
I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected - pseudolus
https://www.cbc.ca/parents/learning/view/i-grew-up-gifted-but-my-life-didnt-turn-out-the-way-i-expected
======
jshaqaw
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 family, spent learning and pondering lots of
different things rather than focused specialization, spent achieving enough to
live well but not make the Forbes rich list or a Nobel prize are considered
external failures to live up to potential. But it is a happy life and in the
end that is all that matters. It isn’t easy to tune that out and be thankful
for what you have but it is vital to my sanity.

I have children now who are very smart and capable. If they want to conquer
the world that’s great. But what I really try to reinforce is that they should
find a life that makes them happy and try to ignore the sentiment that they
MUST be a Supreme Court justice or a unicorn CEO if that isn’t what their soul
tells them.

~~~
karmelapple
I’m so glad I had parents who encouraged in me what you are encouraging in
your children.

I was accepted to a very prestigious university, and as my friends, their
parents, and other adults (including some family) found out, there was mostly
encouragement to just go there. The attitude was, “why wouldn’t I want to go
there? Just think of the opportunity!” They we’re shocked I was thinking of
attending a state school instead of automatically saying yes to the
prestigious one.

My parents were much more practical, pointing out how much it would cost -
even after the scholarships I’d be given - and how much debt I’d have at the
end of 4 years.

They pointed out how difficult it can be to go a long ways away for college
sometimes, and how young adults of that age can struggle, especially in the
first year. I saw that happen to many friends and acquaintances; leaving to a
school far away, only to move back much closer to home after a year or two.

One friend who wasn’t strongly encouraging me to go to the prestigious school?
Someone who was in a grad program at that prestigious school. He was confident
I’d succeed and be happy at either a smaller, state university, or the big
name one. When I chose the state school, this friend - who had been pretty
neutral up to then - said he was _very_ impressed and happy that I went the
way that I did.

All the people who hadn’t had that experience seemed pretty hesitantly
approving of my choice to go to the state school. “Oh, you chose that one? ...
well, good for you!”

I later ended up working at the same company as many people from more
prestigious schools, and graduating from the state school with no debt let me
be a co-founder of a company much earlier in my life than if I had tens of
thousands of college debt. I’m totally happy with my choice.

~~~
throwayEngineer
The whole prestigious school thing means little imo.

After you meet a few dunces from a top school and the rare genius who went to
CC, you really stop caring.

College is what you make it. If you aren't networking a top school, I don't
see the purpose, we all learn math.

~~~
nugget
I would argue that as University education has scaled up and become
commoditized, the value of a generic degree as a signaling function has
decreased, and that in response the value of matriculation to a top school has
only increased. Schools are just brands and become an extension of the
personal brands of their students and alums. Unless you're studying a hard
science or similar, I'd bet that the value of lower ranked schools will become
obsolete sooner.

~~~
Consultant32452
I think education is going to radically change in the next decade or so.
Online education is going to come up to par with the greatest of institutions.
The missing link is the actual credential. The signal of the end of education
as we knew it in the past is when a wealthy/powerful person comes out and
endorses one of these things in a real way. For example, if Elon Musk comes
out and says SpaceX considers a cert from $NetflixOfEducation as equal to an
engineering degree from MIT on a resume... then it's all over. I believe this
will certainly happen at some point, it's just a matter of when.

~~~
nugget
Generally I agree with your view, but there are real hiring problems that have
to be solved first.

>if Elon Musk comes out and says SpaceX considers a cert from
$NetflixOfEducation as equal to an engineering degree from MIT on a resume...
then it's all over.

If 50 developers apply for a job and 3 of them are from MIT and 47 are from
lesser known schools, using the MIT signal as a filter is efficient. If
$NetflixOfEducation is too accessible and half of the applicants have it, then
it loses its value as a hiring signal. Of course there are other filters too.
Previous employers is an important one. You can create comprehensive
professional examinations like they do in medicine, where a passing grade is a
major achievement. But these don't scale well because the more they scale the
easier it is to cheat, especially if the risks of getting caught cheating are
minor (i.e. there aren't previous barriers that must be overcome via
investment of time in other institutions first).

The other dynamic of top schools is the networking effect. There is real value
in concentrating thousands of the "best and brightest" together in one place
and bouncing them off each other. It doesn't scale, which is both a problem
(for qualified people who are excluded for whatever reason) and a benefit (for
those who participate, there is value in the scarcity).

~~~
antoinevg
> If $NetflixOfEducation is too accessible and half of the applicants have it,
> then it loses its value as a hiring signal.

Only for companies who hire for signals.

For companies that hire for throughput this does not hold.

~~~
tqi
I actually think it's a bit more complicated than that. For a large company
trying to fill a ton of openings, I think where you went to college is
actually an even more important filtering criteria (ie an Ivy League degree is
almost an automatic pass from resume to phone screen), but the list of
colleges that get a near automatic pass is larger.

------
S_A_P
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.

~~~
AllegedAlec
It's what Pratchett said: “If you trust in yourself... and believe in your
dreams... and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spent
their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

~~~
mcguire
On the other hand, those who work hard and aren't lazy aren't having any fun
either.

~~~
whenchamenia
I would disagree completely. Good work is its own reward, as is the respect
that comes with it after years of doing the right thing. Its not something you
flirt with, its intergity.

~~~
uhhhhhhh
Dare I say you're both right and missing each others point?

Doing a good job at everything you do personally and professionally is (like
you say) integrity and drives self-respect.

At the same time, the work you're doing can be menial/meaningless to you and
thus may take time from tasks that have greater meaning, or it may even be
mentally unhealthy (stress) or impact your relationships (long hours) that is
sometimes required TO do a good job.

Not everything we do in life is going to matter, I'm not arguing we need to
have meaning in everything. However there is a point I think where people do
need some sort of personal meaning/connection to some of what they're doing.
For many people its family, others charity, volunteering or working in fields
where they are passionate and connected to or any/all of the above/other.

Too often people take the admirable approach of trying to do the best job they
can at everything, and burn themselves out on tasks and jobs that don't
provide them personal benefit in their lives otherwise in my opinion, its a
cultural issue that seems to be getting worse.

------
yomly
People blossom at different stages of their lives - sometimes it's
physical/technical, other times it's emotional, but in any case sometimes
these advantages/head starts end up evening out after the first 30 years for
people. To tell some anecdotes of people living at the pinnacle of piano:

There is a pianist called Aimi Kobayashi who was a real piano prodigy - she
was performing big concertos by the age of 9.

Here is her playing a musically mature recital of Chopin Impromptu No. 1 (Op.
29) when she was 11 - she sounds like a pro already[0]

People who were following her were expecting her to take the world by storm as
a world-beating titan in the world of piano but she somewhat "plateaued"
(relative to her peers at the top) in her teenage years.

Meanwhile Yuja Wang is an absolutely huge pianist (I note that her BBC Proms
this year sold out almost instantly) but accounts of her career/development
tell of her being mostly middle of the pack and unremarkable during her
teenage years. No one in their right mind would question her technical prowess
today though.

Yuja doing Shostakovich 1 [1]

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX57r1l5W3U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX57r1l5W3U)

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo0yIuZTQKg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo0yIuZTQKg)

~~~
yomly
If you prefer stories about sports people, the rags-to-riches story of Jamie
Vardy is a personal favourite[0]

Here is someone who never gave up despite apparently lacking the "talent" when
young and yet went on to win the Premier League, be called up to play for his
national team and beat the record of a world-class player (RvN) for scoring
consecutive games in a row.

