Science and bombed HARD. I was shy, I didn't know how to make friends, I
failed at simnple administrative tasks required when growing up, couldn't
support myself financially and on top of that the course material obviously
wasn't going to be a walk in the park.

To this day I struggle with "boring" work and procrastination.

------
dragonsky
Could it be that the problem is not, the way we provide feedback to children,
but that the expectations we place upon children has more to do with our own
expectations than the child's innate ability?

Take a class of 30 children, they will have a wide range of intellectual
abilities, ranging from borderline intellectually disabled to the highly
gifted. Give them all the same task. Some will achieve well, and have no
difficulty, one or two may not be able to complete the task without
assistance. Take the same class the next day and have them perform the same
task. Those who struggled will may perform better, those who completed the
task the first time, will achieve the same result. Perform that same task for
the next week or so, until the ones who struggled can perform the task. Now
you will find that those children who initially had no problems with the task,
have not even bothered to start it, and may well indeed be causing disruption
in the class.

What I've described is what happens for most classes of children in most
schools. The focus on ensuring all children reach some minimum performance in
key areas has resulted in those children in the normal to high ability range
are being shown that there is no value in being smart, as you are just going
to have to do the same as everybody else anyway... so why bother?

The problem with Bright Kids is not that they never learn how to work hard on
difficult tasks. It is that because they meet the minimum safety net
requirements, they never are never even exposed to the difficult tasks, so is
it any wonder that they grow to doubt the value of their abilities?

What I would love to see is every child in primary school be tested every
year, for both potential and ability. This would allow Parents, Teachers and
the students themselves to get an understanding of how hard the student is
actually working. Are they really "smart" and bored out of their brains and
therefore not meeting the academic requirements, or are they intellectually
challenged, but through a lot of hard work, are achieving a reasonable
standard?

Children do not all come from the same mould, why is it that we try to have
them fit the same mould when it comes to education?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Anecdotes here and elsewhere (e.g. my own bright children) show they actually
shy away from tasks they are not immediately good at! Because it contradicts
what they've been told (Wow! you sure are smart!) they develop a 'sour grapes'
attitude toward anything novel.

------
itmag
Many commenters here mention that they were/are really bright but also
undisciplined and miserable. This underlines something I've been thinking
about a lot: that cognitive style accounts for a big chunk of life's success.

Think of the dumb-as-pigshit ladies' man or the happy-as-a-clam soccer mom who
has life all figured out or the salesman who pulls in a ton of cash because
he's really driven and doesn't give a fuck about rejection. Then think of the
miserable yet brilliant nerd languishing in some dank cave of an apartment
because he can't figure life out. Forever Alone...

Then again, if the bright people could learn to adopt better cognitive styles,
then they would be unstoppable. Smart people should be winning at life, not
dwelling in the shadows as a kind of misunderstood race who push society's
technological progress along yet never reap the benefits in terms of
happiness.

What are some cognitive styles you wish you had?

~~~
paganel
> Then think of the miserable yet brilliant nerd languishing in some dank cave
> of an apartment because he can't figure life out. Forever Alone...

As one of those nerds in his early 30s living all alone by himself in a 5x5m
studio, what's so wrong with "not figuring life out" and instead only caring
about what interests you most? :)

Mind you, I used to have a social life until not long ago (when I was still
happily married to my soon to be ex-wife), but at some point along the road I
read Seneca's "De Brevitate Vitae "
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_%28Seneca%29>) and I
realized that much of what I was doing at the time was really meaningless and
not what I really wanted to spend my time on. And then my wife did me a ton of
good and left me :), but it was for the best, cause as Seneca was saying you
cannot buy back time wasted on meaningless pursuits (acquiring riches, high
political honors etc.).

~~~
itmag
"""As one of those nerds in his early 30s living all alone by himself in a
5x5m studio, what's so wrong with "not figuring life out" and instead only
caring about what interests you most? :)"""

Dude, that totally counts as "figuring it out" :)

------
chunky1994
What this article neglects is the ability of 'bright kids' to excuse
themselves for giving up. Precisely because they're so bright, they can
convince themselves very effectively that what is required of them for
completing a certain task is too mundane for their 'smartness' or it is not
worth the time.

