The Kintsugi School for the Gifted and Talented

I AM NOT GOOD AT PHYSICS JUST CAUSE I CAN WRITE PAPERS.
ARRRG

 

Everything I do now is a disappointment to my family because I didn't do it before. Because wow you were so talented then. What happened. Why did you fuck up and get bad grades when you were the smart one. YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS ALL THEN.

Also I feel like everything is my fault and cry about B's because clearly B means I'm stupid.

 

I was gonna come here and say I've actually been comparatively well served by the g/t label but then I remembered the perfectionism-and-anxiety-based breakdown I had in high school

which was mostly my anxiety's fault

but it had latched on to my inability to turn in anything half-assed or even three-quarter-assed or get B's or be disliked or even just not especially liked by teachers and.. so on

 

OMG yay. Yay. Yes.
Let me talk into the void about school and having expectations thrust upon you, yes, this is good.
*camps out*
*this is my new home*

 

"It's nice, I guess. But it doesn't really sound like you... You used to be such a good writer..."

Gee, I dunno Mom, maybe it's the fact that it's been 10 years since I've let you read anything I wrote.

Maybe it's because the writing for my fucking wedding vows is a little different from the writing for a fourth grade short story.

#seething forever

Edit: Also, if we were on speaking terms, she still would not be allowed to read my writing, half from that, half because it's all fanfic pr0nz and D&D campaign seeds.

 

hello yes i am still currently in the terrible g&t loop (tho in my high school that just means taking 7 ap tests in May and getting into four ivy league schools because otherwise u aren't living up to your potential, wtf, why are you in the top 20 of ur class if ur not even going to a top-tier school), everything is terrible

being in a major pressure cooker high school does not help most likely- like, out of the state, I think it's like 50th out of ~1300 schools?
im almost certain that quite a few of my classmates around the same ranking as me are also going through some terrible brain shit, recently learned that someone i know has crippling anxiety and is doing the medication dance, am sad but not surprised

 

heck yeah mental breakdowns in high school
high fives?
high fives

...has anyone else noticed an actual personality change with mental breakdowns? because pre-junior-year, i was
hm, im going through the list

im amending that to "a dramatic change in the way we present ourselves to others", because honestly i am still a control freak perfectionist, it's just that now i actively put work into appearing cool, chill, and relaxed

like i actually would rather be seen as lazy now than actually experiencing problems?

the largest changes between pre junior year me and post junior year me are that i started swearing in senior year, and i suddenly developed the ability to stop caring about things and people if it takes more work than i want to put in

i have actually had people compliment me for being able to walk away from conversations (like when it's 2 am and everyone is tired but they just keep talking)

huh. also, yeah, i'm kind of stream of consciousness typing this, haha

 

Gifted in elementary mostly meant that I was occasionally dragged off to a separate room to do logic puzzles with one other kid. And there was this weird competition? performance? where we had to recite poetry with a load of kids from other schools, I can barely remember it. Surprisingly, that did nothing to prepare me for gifted stuff in middle school, but then, I was the only one in my elementary to sign up for that. Plus all the teachers expected a lot more parental participation? I failed a lot in middle school because no one bought me the supplies for the 'this is 80% of your grade' projects.

Thankfully, that got me out of gifted by high school, wherein I mostly coasted and pitied my poor IB friends. College brought back the weird gifted thing though. Like, there were bad As and acceptable As (anything under 95% was worrisome), and I'm still fucked up over the one class I failed.

Spoiler: I feel like this is weirdly braggy sounding, so spoiler

like, I got to the point that I was barely taking notes in class, and studying only a little, never made all-nighters and it seemed like I barely made an effort for anything and my mental health was pathetic, and there were still As. But then, other people had jobs and social lives and were doing research and internships, so. My grades were better, but everyone else was getting Life Experiences, and it still technically counts as failing in my brain.

For some reasons, my mental health going to shit in high school and college barely hurt my grades at all, aside from that one failed class. But now that I'm not in a classroom, I can't cope with much of anything.

 

Oh man. Cognition/education sperg time! Quotes from the megathread:

Studies show that labels like "gifted" and "smart" do this to kids regularly and repeatably. Because "smart" is something you are; the word refers to a concept of an inherent, immutable quality. First of all, that isn't a great model of cognitive performance. And second of all, being called smart bestows on you this good quality that you didn't have to work for and can't work to improve, all you can do is try not to "lose" it or "disprove" it with poorer performance. Meanwhile, if good performance is innate and natural, then poor performance must be willful or lazy or something. So kids (and the adults they grow into) become risk-averse and insecure, staying huddled in their comfort zones and not actually learning, and when they're not good at something they freak out or feel guilty instead of learning more or enjoying what they can do.