Meanwhile the sad story of Ravel Morrison[1] is one of how talent alone isn't
enough. A football prodigy who was allegedly more gifted than his peer Paul
Pogba (4th most expensive player transfer in football history). When you watch
him, it is self-evident that he has some gifts but he has bounced from team to
team and his career has not really reflected his natural abilities.

EDIT: Alternatively, another story, an anecdote from UK political aide
Alastair Campbell in his book "Winners and How They Succeed"[2] - he talks
about how on a visit to the Manchester United training grounds a coach pointed
to the two young football players Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo (neither
of whom were even 18 yet) and spotted that only one of the two would go on to
reach the very top[3], citing a difference in work ethic:

>He said that Ronaldo never ever stopped believing he could improve, whereas
Rooney 'thinks he'd made it.'

[0][https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/oct/10/jamie-
vardy...](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/oct/10/jamie-vardy-
leicester-city-england-lithuania-euro-2016)

[1][https://thesefootballtimes.co/2018/09/25/the-complete-
story-...](https://thesefootballtimes.co/2018/09/25/the-complete-story-of-
paul-pogba-and-ravel-morrison/)

[2][https://www.amazon.co.uk/Winners-They-Succeed-Alastair-
Campb...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Winners-They-Succeed-Alastair-
Campbell/dp/0091958857)

[3][https://www.balls.ie/football/difference-between-rooney-
and-...](https://www.balls.ie/football/difference-between-rooney-and-
ronaldo-314814)

~~~
paganel
I’m on my phone while riding the public bus so can’t really easily look for a
reference, but I remember the same Ronaldo saying that there was an even more
talented footballer than him while he was an youngster at Sporting Lisbon but
that that player didn’t play anywhere higher than the Portuguese Second League
because he was lacking in work ethic. I very rarely heard Ronaldo say about
someone else that he was better than him.

~~~
yomly
I recall some clip from the Ronaldo movie where he takes the camera crew to
his bedroom and points at his bed and says something along the lines of "this
is my bed, it is very important - I spend almost 12 hours a day here:

I sleep for 7 hours, I get up in the morning, I train, I then sleep another 5
hours to recover, then get up and train some more"

The guy has virtually no life beyond training - and he optimises his schedule
to squeeze even more training time out of every day.

Say what you like, but I find it to be a little bit inspiring to see someone
at the top deciding to dedicate themselves to seeing just how much further
they can push themselves just for the sake of being even better...

------
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.

~~~
augustl
> 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 gravitational force gaming has on me to do good..

~~~
turk73
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 to even comprehend why we were
firing him. He was falling asleep in meetings every day and the code he was
turning in was not only sub-standard, but often just non-existent.

~~~
kcb
_I never really began to succeed until I stopped playing stupid games and
became a man._

Nice work. You're so manly now.

~~~
dpoochieni
More than some.

I think he triggered some people because they know he is right, he has lived
both sides unlike your common gaming addict with no real breaks in their
activity for years.

------
duxup
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.

~~~
bradleyjg
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 politics / networking / job hopping sense. There
are few or no other professions where that’s true, certainly not any that are
so large in terms of numbers.

~~~
hestefisk
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.

~~~
scruple
Absolutely. A couple that my wife and I are dear friends with are both in the
medical profession. Nuclear medicine and pediatrics. They spent the first 8
years of their careers in NYC, establishing themselves / their careers. He's
now in SoCal and she's in NorCal. They have 2 kids. They anticipate that
they'll be split up for a couple of years in this manner because of their work
situations. He's flying back and forth to be with his family. He's tried to
get positions near their new home but he's either over-qualified or he's not
getting bites.

They have to play networking and social games with their careers to a level
that is well and truly beyond anything my wife and I have ever had to deal
with as software engineers.

My wife and I have board game nights and that qualifies as networking. We're
playing board games with folks from FAANG companies, triple A video game
developers, interesting start-ups, etc... who I've met through this group. Our
friends in the medical profession can't get away with something like that.

------
wickoff
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 entertainer. How is are those standards
sustainable? If everybody excels the nobody does. If everyone is a boss then
nobody has employees.

What effect does this drive for perfectionism has on brains that evolved to be
satisfied with having enough food, having shelter and basic social approval.
No wonder the rates of depression are rising among young people.

~~~
toyg
_> is an educator_

 _> North America_

Hardly a good box to tick, by most reports.

~~~
portroyal
Your comment is grey and I don't think it should be.

People care so much about being "a good person" while also acknowledging
corporate psychopathy and other "bad guys win" scenarios that are so normal to
the human existence.

Meanwhile, if you ask an educator about their situation, I'm not sure they'd
tick the box. The educators I know are fulfilled by their work, not their work
environments.

~~~
humanrebar
Let's ask short order cooks if they are fulfilled by their work environments.
They'll probably complain about coworkers, the hours, and say their feet hurt.

That's not to say teachers don't have the feelings they might have, but it's a
pretty privileged position to be in to expect your work to fulfill you in some
deep way.

~~~
toyg
My point is that a lot (most?) educators wouldn’t consider “being an educator”
as a fabulous achievement - it’s a job, and a pretty stressful and financially
unrewarding one at that, particularly for people with a significant amount of
academic qualifications. So the parent poster going “what is she complainin’
for, she’s an educator!”, imho, is pretty out of order by most objective
parameters.

~~~
humanrebar
I already understood your point. But I disagree that people, even university
educated ones, are owed a stress free, lucrative, or personally fulfilling
job.

It's a great thing to have, but it's a privilege to have one. And it's
privileged thinking to expect one.

Lots of kids have parents who work as hard or harder for less money and
respect. Of course people can complain about the treatment of teachers. Just
don't be surprised if short order cooks aren't particularly moved.

------
bitexploder
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 very smart. The main purpose is
to teach them there are things they aren’t good at and have to work at, and
even small improvements in BJJ can feel like huge wins. My motivation and
reason is very similar to the authors. Everyone always told me how smart I
was, and wondered why I didn’t succeed academically. It’s because it was too
easy and I was already “smart” so why bother? I started building software
professionally at 19 and moved away from home. My first few years away from
home were hard as I had to learn life skills like “focus” heh. Anyhow, that is
my story time about kids and being smart. FWIW, my 7 year old came home one
day recently and said “I think I am smart. I can read books the fourth graders
do....” heh. I just told her “good, but it doesn’t matter. Just enjoy the
books” she really thought I would be proud she is smart, and of course we are,
but “smart” can set you up for a hard time finding fulfillment later on in
life.

~~~
vagab0nd
Speaking from my own experience, I think it's very important to have a
balanced view of the fact that you are smart. i.e. you shouldn't be ignorant
of it.

If you "play" competitively in any of the fields, being ignorant of your own
strength is a big disadvantage in my opinion.

~~~
bitexploder
How would you see using the knowledge that you are smart to your advantage in
a given field? You still have to do the work? (my line of thinking is
something like: You produce what you produce in your field. To me the effort
you put in matters the most. Smart is a meta quality to your work)

~~~
vagab0nd
Yes it is a meta quality, and that's why it's not irrelevant. For instance,
when told something is "hard", you can calibrate yourself on what that means.
You also get the correct sense of what's possible and what's not, in what
amount of time. This helps a ton with planning and decision making.

~~~
bitexploder
Thanks for clarifying. I am not sure how important it is to know you are
“smart” vs just doing what comes natural in a given situation. It’s just how
you will work problems. But I do think there is something there, about being
Meta-analytical. I think good leaders have this. The ability to be two feet
above a battlefield. I am not convinced it’s completely even a “smart” thing
so much as a distinct problem solving methodology that works well (which might
just make you smart based on the observables). I am rambling, anyhow. This was
a cool thread in general.