More often than not, this ends up with a lot of lost potential, which is why
startups are such good options, because any work involving them, is definitely
not boring,and it HAS to be worth the kids' time because _they_ set out to
work on it, and it wasn't mandated by any external authority like parents or
schools.

~~~
suivix
It's interesting because throughout history nearly all tasks have been
mundane, and it's only recently that this has changed. But smart kids often
feel entitled to not do the mundane stuff.

------
lightcatcher
At my school, we have a bit of a "culture of genius" problem. Many, if not
most, of my classmates grew up being one of the smartest people they knew.
This lead to the widespread (and maybe not untrue) belief that we can do
things that other people simply cannot. This leads to a lot of students
setting themselves up to fail (epic procrastination, expecting to do well on
finals after never going to a class or studying) and most students eventually
fail hard at least once, but there are enough success stories to keep the
"culture of genius" alive.

This article addresses what happens when the students fail. As the article
states, many of us seem to blame failure on not being smart enough rather than
just not working hard enough. Personally, I hope I've made away from the
genius fallacy. Interning at a startup (as well as competing in athletics
growing up) have made it pretty clear that success is more a function of
effort and persistence than innate ability.

As bane offered some advice at the end of his post, I guess my mantra could be
"Being smart makes things possible, actually working hard makes things
happen".

~~~
bane
Right. IQ is only a measure of capacity to learn, not what you've spent time
filling your brain with.

------
cletus
Like others who have posted here, I have s story similar to this. By the
sounds of it, I wouldn't call myself as "gifted" as some who have posted here
but, relative to the environment I was in, I was "gifted".

I grew up in three small towns. For the first 9 years, in a town of less than
1,000 where the 3rd and 4th grades (for example) were in the same class.

When I was 8 I was doing the same work as the 7th graders without any real
trouble. It's all this small school could really do for me. This was actually
mostly OK. Sure I was largely around (much) older kids but it really wasn't as
isolating as some other experiences posted here.

Next was a slightly larger town (5-10,000) for 4 years. In the 4th grade my
spelling tested at the 10th grade+ (I ran out of "test"). In the 5th grade I
was doing algebra and trigonometry. By the 7th grade I was doing calculus.
Honestly, maths was really the only thing that interested me. Until that is my
family got a computer we couldn't really afford (a VIC 20), which turned out
to be fairly limited (much less so than the C64 that came after it).

I can distinctly remember at age 10 reasoning out that God didn't exist (I was
raised Catholic and went to a Catholic primary school with nuns and
everything).

It's in this period where I think it became first apparent just how socially
well-adjusted I wasn't. I think it's fair to say I didn't particularly know
how to relate to others. Honestly, I'm not sure that still isn't true.

By 9 or so I could beat anyone I knew at Chess. Actually I think this was true
at 7-8. Not that I knew anyone particularly good (not even remotely). Attempts
to find a challenge from, say, chess AIs were pointless. They were pretty weak
back then and tended to be defeated by going "off book".

Then came a move to a mining community of ~15-20,000, which I basically hated
for the 5 years that constituted high school. The awkwardness and isolation
from primary (elementary) school was compounded. It's always seemed to be that
when it comes to social interactions and relationships, I somehow "missed out"
on the instruction manual, or at least the training wheels, and the people
around me were always speaking some language I just never understood.

I understood numbers and computers.

One of the problems was that I was _bored_. I found school so insanely easy.
Nothing was really a challenge. I'd get told how smart I was. Only many years
later did I fully appreciate just how much damage it does to be told you're
smart. It demotivates you and isolates you.

I would fail assignments and classes because I didn't do them. Not because I
couldn't do something but _something_ was never good enough. Or I'd fear the
embarrassment and "humiliation" of not knowing something and having that
pointed out to me.

I can remember having conversations with my parents where I'd bring home a 90%
in a test and I'd get asked "what about the other 10%?" I don't think this was
asked in a way to be mean. In a strange way, I think it was a weird way of
showing pride because all you can "complain" about is a missing 10%. Whatever
the case and in spite of well-meaning intentions, the message that was
hammered in was that nothing ever seemed good enough.

My father was a fitter and turner in the British merchant navy. His father and
grandfather were likewise tradesmen. My mother dropped out of high school
(although her father was a school teacher and principal for much of his life).

Basically I don't think they knew what to do with me. Academic pursuits
weren't something they were equipped to deal with. My two sisters were cut
from the same cloth, neither being remotely academic and neither finishing
high school.

I took notes in class but never looked at them again. Either I didn't need to
(particularly for maths) or I didn't care to (eg human biology). I never
really learned how to study. I can remember scoring 85% in multiple choice
exams for subjects I knew nothing about just by figuring out the skills to
pass such exams.