------
mabbo
The key moment for me when I first had an inkling that being smart wasn't
enough on it's own came at my grade 11 math final exam.

I finished it in 45 minutes. No problem. Got an 88%. Felt awesome. Simon, the
prototype of the "jock" football player, took the full 2.5 hours offered on
the same exam. He got a 99%.

It bothered me for years because it went against everything I knew. _I_ was
smarter, so _I_ deserved the better grade. I finished so much faster than him!
If I'd spent the full 2.5 hours I'm sure I'd have gotten 100%... But I didn't
do that.

It took until college before I finally came to understand: nobody cares how
clever you are. There are no points for that in life. Points are for getting
things done, for accomplishments.

(I should also mention that despite the jock stereotype of acting superior,
etc, Simon was one of the nicest guys!)

~~~
beauzero
My brother was always a better learner/student than me as well. He would study
10+ hours for an exam...or all night if that is what it took. I would cram 15
minutes before an exam. We both got similar grades. The difference is that he
retained most of what he studied. A month later I didn't remember it. We
adjusted our jobs similarly. Mine requires large amounts of information being
take in and used quickly to solve problems...sometimes only once. He teaches
difficult students a very difficult subject.

~~~
sanxiyn
This kind of thinking is very foreign to me but apparently it is common?
Getting 100% in exam never required any effort for me, so I never studied for
exam. I always studied to understand, so I retained it all.

~~~
toyg
You forgot the humblebrag alert at the top.

------
petercooper
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.

~~~
redsparrow
This echos some career advice from Dilbert creator Scott Adams. "Become very
good (top 25%) at two or more things." He also goes on to say that "at least
one of the skills in your mixture should involve communication, either written
or verbal." The idea being that this should make it easier to leverage your
other skill(s) in a work environment.

[https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/car...](https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-
advice.html)

~~~
mark-r
He uses himself as a prime example. He knows he's not the funniest guy in the
world, nor the best artist. But by combining the two in Dilbert he's been very
successful.

------
caser
In many ways, this was my story growing up until I got really into soccer.

I started playing late, but loved the game, so clawed my way up through
practicing in much of my spare time, whether down by the field or in the
street in front of my house.

Soccer pre-season conditioning also was probably the hardest thing I’d ever
done, and left me in the best shape of my life. This instilled the feedback
loop of effort = reward that was missing due to academics coming so easily.

If you have a gifted child, find a sport they enjoy and encourage the hell out
of it.

~~~
toyg
Sport is a double-edged sword. I was shit at _calcio_ but in Italy it's the
only true religion, so I got to play it anyway. I built my role on hard work
and tactical awareness, rose to team captain, then... my ankles just checked
out when I was 18. My mood never fully recovered, I think. Nothing really
compares. Outside a football pitch I'm the laziest person ever; the sort of
hard-work mentality one gets on the pitch does not really translate to white-
collar jobs, and I know I'll never find again the sort of high I could get
when scoring or tackling.

~~~
pdimitar
There are a ton of other sports to practice -- and some are not competitive at
all.

Keep looking, you will find a physical activity that will fulfil you. You
might never get the same high as with football and that's OK. There are many
other things to do!

------
taylodl
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 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!

~~~
hyperdeficit
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.

~~~
0815test
Being able to reach "flow" quickly when setting out to work on something is
what matters, even more so than "work ethic" or "grit" alone. In the longer
run, relying on the latter just sets you up for burnout and the stress of
overwork; whereas the former is sustainable and even quite enjoyable.

Physical activities such as shoveling snow and chopping wood are good at
inducing flow, whereas it can take some effort to reliably enter that state
when doing something more abstract. I think this is why the Pomodoro method is
so popular, it can be used to "gamify" all sorts of tasks since the regularly-
scheduled breaks act as a physical marker of your achievement.

~~~
taylodl
That's a good point and brings up something I still struggle with - "flow."
I'd never heard it put that way but that gives me another tool to help me up
my game. Thanks!

------
godzillabrennus
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 their class. They follow rules well.

I’ve been entrepreneuring for a commensurate period of time and overall look
back very fondly on what I’ve accomplished and the trajectory of where my
career is heading. Even the winter I had to eat peanut butter and whatever I
could get for free to survive is something I don’t regret, it was a wake up
call for me to take more off the table to survive bad times than to reinvest
everything in growth.

My sibling has expressed to others that they wonder if they chose the wrong
path. I do not wonder these things. My life feels right.

Do what you love and it’ll never feel like work.

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

~~~
godzillabrennus
My siblings gender is Female.

Why does it matter? Did that change your perception of the story?

~~~
humanrebar
It doesn't matter, but the singular they confused me as well. It took me a
second to realize 'they' is your sibling and not some other people entirely.

------
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.

~~~
cowpewter
Yes, I coasted through school until college. Never studied, never had to, even
in the gifted, honors, and AP classes. I especially did well on tests.
Graduated 3rd in my class, only .001 GPA points from 2nd, with a handful of 5s
(and a couple 4s) on my AP tests. Had undiagnosed ADHD (inattentive type) the
whole time. Always procrastinated heavily, usually wrote papers/did projects
the night before they were due. The closest I got to "studying" was re-reading
the chapter I was going to be tested on the morning before the test, and even
that was only for social studies classes where you had to remember names and
dates. I did not need to study at all for math, science, or English courses. I
got very lucky with a handful of _exceptional_ teachers in high school.
Teachers that actually cared about me and my success. I wanted to do well in
school, because I got praised for it - both by my mom and by teachers. I
craved that praise like nothing else as a child so I always did just enough to
make sure my grades stayed high.

Life fell apart in college. Huge class sizes with no personal connection to
the teacher and being solely responsible for meeting deadlines and studying
eventually ruined school for me. Your lecturer with over 3000 students doesn't
give a shit about you or your performance in school. I lost the immediate
feedback and praise that I used to get in grade/high school, and with it, my
hyperfocus on doing well in school was gone.

I fell into a deep depression, took a year off, took anti-depressants, tried
school again but still just couldn't make myself go to classes anymore.
Dropped out. Spent a few years working a dead-end call center tech support
job. Wound up getting into software anyway (my failed degree was going to be
in CISE) and I do well enough for myself now (especially after getting an ADHD
diagnosis and getting medicated for it), but college/young adulthood was a
disaster for me. I also had to declare bankruptcy in my mid-twenties - another
consequence of depression and undiagnosed ADHD. Impulse purchases and the
guilt/shame/avoidance spiral turned my credit into a mess.

Most of my peers actually did far better than me (like, they actually finished
their bachelors (some went as far as PhDs) and went on to good jobs in the
fields they studied for), but I don't think any of them had ADHD. That was the
other thing that kept me focused in high school. I was part of a decently
sized group of "smart kids" \- we would compete with each other on grades, and
that competition helped keep me on track. Lost that in college too.

Basically, yeah, giftedness and ADHD are a terrible combo. With ADHD, you need
a lot of structure and work ethic to succeed in life, but if you're smart
enough, you don't have to develop _any_ of those skills to excel in grade/high
school. Then you hit adulthood and everything falls apart.

------
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.