So after finally finishing high school I went to university.

It may sound strange but I don't think it ever occurred to me in high school
that I might do computer programming for a living. It's not like thought about
it and either wanted to or didn't. I never even pondered the question.

I ended up applying to do a science/engineering double degree because it
looked hard. A bunch of other people in my class also ended up applying for
engineering because they didn't know what to do either but, as I learned years
later, I seemed (to them) to know what I was doing. I have to wonder what they
would've become had I gone to school elsewhere.

Whereas high school was structured, university was not. Nobody checked your
attendance. Painful shyness quickly caused me to avoid going to lectures
altogether. I was completely unequipped for university.

I barely skated through first year and bombed out in second year (when you
actually had to work). Some years later, work finally cured me of many of the
aspects of painful shyness (eg standing up in front of people and giving
presentations).

At one point my parents thought to send me to boarding school (in a 1 million+
city). I fought this and deeply regret it. It was an unknown. I wonder how
much better I could've done if I'd been put in an environment where academic
excellence wasn't a recipe for instantly being ostracized (as it was in my
shitty state high school).

Likewise I wish I'd stuck with university long enough to find some guidance
and mentoring. All in all it feels like I drifted through the system and
eventually fell through the cracks.

At no point did I ever really find people like me either. Through primary and
high school, the towns seemed too small for that. The university had a
computer club but I found that lot, as a whole, to be a pretentious lot with
whom I had precious little in common. It seemed like university just had a
different cookie-cutter mold for the "in" group.

Largely I was left alone (something I realize I quite clearly contributed to).
To me though that seemed to be an improvement from high school so I just went
with it.

Now my sisters both have children and I see them both laud their children by
telling them "you're so smart". I try to tell them how damaging this is and
they shouldn't but they just don't get it. Old habits kick in.

I envy those people who grew up in households where at least one parent had
gotten a college degree (a friend I later made had a PhD in lithography stuff,
3 members of his immediate family had PhDs and a great uncle or something won
the Nobel Prize for Physics a number of years ago).

I really don't have a solution here other than to hammer in the point: _stop
telling children they're smart_. I don't think I'm any kind of genius but it
certainly did me absolutely no good at all.

~~~
mcobrien
Thanks for sharing this. I have a bright five year-old and, having read
articles like this one, my partner and I try praise effort as much as we can.

Here's the problem. For nearly all of the tasks she's set in school, she
doesn't need to expend much effort at all. We say, "nice work, you must have
tried really hard!" and she replies, a little confused at us, "no".

It sounds like you found everything too easy as well. What kind of feedback
would have worked for you?

~~~
BSousa
I can't speak for your child of course, but I can give you a little story. My
wife and I went to the same schools since kindergarden (not same class) to
university, so the topics and difficulty were about the same. She always had
fantastic grades (90%+) and she got the encouragement that parents usually do
("You're so smart!", "Ohhh yes, she is very smart, she had a 100% on X"). I on
the other hand, was an above average but didn't care much so my grades were
just a bit better than average (70-80%) but something my father said always
stuck with me "I don't want/need you to be a genius, just work hard." That's
about what I remember of my parents parenting technique: "Just work hard".

Now, I'm 29, and never excelled at school, dropped out of University after one
year, travel across Europe working as a programmer in many interesting
projects and can say I live a normal balanced life. I don't dwell much on
problems, and accept that things change and I can change.

My wife on the other hand, she has very low self esteem mostly because she
believes that what she does is what she is. She can't change it. If she
forgets about something she says she is dumb. If she breaks a glass, she says
she is clumsy, and has a very hard time believing these things can change. She
is stuck at a miserable job because she is too afraid to move and fail at the
new one (even though she had better offers). She can't really separate what
she 'is' from what she can become. For her, mostly due to the way her parents
praised as a child, she came to believe we are born a certain way and can't
really change.