~~~
LocalPCGuy
As someone who was put into "additional classes" because of being labeled
gifted, asking them to do more work isn't always the right answer. I felt like
it was a punishment, basically more (boring) school work, and (as a kid) the
best way to deal with that was to disengage further.

~~~
0815test
It's not supposed to be a punishment at all! If anything, the whole policy of
"challenging" gifted kids is something that should be done in an _unusually_
benevolent way, since the whole point is to visibly teach them that it's
_okay_ to fail at something that's especially difficult (particularly when
they're just starting out on that task); and that good things can come out of
failure, provided that it's followed by focused work and a moderate dose of
"grit" \- that there _is_ a level above theirs where "no pain no gain" is the
name of the game!

~~~
LocalPCGuy
Exactly, when I was in elementary school, it was basically an additional
class, that took me out of regular class time which then meant in addition to
the extra class work, I had to also catch up on the regular class information,
assignments, etc. that other kids had class time to learn/work on.

It was well intentioned, just not super well thought out I think. Also keep in
mind that my perceptions are filtered through many years at this point, so
take them with a bit of a grain of salt.

Middle school and beyond were a bit better, as you just ended up in more
advanced classes (i.e. advanced Math).

------
aerophilic
This reminds me of a parenting philosophy we employ with our kids:

We don’t tell them they are smart. Instead, we tell them they must have worked
hard at something (Assuming it was worthy of praise).

We got this from the book Nature Shock, a book that talks about “counter
intuitive” examples of how you can impart lessons on your kids more
effectively.

Basically by praising hard work rather than brilliance, you are telling your
kids that you got something because you worked on it, not because you are
inherently “smart”. This gives them (at least in theory) something to work
with when they run into obstacles.

Worry though what to do if they never pursue anything that is truly “hard” for
them, and consequently need to struggle. and they never have to work.

Edit: changed wording in last paragraph to clarify intent

~~~
barry-cotter
At some point they’ll leave your care and enter some other environments. If
they don’t understand that other people find school and intellectual work far
more difficult and less rewarding than they do there are two different failure
modes possible. They can really piss people off by suggesting they do things
they perceive as a deliberate insult, like telling a coal miner they they
should retrain and get a job at Google, or they never meet those people and
think everyone is like them. People who have no contact with other social and
educational strata have comically off estimations of how other people live,
the educational equivalent of asking someone with work problems why they don’t
take time off and live off their investments for a bit.

~~~
aerophilic
It’s a valid concern. I worry about this a lot.

My wife had a _much_ different upbringing than me, and as a consequence, is
“blind” to certain realities.

When I tell her things about how most people find “x” hard, she just doesn’t
“get it”. She just sees that there are so many people who find “x” easy, and
she looks “up” and sees all the things _she_ finds hard.

Not sure how to “teach” this to my kids, other than having them stay with
family that weren’t as fortunate as me while growing up. Show them how hard it
is when you _don’t_ have all the advantages (we thus far) have been able to
give them.

One thing that I know I can do is make sure they learn the value of “hard
labor”, as I did helping my Dad doing construction over the years. It sucked
at the time, but I know what it truly means to be physically exhausted at the
end of the day for long stretches because you has been carrying 2x4s, cement
bags, and digging holes all day.

~~~
barry-cotter
> Not sure how to “teach” this to my kids, other than having them stay with
> family that weren’t as fortunate as me while growing up. Show them how hard
> it is when you don’t have all the advantages (we thus far) have been able to
> give them.

Summer and part time jobs. Working in a supermarket, fast food restaurant or
on a golf course or construction site leaves you with a much better
appreciation for the breadth of human capacities, interests and experiences
than working towards your first I Banking internship. I’m sure volunteering as
a tutor to disadvantaged children would help a bit too but only for realising
the diversity of capacities out there.

------
gaspoweredcat
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.”

~~~
always4getpass
“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

------
jacquesm
Friends 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.

------
aflag
From what I've been reading in this thread the whole issue seems to be related
to gifted people believing they are special -- which is not their fault, after
all, everyone keeps saying that. If you're special, your life must be special,
all you do must be great. That's a very dangerous illusion. At best, it will
make you stressed out trying to be something you'll never be. At worst, it
will make you completely depressed.

Truth is, even if you are pretty smart for an ape, your 80-90 years in this
planet doesn't really matter. All there is to achieve is getting your life
figured out. Which is no simple problem. Knowing what you actually want and
need is very difficult already and that's only half the battle.

------
vfc1
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](https://brilliant.org) or Coursera on any topic they
like. Let the child themselves determine their own destiny, don't impose
things like academic success or a corporate career on them.

Maybe they are natural born entrepreneurs and they want to build a company,
who knows? All these expectations thrown at an you child can be nothing but
detremintal and anxiogenic, just let them grow up like any other child.

~~~
bitexploder
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”.

~~~
sanxiyn
Why? Being smart is good. Why wouldn't you let your kids know?

~~~
onemoresoop
Because it does more harm than good in the long term

~~~
sanxiyn
I'd say having false belief (believing oneself not to be smart, when in fact,
one is smart) is more harm than good in the long run.

~~~
bitexploder
I answered this elsewhere, but... I think it is ideal to just exist without
putting smartness on a scale. Smart is not an inherently good or bad thing
IMO. It just is. What you do with "smart" matters, so we focus on doing and
effort in my house, not on inherent capabilities. Also, maybe you as a person
just don't want to do "smart" people jobs when you grow up? Probably you will,
but if you are holding yourself to some standard it could set you up for years
of unhappiness if you feel you are "wasting" your talents.

~~~
sanxiyn
Being smart is inherently good. It is ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

~~~
onemoresoop
You can't argue Hitler, Stalin, etc weren't smart in their own ways. So being
smart is not inherently good, it depends on what it applies to. There could be
smart pimp who makes a lot of money, does that make him good?

Maybe being good is inherently good?

------
georgewsinger
I'm reminded of a quote from a very good book:

> "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?" — is difficult
> to answer directly. It may be easier to start with a preliminary: what does
> everybody agree on? “Madness is rare in individuals — but in groups,
> parties, nations, and ages it is the rule,” Nietzsche wrote (before he went
> mad). If you can identify a delusional popular belief, you can find what
> lies hidden behind it: the contrarian truth.

Tally up the number of people here vigorously (and defensively) arguing for
"being happy", "being interesting", "being encouraging" (or anything but
"being great") is all that matters, and you will get a very large number.

It's really, really hard to make an outsized contribution to humanity. So the
consensus response to this is "well, but it doesn't really matter: just be
happy". This cultural meme is extremely harmful to us all. People shouldn't be
shunned for trying to do something great and failing. But we shouldn't go too
far and say "well, as long as you're happy, you're not blameworthy". If you
have a gift, you should use it for good. Your comfort is not the only thing
that matters.

------
madengr
Sounds 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.

~~~
cobbzilla
This is a good realistic perspective. Another great way to look at it
positively: surrounding yourself with people better than you is a perfect
opportunity to “up your game”. I played a lot of basketball in my youth but
was never more than a mediocre player. it wasn’t till my late 20s playing
street ball in Oakland that I got a lot better. Those first few weeks were
really hard, understanding just how far I was from the other players.

------
maxerickson
I think ultimately there is a very short list of people who end up having a
life that really turns out how they expected — gifted or not.