Long story to mostly tell you (though, I'm not a parent yet so I can't say I
know what the hell I'm talking about) that as long as you can teach your kid
that what we become is product of what we do, and not who we are born, she
will probably be ok. Try to find thing you can point to hard work. She does
her homework? Nice, then tell her next time she gets a good grade "Good thing
you did all you homework, see how it payed up". She may still think it was
easy, but she her subconscious will link hard work and results.

~~~
mluiten
This reminds me very much of the Carol Dweck's theory on the Fixed and Growth
Mindset[1].

I too, was raised on a Fixed Mindset; "You're not good at
math/physics/chemistry? That's ok, I'm sure you have other skills.". This
caused me some level of discomfort in trying new things (which are necessary
for any sort of growth) because at some point I could just reach 'the end of
the road' and the limit of 'talent'. This has often caused me to avoid new and
challenging things altogether.

Since a year or so I've been trying to adapt the Growth Mindset by
interrupting my thought process when I feel this discomfort and (often
literally) say to myself that it is not the outcome that matters, but the
chance to improve your skills and extend your abilities. Failure is not about
you and it should just be a trigger to try harder; the road does not end. I
still fall in the same traps I used to, but I've said Yes to more
(challenging) things this year than any other year and I haven't 'failed'
nearly as much as I thought I would, nor did the failures have the impact I
feared them to have. Growth really is a marvelous (and endless) thing.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset_(book)>

~~~
BSousa
Glad to see it is working for you! Just bought the book you mentioned for her.
Maybe it will help her. Thanks!

------
BrandonM
The problem with pop psychology is that it often is not _quite_ right. A half
dozen decades ago, the "new idea" was that kids should not be beaten, but
encouraged (spare the rod and spoil the child). In the last decade or two,
we've learned that the _kind_ of praise you employ is important, and the
advice now is to praise effort rather than innate ability.

Once you get into the real world, though, you learn that effort isn't as
important as doing the right things well. School itself is teaching us the
wrong thing, and this effort-praising business is compounding it. Trying
_really_ hard at History when you don't like it isn't going to make your life
much better in the long run, it's just going to be hours and hours that could
have been spent furthering some other ability or otherwise enjoying childhood.

In a couple more decades, we'll have a shiny new experiment that shows that
praising effort has ruined a couple generations, teaching them that life is
nothing but hard work, soldiering through undesirable situations without
considering importance or relevance. We'll learn that we need to teach
children reflection, to foster creativity, and to encourage curiosity. Then
we'll learn that those kids don't work hard enough, and the parenting industry
will roll on...

Rural parents have had it right for generations. Making kids play outside,
giving them real responsibilities (e.g., necessary farm chores), and teaching
them a variety of skills outside the classroom is practically guaranteed to
result in well-rounded, well-adjusted children. You don't need to read the
latest parenting mumbo-jumbo to know how to raise a kid.

------
gospelwut
I don't know if it's a sign of some neurotic behavior, but I hate it when
people use the word bright. And, for whatever reason, they use it a lot. I
find it patronizing if not placating--especially when my work isn't
appreciated by people that rationally couldn't possibly appreciate it on a
deep level without me interpreting it for them (i.e. not their fault).

It always feels like a qualifier or platitude. "I know you're bright, but".
Everybody says you should sell yourself, but as a child I always tried to NOT
sell myself. I just wanted to get by with minimal effort, because those
endevours (e.g. school) were meaningless to me beyond a score that may aid in
perusing things I care about. I always felt like the bar was set low because
kids in general don't try. There was zero advantage to distinguishing one's
self other than higher expectations for the same, hollow A.

There's one particular example that always sticks with me. I remember taking
Spanish from a charming, eccentric Argentinian woman. The work was simple, so
I began to embellish the little side projects and essays. Why not? I had
nothing else to do with the remaining 30 minutes of class. I turned in work; I
got good grades. No misunderstanding.

But, eventually, I got bored and just did enough to satisfy an A. My heart
just wasn't into embellishing Juan's illustrious adventure at the hospital. It
didn't garner anything more. There wasn't an A++ or Super A.

During the next PTA meeting, my adorable Spanish teacher burst into tears.
Why? Because I wasn't trying anymore. My heart just wasn't in it. Despite the
fact 95% of the class gave no fucks whatsoever, my decline crushed her.

This fortified the notion, in my mind, that it's not worth being seen as
bright or exceptional insofar it gains you nothing. It only means you are
expected to do more for an A or the same baseline salary as that jerk-off you
tutored Business Calculus to. If you can't sell it, don't do it. Yet, somehow,
people always end up using that word -- bright. Again, I wonder if it's simply
a nice way of saying idiosyncratic, since I try my hardest to not act "bright"
in anyway. I simply try to not be dim-witted and do good work.

(I also find it somewhat worthless coming from most people, since I've known
genius-level, 160-170IQ types. I'm nowhere near that realm of existence. And,
yes, those people do live in a different world than us albeit sometimes not
good).

------
rayiner
Bright kids put schools in a difficult position, to be sure. The biggest
problem with them is they're still just kids. They may be high-IQ, but they've
got kid-like focus, maturity, self-motivation, etc. It would be relatively
easy to just take high-IQ children and let them tool around on their own, but
that's not a good idea because they'll never learn study skills and
organizational skills that are so necessary to succeed in the real world.

Gifted and talented programs are, of course, an option, but they cost money
and even when they're available they're often too-little, too-late. Magnet
high schools, for example, don't do much good when a kid has been figuring out
who to avoid schoolwork to spare himself from the sheer boredom since
kindergarten.

I think a good solution would be to develop specialized curricula for advanced
students at the state or national level (segregated by area to account for
students who are advanced in some areas but not others). Obviously it would be
logistically impossible for teachers to teach and grade these different
assignments, but gifted students tend to be able to self-teach, and grading
should be purely based on effort anyway.

------
bane
Like many HNers, I was a pretty bright kid growing up. I scored embarrassingly
well on most aptitude tests, and before entering middle school found myself
the subject of repeated IQ, aptitude, learning style, personality style,
thinking style, and psychological analysis by befuddled education specialists
trying to figure out why I did so poorly in school.

Here's a sample of what I endured before entering 6th grade.

-6 IQ tests (the first when I was 4!)

-ITBS (I scored so high I had to take it twice, the second time isolated in a room with two observers since they thought I had cheated)

-MBTI - INTJ - I've taken this test at least a dozen times

-Keisey - I'm unfortunately a Mastermind

\- Holland - Strongly R-I-A

\- Various Thinking Style tests (abstract-to-concrete, abstract-sequential)

\- Hermann A-D

When I got to High School, I endured another battery of tests (3 more IQ
tests), interviews and other ridiculous activities. I spent one day a week
sequestered in a "gifted lab" where I was expected to produce works of art or
something, but I found interminably contrived and boring.

Why did I do so bad in school despite these indicators of intelligence? I was
miserable. From 1st grade on I was miserable. I hated school and everything
about it. Arbitrary rules, boring wrote memorization, pep rallies,
uninteresting subjects, teachers more inclined to deal with behavior issues in
class than teach anything. I only bothered to attend instead of skip classes
because the school had a decent liberal arts program (which was fun and had
teachers that "understood" being miserable in school) and I helped start a
poetry club with several other disaffected youths.

The truth is that I felt like, and in fact was, socially outcast by all of the
special programs, tests, special classes, after school mentoring programs etc.
I couldn't really enjoy talking with other kids my age in the normal classes
and getting involved in "special" classes instantly cast you as an outcast.

After enduring all that I never bothered to take the PSATs, SATs, GREs. I
didn't care. I was done being tested, probed and made to do what others wanted
in the interest of nurturing my potential.

The truth is that, as a smart, self motivated kid, I kept myself plenty
occupied by intellectual pursuits. Just outside of school. I built computers,
wrote software, wrote music (often in math class), performed in community
orchestras, drew in pencil, created alphabets, painted, studied a couple
martial arts, read an extraordinary number of books, played piano for modern
dance recitals, published poetry, got heavily involved in the demoscene.
School was to be endured, not to succeed in.

When I turned 15 I started feeling hopelessly trapped in a system and a world
I couldn't escape. Buoyed by my "successes" in various IQ/Aptitude tests, I
thought the world just didn't "get" me. I started having suicidal thoughts. At
16 I found myself thinking seriously about killing myself. I spent more than
one night at my sink with a kitchen knife at my wrist wondering if I should go
ahead and make the cut or not. It was not a good place to be. I was saved by
my music, and ability to experience _frisson_ (as weird as it sounds).

I did plenty of extracurricular I suppose, just none that would work on a
university application.

Kids who succeeded in school were "losers" (I mistakenly thought), since they
didn't have the inner light that led to self-creation (or so I thought).
Regurgitation of endless facts and conforming to what the teachers wanted did
not impress me.

Despite being extraordinarily bright, I was also hopelessly naive.

After graduating HS ( _just_ barely). I took a couple years off to find myself
and to grow up a little. The rarefied environment I grew up in (along with
some family issues) just gave me no chance to do that -- my IQ was high, but
my EQ was low.