------
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.

~~~
Bakary
Feels pretty reassuring that there are a ton of smart and talented people out
there. Imagine what the world would be like without them.

------
maire
Heather Jones seems like a classic fixed mindset child. An excellent book to
read on this subject is Mindset by Carol Dweck.

Essentially, by labeling a child as Gifted we are setting up in a child's mind
that their intelligence is what they are and not what they do. This is a
"fixed mindset". Fixed mindset children will stop trying as soon as they hit a
barrier because failure proves that they are not gifted. This is too much to
risk.

The opposite is to complement a child for exploring and trying beyond their
current abilities. This is a growth mindset. If a growth mindset child hits a
barrier then they will try to overcome the barrier because intelligent
behavior is what they do not what they are.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Great summary, came to mention this too. I experienced similar growing up.

One good sign is that the "gifted" program at my daugther's school mentioned
this book, which is how I came to read it.

------
JacKTrocinskI
There seems to be this idea that success, money, or fame will bring you
happiness, however there are many people who have achieved success, or are
famous and/or rich that are not happy which disproves the idea. I find it kind
of sad that a lot of society seems to still associate those things with a good
life.

------
titzer
It took me years to realize that dreams are just dreams unless you work at
them. And working at big dreams--the kind of career-arc dreams, are not
supported well by all-nighters and heroic hackfests. They are constructed by
daily drips of work in just the right direction. Keep plodding along, building
up the creation in little steps. Hiking and climbing mountains are good
instructors. You don't run at a mountain, you'll only get tired. Plan your
route and then take the steps as they come. Don't take stupid risks. And
usually you will summit!

------
miesman
I still remember my 8th grade history teachers response when I told him I was
gifted: "Well you haven't done anything gifted in here."

Which is really the main point. Ones circumstances aside, I strongly believe
you can achieve what you set your mind to. I've been able to achieve
everything I've truly wanted to achieve in my life so far.

I suspect the author of the article wanted to be a mother, married and to work
with children. It looks like she achieved these things.

------
mattlondon
So what they are saying is really that they didn't have to try hard at school
and so learnt to be lazy and that its not their fault that they're lazy - its
society's fault for telling them they are/were gifted?

Please take some personal responsibility for your own actions (or inactions in
this case).

Frankly anyone who has had a decent education (even if they were not "gifted")
has potential to waste; its not unique to "gifted" people to throw that away.

------
sdwisely
I kind of wish my parents had never been told this.

I think being told I was "gifted" might have blinded them to a much more
important problem - that I had severe ADHD.

~~~
thrav
I have the same story, and I’m pretty sure the author is undiagnosed as well.
If her child has it, it’s almost a certainty that one of the parents has it,
and it’s probably her.

------
RickJWagner
Being born intelligent is only part of the equation. It takes hard work and a
little luck, too.

The world is filled with successful people of less-than-average intelligence
who simply work hard and are in the right place. On the other side of the
coin, there are many highly intelligent people who never find satisfaction or
material success.

The game is made up of many aspects. We do best when we don't ignore any of
them.

~~~
chrisweekly
_Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not:
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full
of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent._

\- Coolidge

------
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.

~~~
justinclift
> Imagine Einstein deciding to become a plumber.

Might have solved sanitation for the entire world?

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

~~~
barry-cotter
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 on the structure of grit and the
> relation between grit and performance, retention, conscientiousness,
> cognitive ability, and demographic variables. Our results based on 584
> effect sizes from 88 independent samples representing 66,807 individuals
> indicate that the higher-order structure of grit is not confirmed, that grit
> is only moderately correlated with performance and retention, and that grit
> is very strongly correlated with conscientiousness. We also find that the
> perseverance of effort facet has significantly stronger criterion validities
> than the consistency of interest facet and that perseverance of effort
> explains variance in academic performance even after controlling for
> conscientiousness. In aggregate our results suggest that interventions
> designed to enhance grit may only have weak effects on performance and
> success, that the construct validity of grit is in question, and that the
> primary utility of the grit construct may lie in the perseverance facet.
> Keywords: grit; performance; meta-analysis; perseverance of effort;
> consistency of interest

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/000a/51e0d37b8a557318559e19...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/000a/51e0d37b8a557318559e19905d0f07f9ea00.pdf)

> Predicting school success: Comparing Conscientiousness, Grit, and Emotion
> Regulation Ability

> The present paper examines validity of three proposed self-regulation
> predictors of school outcomes – Conscientiousness, Grit and Emotion
> Regulation Ability (ERA). In a sample of private high school students (N =
> 213) we measured these constructs along with indices of school success
> obtained from records (rule violating behavior, academic recognitions,
> honors, and GPA) and self-reported satisfaction with school. Regression
> analyses showed that after controlling for other Big Five traits, all school
> outcomes were significantly predicted by Conscientiousness and ERA, but not
> Grit. The discussion focuses on the impor- tance of broad personality traits
> (Conscientiousness; measure of typical performance) and self-regulation
> abilities (ERA; measure of maximal performance) in predicting school
> success.

[http://ei.yale.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/IvcevicBracket...](http://ei.yale.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/IvcevicBrackett2014_PredictingSchoolSuccess1.pdf)

~~~
mounds
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!

------
pdimitar
Being smart does not guarantee material success and job/food security.

This is something I finally started comings to terms with at 39. I was one of
these kids who was falling asleep in class, pissed the teacher by doing so,
had to do a personal exam mid-term and I completed it with A grades
everywhere. People envied me for grokking everything easily and being
seemingly genius with zero effort.

...Until I went to university and had to work after.

Not gonna repeat the article because it nailed a lot of things exactly right
but again, realising that intellect does not strongly correlate with material
gain is a mind-blowing revelation I wish I was taught _much_ earlier in my
life.

------
mounds
I'm somewhat confused by the author, more so because even as a 'gifted'
student, the other 'gifted' students often took to things faster.

Not one gifted student was particularly alike.

Another example: all gifted students in our third grade were put to a chess
tournament. Some students fell out fast, while others were more apt to
understand the complexities of the various piece interactions. In the end the
two top students would be considered 'unlikely to succeed' in the current and
following academic years, one with behavioral problems, and the other an ADHD
mess.

They're doing fine nowadays.

------
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.

------
Nano2rad
Putting gifted students into separate class or being allowed to skip grade is
not a good idea. The children should study with others of the same age at
least up to 18 years. There should not be skipping grade and no failing grade
as in the past. The thinking of children changes rapidly from year to year
until they are 18. A lot of what we study is understanding how we interact
with our fellow human beings. This is affected when skipping grade. It will be
difficult to interact with fellow students not your age.

~~~
fred_is_fred
Skipping a grade versus giving gifted students work that challenges them are
wholly different things that you have conflated. We cannot and should not let
kids sit in class and be bored because the work is too easy. What you are
describing is a least common denominator education system, which I think we
are already in enough to some extent.

------
jdefr89
Lets not forget that most of the people labeled as gifted, are in fact
probably not. Identifying a person as "gifted intellectually" at such a young
age is bound to be inaccurate. The development of the mind is super complex.
And although it might seem like we can identify someone as gifted, we need to
make more careful decisions with ANY label. We simply are not that great at
determining success when it comes to individuals, and at the extreme ends of
the bell-curve we get much much less accurate.

------
motohagiography
I realized that being selected for a gifted class wasn't so much about helping
my peers as it was protecting the order of the classroom. If someone said
today, "hey, these people are exceptional, let's isolate them from the people
they seem to lead," I'd recognize it for what it was. When I look at former
gifted kids, it's almost as though a generation of young leaders were
sabotaged by appealing to their parents vanity.

Sure, some kids need to get out of absurd public school situations, but
knowledge these days is basically free. The only skills that matter for life
outcomes are social and political, with things like abstraction and mastery a
distant third.

The theme among former gifted students I know is a kind of naivety where their
social segregation deprived them of experience with the tools for how less
abstractly oriented people must survive. It makes them soft targets for
someone with a chip on their shoulder, a double digit IQ, and an instinct to
lie to cover their weaknesses. Few would argue against the idea that, teaching
kids to solve problems using intelligence and creativity over collaboration
and management is to put them at a disadvantage. Problem solving is what
talent does, it is not what management and leadership does.

I'm sure there are many gifted students who are just fine, but the outcomes
are arguably much more polarized than for typical students.