If I could do it all over again? I'd do the normal classes with the normal
kids. I'd avoid all of the tests and other nonsense. I'd join the baseball
team and the debate club. Get a perfect SAT score and get into a top school.
Selling out? Maybe. But I think I'd have a been a lot less miserable and saved
fighting the system for a later time.

Why did I do so poorly in school despite the tests? It was probably the tests.
I was told I was so smart so many times that the effect mentioned in this
article seems particularly germane. I didn't work hard, so I didn't do well,
but I tested high, so I thought the system was broken, not me. I was _already_
smart, so I didn't need that fact positively reinforced, but I did need
instances of hard work reinforced. I had no work ethic coming out of high
school, I simply did things that interested me and dropped things that didn't.

I've thankfully grown out of many of these things, and the mantra I've used is
simple, "If you're so smart, you should be able to figure out how to <insert
problem>." If it's doing well in school, socializing well, working hard, etc.
I try and overcome my problem with that simply phrase. It sounds silly, but it
works and I wish I had known it growing up. I would have been a lot happier.

~~~
chunky1994
My god, this sounds so much like me! Although I'm not always miserable, only
I'd always done well in school except for the last two years when everything
just got very, very boring.

I graduate this year, and everything you've said in: > _At 16 I found myself
thinking seriously about killing myself. I spent more than one night at my
sink with a kitchen knife at my wrist wondering if I should go ahead and make
the cut or not. It was not a good place to be. I was saved by my music, and
ability to experience frisson (as weird as it sounds). I did plenty of
extracurricular I suppose, just none that would work on a university
application. Kids who succeeded in school were "losers" (I mistakenly
thought), since they didn't have the inner light that led to self-creation (or
so I thought). Regurgitation of endless facts and conforming to what the
teachers wanted did not impress me. Despite being extraordinarily bright, I
was also hopelessly naive._ Applies to me.

Could you please tell me how you got yourself out of this? I'm quite desperate
here.

~~~
bane
It sounds hopelessly stupid, but it saved me. I'm one of the few percentage of
the population that can _frisson_ to certain works of music.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson>

When I was sitting there, knife to my wrist, the thought of all of the music
that I would miss, that I wouldn't discover or be able to frisson to (I didn't
know what it was called at the time and only learned what it was decades
later, but I knew it was very real for me) was the one thing I couldn't
accept.

I've never regretted that decision.

What I've found is that outside of academia, the real world problems are _so_
messy, and so complicated, that it takes all of my intelligence to work on
those problems _and_ deal with other messy soft issues, like selling my ideas
to higher ups, or balancing financials against employees, are so
intellectually stimulating that it literally "gets better" if you have the
drive and will to find a line of work where you get to work on interesting
problems.

(I've always thought the wonderful "it gets better" ads do a disservice to
other disaffected members of society by not talking specifically to us, even
if the message it true for more than the community they target)

As a matter of fact, it doesn't just get better, it gets awesome. I've gotten
a job I never get bored of, I got the girl, I get a pretty nice paycheck, live
a nice life, travel as much as I want to wherever I feel like (see the
world!), and always work to write a novel of my life that I'd find
interesting.

Just remember, if you are as smart as they say you are, you can figure out how
to solve your own problems. Not popular at school? That's a solvable problem.
No girlfriend? Solvable. Bad grades? You can solve it. Your mind is your most
powerful and flexible asset, you can use it to do anything you really put your
mind to, even things that don't come naturally once you solve the problem of
learning how to grind on boring stuff.

~~~
wahnfrieden
I had no idea frissoning was a unique thing. How repeatable is it for you?
I've felt it countless times from music or moments in film or life in general
when I experience something that is particularly profound or impressive on a
visceral level. It's not a daily occurrence though. I've usually attributed it
to the feeling of getting a surge of adrenaline. Interesting.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
I can't repeat it much. I don't go chasing after it; I let it find me. It
isn't something you can conjure up over and over. You feel like you are in
contact with beauty itself, and then you are forever changed. The experience
is fleeting, but I remain grateful for it when it happens.

In my case I found it in some music that I found at the exact right moment in
my life and it served as a sort of pivot point to open myself up to life more.
It's hard to know what caused what exactly; I don't believe it necessary to
boil it down to something that would appease the cynics of the world. I
instead see it as something of an omen: that I'd one day be able to
participate in this thing called music.

It's a long road, but I thank you for reminding me of it.

~~~
itmag
Sounds like a mystical experience. Maybe something to look into?

~~~
sliverstorm
If anything, I'd describe the experience (if what I experience is the same
thing) as similar to, if not the same thing as, a small shot of endorphins
dumped directly into the base of your neck.

~~~
itmag
Yeah I've experienced it.

Are you saying it's not commonly experienced?

~~~
sliverstorm
I personally have no idea if it is common or not.

------
cperciva
Yes, praising students for their effort is a good way to encourage them to
keep trying. But is this necessarily a good thing?

I see far too many students entering postsecondary education who shouldn't be
there. No matter how hard they try, they just can't grasp the basic concepts.
And when they inevitably fail, they fall back on what they were praised for as
children -- "but I worked so hard!" -- as if they deserve to receive a degree
on the basis of effort alone.

Sure, it's useful to remind smart kids that they need both brains and effort.
But don't make the dumb kids think that effort alone is enough to get them
where they want to go.

~~~
xibernetik
I'm not going to disagree with the meaning behind your post, but I am going to
disagree with the wording.

Calling kids who shouldn't be in university dumb is incredibly harmful and
reinforces the idea that you need some sort of Bachelor's degree to be
successful, not-stupid, a real adult, etc. That attitude only encourages
people who really should enter a trade get a random arts degree instead which
causes them far more misery in the long run.

Besides, effort is not enough for smart people either -- for some careers,
you'll need a variety of talents that even for a "smart" person may be
difficult or slow to develop: people skills, aesthetic sense, artistic
control, etc. Not to mention some people have an easy time with biology and
have no trouble at all going through med school but find calculus hellish, and
people who are the exact opposite. If anything, the whole "If you believe in
yourself and work hard, you can go anywhere!"-attitude has a chance of
backfiring with everyone.

~~~
cperciva
_Calling kids who shouldn't be in university dumb is incredibly harmful..._

Only because you attach a value judgement to the word. I'm just calling a
spade a spade; problems only arise when people think it's impossible for
stupid people to be happy or successful (despite large volumes of evidence to
the contrary).

------
tsunamifury
A good professional life's about follow through. No one cares what you were
smart enough to do, only what you've done.

I'm just learning that now at 26.

------
bcl
[http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-New-Psychology-Success-
ebook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-New-Psychology-Success-
ebook/dp/B000FCKPHG/) does a really good job exploring this.

------
yogrish
This article gives much more info on this topic. " Inverse Power of praise"
<http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/27840/>

------
bitsoda
I've read upwards of 140 comments, and have yet to stumble on some kind of
_solution_ for those of us who fell into the "smart praise" category as
children. Is there some way to flip the proverbial work-ethic switch in your
mid-twenties (or later) or are we doomed to a life of self-doubt and avoiding
anything remotely challenging that we're not already proficient in?

------
WalterBright
I was always a Bright kid.

------
aforty
Wow... That hit close to home for me. I've always felt this way and I'm afraid
to fail. I overachieve always to try overcompensate for the feeling that if I
fail then I'm not smart enough.

I never overachieved in school, I think I was mostly bored but was always told
I was "smart" and "bright." Jebus, that really hit a nerve.

------
eavc
Where is the study showing intelligence to be profoundly malleable?

IQ is one of the more heritable traits, from what I've heard.

------
IsItSafe
Feeling a lot of kinship with many commenters in this thread. High grades
without trying; honor/gifted classes from a young age (at the private school I
went to, we had those starting in first grade. You were put into a class with
a teacher and only 2-3 other students); breezed through tests without studying
(thankfully this did not impact my work habits later on - as soon as I started
working on challenging, real-world problems I became a workaholic); aloofness;
extreme precociousness; a burning hatred of childhood (I wanted to be an adult
to have something like freedom. I remember it feeling so unfair that large
numbers of "undeserving", irresponsible, cruel people got to be adults and I
was stuck a child. No one else I knew could relate); and of course, suicidal
ideation. It's interesting to ponder what our lives would have been like had
people like the ones in this thread known each other at the time.

Anyway, I thought I'd add my "why I hated school as a gifted child" list to
this thread: This applies to public and private schools, both of which I've
attended. This is an NYC-based, personal, anecdotal perspective, and doesn't
feature any sort of statistical rigor.

* Co-student apathy, class disruptiveness, and disinterest. Seeing other students cheat, fall asleep, space out, not participate, and fail horribly can be a motivation killer.

* A predilection toward violence by many students/the constant threat of getting "jumped" (less of an issue at private, but not completely eliminated)

* Overcrowded classrooms

* Teaching to the lowest common denominator. No attempt at tailoring education to individuals or logical groups.

* At times, more time spent on attempting to restore order than teaching