~~~
0815test
Management and leadership involve _plenty_ of problem solving! It's genuinely
hard work, not just faffing around - that's just the stereotype that prevails
among people who have never been in a management role in the first place. For
one thing, if you're in management, there's probably a higher-level manager
that you're accountable to! Funny how people seem to forget this.

~~~
motohagiography
So the problems you solve in management are how to get people to solve
problems, not the physical/logical problems themselves. It's not faffing
around, and it's a higher level of abstraction, arguably something gifted
people would be good at if they hadn't been trained to solve problems like a
super IC.

~~~
0815test
You specifically said that management doesn't involve "talent", "problem
solving", "intelligence" or "creativity". And often the best managers are
people who are just as familiar with the physical/logical domain as the
concrete "problem solvers" \- after all, much of the difficulty of "getting
people to solve problems" is things like knowing when to call BS on someone
vs. when there's an actual issue that's gumming up the work and that one
should deploy resources on. Stuff that's way too hard unless you actually grok
what's going on.

------
nostalgk
I really think the gifted program, at least as it was implemented in my
schools, is a complete sham. After being able to easily pass multiplication
tables and multiple choice tests in 5th grade, I was placed into 8th grade
math; pre-algebra. I took pre-algebra 3 times in middle school, never once
taking any of the fundamental math classes below it, and as a result never
developed the important math skills I needed, something that has caused me to
struggle throughout my entire software development career (I don't even know
how to do long division!).

My personal solution would be to keep kids in the normal classes, but allow
them to opt-in to more challenging course work if they feel they are not being
challenged (with the ability to take a step back if they need it). I think the
middle school age is the most important time to push this, where grades (at
least in my case) aren't exactly the most important thing in the world and
aren't a clear determinator of future success (i.e. affecting university
admissions).

I don't have kids right now, but if I do, I am not letting them skip ahead on
mathematic courses during their foundational years. I'm lucky that I've had
the drive to succeed regardless of my inability to pass even the first
Calculus class in college, but it's been a huge demotivator in a field full of
passionate mathematicians who are my peers.

~~~
lukevp
This happened to me too. I went to college with a high enough SAT score that I
skipped straight to Calculus 1. I took Cal 2 and 3 and Differential Equations
and managed to pass them all despite very little comprehension of the
material. These classes were my lowest grades overall. I never took precalc or
trigonometry so I missed the foundational concepts. Right before I graduated,
I needed a few hours to round out my math minor, and I took Trigonometry, and
all of Calculus suddenly made sense. I really wish I had not been allowed to
skip Trig or Pre Cal!

~~~
nostalgk
At my high school, you could either take Pre-Calc or Trig, and Pre-Calc was
essentially a watered down calculus class. Pre-Calc was considered the class
you were supposed to take if you were going to university, and it was the
first class I ever failed.

------
rnernento
A lot of really smart people see the traps associated with "success" at high
levels. Even if you're good at everything it's still a significant effort to
rise to the top in most fields.

Also, to put all this in context I would say that humanity overall is failing
pretty hard right now. We're basically destroying the planet and treating the
vast majority of the global population like shit. "Success" is relative...

------
Hendrikto
> my husband, young son and I were living in my parents’ house.

How big is her parent‘s house?

~~~
asark
Standard suburban detached-house above-grade bedroom count in the US since at
least the 80s is 3br in normal neighborhoods, sometimes 4 in the more
expensive ones. If for some reason you want a 2br house you're probably gonna
have to look at neighborhoods 35+ years old, or attached (duplex, say)
housing. Lots of the 3br houses in places where basements are the norm have
been upgraded with a fourth, basement bedroom—sometimes "nonconforming" (no
emergency exit window) especially if it was finished 20+ years ago, but that
hasn't stopped people from sleeping in them.

------
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?)

------
ordu
_> my fear of failure – something I didn’t have a lot of experience with as a
child – held me back from making the attempt._

It is the key to understand a mind of a wunderkind, I believe (at least in my
own case it was so). It is the reason why parents should not praise their
child on being smart. When you are praised on being smart at a child age, when
your self-concept is being formed, then "to be smart" becomes a part of self-
concept. To be not smart means to fail yourself. The worst part of it: it is a
very short-sighted concept, it means that to fit into my self-concept I need
not to really be smart, but _to look_ smart.

It is like a mask I need to wear. The mask of a smart man. With a hidden fear
of being not as smart as it looks from outside. Sometimes with a panic attacks
when mask slips for a second (not the real panic attacks, but pretty close to
it).

I remember that being at school I was reluctant to ask my father to help me
with math homework. He could explain anything, but I never managed to
understand his explanations, he was a terrible teacher. I knew that I couldn't
understand him and I knew that he would ask "are you understand now" and I
knew that I would be afraid to disappoint my father by my stupidity by
admitting that I had understood nothing from his explanations. So I did math
homework by myself, even if I struggled to understand how to do it. Even when
my mother suggested me to ask my father about it.

That situation was projected to a future. It was hard to overcome fear of
asking other (and to inform them that I'm "stupid"), it was hard (it _is_
hard) to work hard when I'm suspecting that I'll fail with that. Even if I'm a
little bit unsure about my coming success it would be hard.

I used to think that I just couldn't work hard, but then I realized, that I
can work hard, just up to a point when I start to doubt my success.

------
pnathan
I have a friend whose story was similar: she found grad school extremely hard
because it was the first time she had to work at success.

I probably would have fallen into the gifted category, had I not been
homeschooled. I was pushed to excel in several different areas, some of which
I was less gifted at than others, causing at least a nominal work ethic to be
inculculated.

Math was always relatively easy for me to conceptually understand: I thus
nicely got a C in Calc 1 for understanding concepts and failing to really be
able to grind out the work properly. Grades improved after that, let's just
say. :)

I also think that excessive success in the childhood years and early teens
often skews with people's heads and they often don't do well later on. A lot
of stories about gifted kids going mediocre. Terry Tao is an interesting
counterexample to that, though.

Anyway, I think the big takeaway is that Grits is a key character attribute
for success.

------
theelous3
I think just leaving your kid to compete normally is the best option. Don't
skip grades, only put them in summer classes and advanced classes if the
explicitly ask for it. If a kid actually is extremely intelligent, they should
have no problem succeeding amongst their peers. If the additional work given
to them isn't their idea, all you're doing is impeding their social life, and
status. Don't run around telling them how amazing they are all the time. The
creation of an ego starts early, and if your kid is to function happily for
the rest of their lives, you want it to be a good one.

As an aside, calling a kid with ADHD neuro atypical is a bit much. I hope the
kid doesn't know their parent uses that terminology about them. That could be
crushing, or set up a crutch to use in justifying failure, or the perceived
lazyness associated with ADHD.

------
naveen99
6% of children are enrolled in gifted programs.
[https://www.nagc.org/resources-
publications/resources/freque...](https://www.nagc.org/resources-
publications/resources/frequently-asked-questions-about-gifted-education)

------
localhost
I think that experiencing failure and learning from it is under-rated as a
skill. By not allowing our kids to fail, and/or putting them into systems that
prop up their egos (e.g., gifted schools), they will never internalize what it
is to struggle. We all struggle eventually in whatever it is that we want to
do.

This story reminds me somewhat of the Billy Beane story from Moneyball. Billy
never really experienced failure until he was drafted. All the way through
high school, he was a "can't miss" prospect. A 5-tool player. The best athlete
on either team, etc. And that went to his head. He wasn't able to deal with
failure at all (and this is well chronicled in the book), which ultimately led
to his downfall as a player.

------
zepto
In other words, she was completely failed by the education system which forced
her to work at a level below her capability and excluded her from the
Challenge is necessary to develop that were challenges necessary to develop
that were Tailored to meet the needs of less gifted children while her needs
were ignored.

It seems fairly obvious that a system that forces people to work below their
level of capability for the first couple of decades of their life, is
conditioning them to do that for the rest of their life too.

Of course some people will find a way out of this path, but this is what the
system does and generally gifted people will be disadvantaged in this way.

------
nickpsecurity
The Outsiders was the first thing I read about how, contrary to popular
belief, the gifted might have a curse instead of a blessing:

[http://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/the-
outsiders/](http://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/the-outsiders/)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190531123431/http://prometheus...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190531123431/http://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/the-
outsiders/)

------
haihaibye
The person somewhat cruelly judging her life is using a formula of:

Life score = actual potential - genetic potential

Ie she had high genetic potential but failed to live up to it. It seems she
has had a gifted kid.

She sounds like she's given up on this metric but were she to have another
gifted kid, and nurture the two to success making the world better, she would
meet her metrics.

Have a particularly awesome kid, or lots and she can easily win big. Perhaps
her genes are telling her this by giving her a sense of ennui?

~~~
JasonFruit
The worldview of this comment baffles me. Do you think living to maximize some
imaginary "life score" is a good idea, a healthy idea, a utilitarian idea? Why
not make yourself useful in whatever situation you are in, trying to make
constant progress on what is important to you, and be a benefit to the people
you care about? They won't put my life score on my tombstone.

~~~
haihaibye
Assign those goals or being useful a score then try to maximise it.

Write the deeds on the tombstone and let future people assign their own score.

------
ficklepickle
This was me. They told me I was gifted at 5, but missed the part where I was
on the autism spectrum. It led to severe mental health issues and substance
abuse. The only reason I'm not dead is because I finally figured it out, 25
years later.

Now I can apply myself and am not so terrified by failure. I feel unencumbered
for the first time. I can pursue my interests.

I don't think telling 5 year old children they are gifted is helpful. There is
no upside.

------
jimjag
Here is a nice thought experiment: substitute the word "privileged" for
"gifted" and see if, and how, your response to this article changes.

------
icedchai
My sister and I were both in gifted programs, back in the late 80's and early
90's. Neither of our lives turned out the way we expected. We also have a few
gifted friends, some who have severe mental illness or drug addiction. Though
most quite lead very ordinary lives, I know none of who achieved anything
incredibly extraordinary. I know I've done better than most, it doesn't feel
like enough...

------
bhouston
I quit gifted back in grade school as I found a lot of it was preening. I
prefer to do things/achieve rather than be content being a thing.

------
dfilppi
Being 'gifted' can make you lazy, because you can be. It's a temptation for
anyone above average. If you can coast and get praise, why kill yourself?
Depends on your underlying personality I guess. This phenomenon is also why
it's hard to progress a lot farther than your parents level: there's a
diminishing level of praise for higher levels of achievement.

------
drm237
I suggest reading the book "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success". The
author's TED talk is interesting:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing...](https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve)

------
akhilcacharya
There’s too much focus on “gifted” folks and not enough on normal people.
Normal people don’t have a champion in society.

------
llamataboot
Ooof, this hits home. Was told my whole entire childhood that I would "cure
cancer" (Why all the adults decided I would do that is beyond me) and that the
world would kneel at my feet because I was intelligent. Come to find out, I'm
not all that intelligent when compared to other really intelligent people, and
the world actually doesn't care so much about whether you are smart -
especially in late capitalism when 'hustle' (and audacity) (and maybe some
amorality/sociopathy) seems to be much more well-rewarded politically and
financially.

All I have to say is that you need to be careful what information you are
inputting and what social circle you keep as well.

ie; it was very easy when I was a poor activist that never read HN and had no
hope of even making rent that month to not give a shit about money (and often,
to semi-despise those people going after it)

Now, as a programmer, making what my former-self would have thought would be
obscene amounts of money, I often catch myself jealous of people that get paid
more, that didn't spend 10-15 years doing activist work and instead bought
passive investments, etc etc.

Do I really care about money that much? No, not really. But because I'm
exposed to way more people way more often making way more my brain
automatically wants to compare in that direction.

It's trickier than I thought.

------
quxbar
Just wanna mention I would have been a miserable loner of a kid if not for the
Duke TIP summer camp program. Being surrounded by other smart kids was
incredibly affirming, gave me vital social skills, and made my 'normal' public
school life much more bearable.

------
Verdex
So much to unpack here.

1) Intelligence isn't linear. How could it be. Problems in the general sense
are terrifying graphs of graphs with meta edges everywhere that are
conditionally relevant depending on what "value" is at any given vertex. Being
good at one type of problem doesn't necessarily translate into being good at
another type of problem. Being gifted doesn't mean you're necessarily smarter
than your peers it just means that you're better than they are at a particular
type of problem that you aren't generally expected to be good at.

2) Problems get harder at an exponential rate while utility from intelligence
improves at a linear rate. Example: Brain surgery is pretty hard. Fighting a
gorilla is pretty hard. Now imagine trying to perform brain surgery while
simultaneously fighting a gorilla.

If you are gifted as a child then you're solving problems that are harder than
what your peers can solve. But as the set of problems you want to solve gets
more difficult the value of your giftedness is going to be lessened.

3) Utility = effectiveness * alignment * time (more or less). Having your head
in the game (alignment) can make a real difference in whether or not you're
useful. Being able to commit more time can make a real difference in whether
or not you're useful. And intelligence can affect effectiveness, but
experience or having good mentors can also raise your effectiveness (sometimes
more than intelligence can).

4) As far as I can tell, some people like to unify all of their experiences
into a singular framework of understanding the world and some people like to
compartmentalize their experiences into different spheres. To some extent we
all do both. Unifying as a child can make you look gifted because you'll start
to understand complicated topics where your peers only mimic competency (think
having an algorithm that calculates outputs versus a lookup table that just
gives out memorized results). However, often in the real world (tm) mimicking
is more than effective enough for what people want to get done. So the
compartmentalizers are completely adequate. However, the compartmentalizers
also can deal with incompatible scenarios _much_ better than the unifiers. If
you try to unify the cold logic of a computer with the fuzzy interpersonal
relationships of office politics, then you aren't going to be making any
progress without years of studying both. However, if you can compartmentalize
the two, then you can start being productive and advancing on day one. There's
going to be some cap to what you can do as a compartmentalizer, but that cap
is probably far above what you need for nearly all domains that most people
are likely to encounter.

------
filmgirlcw
This resonates a lot with me. I've said before that all the success I've
achieved has been in spite of the "gifted" label, not because of it.

Unlike the author, I was lucky enough to experience failure before college, so
I didn't enter it thinking I was "special." So many of my peers (as well as my
older sister), didn't know how to deal with not being "the best" or having
competition from others.

But that doesn't mean I overly excelled in college -- in fact, I didn't really
care.

I had a pretty typical quarter life crisis timed with the great-recession and
didn't go to grad school or law school, and was in kind of a listless "what am
I doing with my life" place for a few years.

My relatives DID comment "it's a shame what happened to filmgirl" \-- but in
my case, it was absolutely said with judgment (and not a small amount of
schadenfreude -- because both my sister and I grew up "beautiful," "talented,"
and "brilliant" (and in her case, she was also very popular) and then wound up
not taking over the world, while my relatives kids became doctors, etc.) and
family friends would whisper about all my wasted potential.

For a time, I felt that way too -- and then I got over myself, realized
(again), I'm not fucking special and that just because I was given a label
that created bullshit expectations on my future, didn't mean I was going to
freak out because things didn't go according to plan.

Ironically, within a few years of that quarter-life crisis, I was on TV all
the time, I was interviewing high profile people, and doing well for myself in
my chosen field. And now I'm in a different field and I work at a large
company in a high profile role and make a very good living. On paper, it
certainly looks like I've lived up to my potential -- even though the story of
how I got there is a lot different.

Which, to me, sort of underscores what bullshit so much of all of this really
is.

The schools, the test scores, the labels, they don't matter. They can help,
sure -- but having them ins't a guarantee for "success" and not having them
doesn't mean you'll never go on to do anything.

For what it's worth, my parents never pressured me and didn't care when I was
a fuck-up. They loved and supported me anyway. But I still felt like a failure
and a fuckup for not living up to my potential because of the external
pressures put on me as a child.

------
mrdependable
I was deemed gifted in school, and always thought of myself as smart. I've
come to realize in adulthood that I just have a fantastic memory which I
leaned on for everything. In other forms of intelligence I'm probably around
average.

------
markm248
"True" I think as I spend yet another hour clicking links on Hacker News.

------
dceddia
> “It’s a shame Heather never did anything with her life.”

> I was about 30 at the time

It's a bit strange and sad that much of society holds this idea that if you
haven't achieved greatness before you turn 30, you never will.

------
ivanhoe
The problem with being gifted is that you get used to doing everything
effortlessly in school, and then with a little luck you end up on a top-notch
University - and all of the sudden you're surrounded by people just as smart
or smarter than you, and also more motivated and more ambitious, professors'
standards are much higher and you're just not used to working hard. And on top
of all that, there's family and peer pressure and expectations, to add to the
stress. It sucks, and the only way around is to push gifted kids to work
harder when young, giving them special, harder curriculums, forcing them to
acquire self-discipline early on, when it's easier...

------
gdepuydt
Funny that only 'gifted' people make comments in this thread, and everybody
relates.

I was labeled gifted too, once, by my mommy. Yeah.... It's a hard life, Pfew!

------
de_watcher
Yes, if you get there early (like in a good school) then your view is complete
and you're still happy to later tone the things down and chill on the job.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
When I graduated school they specifically the degree we have is only a permit
to do what we were trained to do. What we do with it is up to us.

------
mathgladiator
So, I think they way we try to educate our young is messed up. I was in
special ed as a kid, and now I am an engineering leader as an adult.

------
samwhiteUK
I'm not sure I've ever read anything which has reached me on such a personal
level as this. I should really try harder.

------
thomaswang
Point being. Grit is what gets you places.