* A habit of blaming "everyone involved" (i.e., anyone in the vicinity) instead of attempting to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of activities that were against regulations. A very "short-cutty" attitude towards determining any sort of blame. Nothing resembling due process and no requirements for sound evidence. "10 guilty men go free" had no meaning.

* Little to no coverage of the source theories or practical future applications of subjects. Much focus on facts, figures, and formulas without any attempt at relating it to the real world, past, present, or future. "Real world" examples tended to be laughably contrived. Attempting to glean information about sources/reasoning for the thing's existence often met with angry stares ("you're causing us to veer off the subject and confusing people!") or simply stopped cold ("it doesn't matter, just learn it").

* Poor facilities and equipment (not an issue at private)

* Alternately attempting to paint the currently taught education as a personal enrichment experience ("it's for your own good") or a necessity for future survival ("learn this or you'll sleep in the street"). Neither perspective was accompanied by anything resembling _why_ or _how_ it was beneficial.

* A jarring, cacophonous, impersonal, zoo-like atmosphere. Getting up early, waiting outside in the cold/heat, being stuffed into classrooms/buses/lunchrooms with people who had horrible hygiene; disgusting habits; were loud and obnoxious; were dramatic, crying, whining, moping children; were four feet tall and no life experience, yet filled with endless arrogance and bravado. Blaring bells going off when you're still half asleep. If you were precocious/mature, you tended to feel very uncomfortable and out of place. Arguments about this being like the "real world" are complete and utter nonsense; if I don't like a place of work or other institution, I go somewhere else that I like better.

* Absolutely horrible food (even at private school!)

* Far too much focus on testing rather than the ability to understand and apply knowledge (which goes right along with not attempting to teach how said knowledge could be usefully applied).

* Lack of depth. I've learned (and continue to learn) more about subjects researching them on my own than I ever learned about them in school. Perhaps that's a given considering how much time we can personally spend on subjects outside of school, it still seems like schools could do a lot better job of it.

------
110101001010100
Another deceptive title designed to attract clicks.

The problem is with how we attribute achievement, how we praise kids, not the
kids themselves. But the title as written attracts more attention. The reader
thinks, "What could possibly be wrong with the bright kids?" Click.

I'd argue this finding implicitly speaks to the way we view and value
intelligence and ability. Seems to me we refuse to acknowledge effort is as
useful as some sort of innate ability. Our dominant fascination (judging by
scholarly and mass media publications) seems not to be with hard work, and
achievement despite the odds, but instead with those who are "gifted" and do
not need to work as hard as everyone else to achieve the same results.

Surprise! The bright kids are not as motivated. That's the revolutionary
finding presented in this fluff HBR blog "content".

We go to great lengths to try to find such "innate" above average ability, to
label and preselect "the bright kids", instead of devoting our attention
toward motivating and rewarding _effort_, which in my opinion might ultimately
harness more human potential in the aggregate than focusing excessively on
"the bright kids".

Especially when you consider that the attention we place on ability and the
"bright" label we give them could possibly lower their overall performance, if
you believe what's suggested by this study.

~~~
chunky1994
> _We go to great lengths to try to find such "innate" above average ability,
> to label and preselect "the bright kids", instead of putting our efforts
> into motivating and rewarding _effort_, which just might ultimately harness
> more human potential in the aggregate than just focusing on "the bright
> kids", in my opinion._

That's true for the most part, however motivating bright kids doesn't take
away from resources so much so that rewarding effort becomes unfeasible.
Bright kids require a lot of motivation because either:

1) They tend to doubt their abilities, and because they're bright spend most
of their time figuring out whether they're actually bright as stated in the
article.

2) They get bored with ordinary mundane work, and so break away from any
formal system of learning and seek for an outlet, which may turn out to be
very productive, or because they're so young, it may be counterproductive and
result in them going back to point 1.

~~~
110101001010100
Very true. For how to "solve" those problems in education I have never had any
decent ideas. No doubt many readers here have experienced them first hand.

I just see a lot of attention on "innate" ability, who has it, and why, and
less attention placed on effort. I think effort is underrated. That is my
biased opinion.

Would anyone disagree that if bright kids were forced to have to expend more
effort, they might themselves benefit, as they _might_ be more likely to see
some of their true potential? No guarantees of course.