~~~
gpvos
True, but an important corollary is that many people who could serve our world
in wonderful ways aren't learning grit, since our school system isn't set up
for it and neither are most parents, even if they're smart and have recognized
the problem. This is a huge waste of human potential, and also makes them much
unhappier than should be possible.

~~~
thomaswang
The only way for the society to learn is by doing. We need people who are
gifted and have no grit and people who are not gifted but has.

Also don't tell every child they can become anything, they can not. I suggest
telling them "they can do anything they set their mind to but they need to
want it" that last part is the grit part, gifted people me as well hits a wall
at some time in life where the rules and systems (job) do not fall naturally
like coursework, here you have two choices stand up and do your job (just
know, you will succed it just takes some more time than usual), or don't and
be bad at your job and don't excell.

Whining about what you where not taught Fron society or parents gets you
nowhere in life, but acceptance and perseverance does, atleas that's my
experience.

------
debatem1
"Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call 'promising'." \--Cyril
Connolly

------
legohead
my brother is an actual genius. like Feynman level, without a doubt. he could
have done something to change the world.

but he decided early on that life is short and he just wants to have fun. so
he works an easy, well paid government engineering job, and plays video games
all the time.

~~~
daenz
Not sarcastically: good for him. Sometimes I wonder if we put too much
pressure and expectations on geniuses, like they are supposed to solve the
world's problems for us. It's cool to hear your brother is just trying to
maximize his happiness like any other person would.

------
bennythomson
I'm in this picture, and I don't like it

------
mrandish
I can confirm the author's experience but from the opposite perspective. In
third grade I was diagnosed with ADD. At that time the school didn't know what
to do with that, so I was segregated into an "educationally handicapped" class
only available at another school across town. So, I had to ride the proverbial
"short bus" (for the handicapped kids) and did the rest of elementary school
in a "special" classroom in a temporary building isolated on its own from the
"normal" classrooms. The other kids in my class had far more severe problems
than mine, often both physically and emotionally. The class size was smaller
but the teacher had to spend much of her time dealing with challenging issues.

Basically, unlike the author, who was told she was so smart, I was given every
overt and covert signal that I was handicapped, both at school and at home. I
was "mainstreamed" in middle school but was assigned to go to another
"special" classroom for all core subjects. Again, this was the only different
classroom on campus. It had double wide doors and actually had a small
adjacent observing room with a two way mirror in-between. My fellow students
were often so disruptive and required attention from the teacher that I was
allowed to spend most classes alone in the "observing closet" reading. It was
dark and pretty quiet. Some of my best memories of school actually.

When I was in 8th grade, every 8th grader in the state had to take the same
standardized test. It was basically like a middle school SAT. I remember a few
weeks after taking the test, the principle of the school came to my special
classroom and told me I needed to retake that test, this time in his office
while he watched. A week after that I was suddenly re-assigned from that
"special" classroom to now take my core subjects not just in the normal
classes but in "accelerated" classes for mentally gifted kids.

Obviously, I was simply not neuro-typical. I still struggled mightily with
some subjects in school while succeeding wildly in others. My grades were 'A's
and 'D's with little in-between. I dropped out of college because I just
couldn't get past some required classes. I taught myself computer programming,
got deep into technology, got involved very early in a startup, then founded
my own startup, then another, then another. Took one to IPO, two others to
acquisitions. Stayed with a Fortune 500 acquirer as an executive and
eventually ascended to the C-level. Now I'm well-known in my industry and
considered a substantial "success" by most standards. I manage armies of
incredibly sharp ivy league MBAs and Phds yet have no degree myself (and not
for cool Zuckerberg reasons like dropping out of Havard). My Mom still says
stuff like "Out of all my kids... well, we thought we'd be caring for you when
you grew up and now you're caring for the whole family."

Bottom line, many people see my schooling experience as tragic, and it _was_
truly awful in many ways, but I've always attributed my entrepreneurial drive
and much of my success to the perverse experience of being told and treated as
if I was handicapped. I worked harder because _everyone_ told me that I'd
always have to work harder and nothing would come easy for me. I didn't give
up when I failed because I mostly expected to fail.

------
gingabriska
The 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.

------
polote
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.

~~~
imtringued
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.

~~~
polote
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

~~~
jdefr89
I believe the name for what you're trying to describe is called "clinicians
error" or something like that? I see your point. But I think the article
speaks to the idea that most people equate being gifted with 100% success.
When in fact, like anything else, there are no guarantees.