Bragging about being gifted isn't weird - it's a natural consequence of being told you're gifted, since you have this fragile self-image you need to protect. Unless by "weird" you mean "unhealthy" rather than "unusual" or "difficult to explain." In which case, yeah.

This is how it should go, or rather, this is the kind of thing that teachers and parents should be encouraging (accounting for disability accommodations etc.) If you praise good performance by referring to effort or specific good qualities of the work, you reinforce hard work and/or particular skills, which are things the student can choose and control. Unsurprisingly, if a student focuses on aspects of their performance they can control, they improve. And if they struggle with something, it's not a threat to their self-image, it's a signal that this thing will take work to be good at, and the student can choose to put in that work or not. Usually, barring other life commitments, they do the work and get better.

General intelligence / IQ / g-factor probably exists in some sense and may be a useful concept to cognitive scientists. It's not nearly as useful to educators as you might think, though, and it's downright poisonous to communicate to students.

I've experienced this from both sides, by the way. I was very much "that smart kid" in school and I didn't really grok how much it messed me up until I had students with some of the same issues.

 

did you go to ERHS with me bc that sounds like ERHS.

 

@TheSeer
starting with initial off topic question: is your icon from dominic deegan? ...is your username from dominic deegan?


back on track

i have heard a lot of this before! my roomie was an education major and i was a psych major, so a lot of our conversations were basically about "how our school histories fucked up our brains"

i always liked coming back to the fact that we're taught that our qualities are static and somehow moral- people would tell me i was smart, or a fast reader, and i somehow managed to translate that into "this is the thing that gives me worth, and if i ever stop being that, then i have no worth"

as opposed to "if i stop being one thing, i can work to bring it back or practice, and not being that thing isnt bad"

i got distracted by royal pains halfway through that so i'm not sure if that made sense anymore

 

I managed to get through being "gifted" relatively unscathed.
I was super advanced in math, to the point where I got stuck in the back of the room with a textbook to keep me from disrupting the class via boredom.
I also skipped ahead in physics, and to a lesser extent the other sciences. I was good at literature as I can take literary analysis, but I never learned to write an essay. I can bullshit but only in freeform and only if my audience doesn't have a chance to examine what I said two sentences ago.

I am super, super lucky, though. I am the child of two PhDs from a major university; my mom is actually a professor. So they knew how to deal with a gifted kid and my mom has connections. I live less than a mile from a university. Plus Boston has good resources for keeping math kids entertained.
So when I wanted to take AP classes in middle school I got to, and when I wanted to take college classes in high school I got to, and when I ran out of science classes (all of my math classes during high school already being audited college classes) I got to leave high school as a junior.
In college I did get the suddenly-not-the-smartest that hits kids who manage to be gifted through high school without burning out, but I was taking the hardest freshman math class they had to offer, so my ego survived; plus my dad spent my entire childhood warning me about that. I found it super annoying but maybe it helped.
I think college really helped me tone down. I am bad at anything where you need to either write essays or understand historical context. But then that mostly stopped mattering because I went to math grad school and became the only grad student in my particular field of research.

Anyway, my parents, despite being first generation immigrants from East Asia, spent a lot of time keeping me entertained and trying to deflate my expectations of myself, which is probably why I still love math despite having been gifted at it for two decades.
Note that when I say expectations of myself they did also try to separate my ego from my grades. Unfortunately I think they went a little far because I never valued my grades and so never learned the value of hard work until grad school, which is a terrible occasion to learn that for the first time. I'm still not sure it really sank in.

 

Hello teenage years how are you yes so good to see you again.

Grrrrrrrrr.

 

Spoiler: *casually unloads*

So for the first three years of my education it was great, I liked school, I didn't have any problems other than writing the number six properly, I had to write it from the middle instead of the top for a while, it was just weird. And I don't hold my pencil the standard way. It feels wrong, even with those squishy angled things you can put on to make the grip better. It didn't work. I don't like it. It worried my dad because he said it would make my hand hurt. It didn't. My hand is still fine and I have spent plenty of time writing, I think I'd know.

Was in the "enrich' instead of 'reteach' programs also. All was well. Then I reached the age where you were expected to turn shit it on your own instead of having the teacher take it when everyone was done. That really screwed up my grades because I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE THE HELL THE TURN-IN BASKET WAS. And I never asked. Because I am allergic to asking questions. Especially in school. Anxiety. Tis bad. (God self, you should know this already why don't you know this I know you're good at fucking shit up but couldn't you at least have done that mixed with/or Gosh what if it bothers the teacher I don't want to bother them they'll think I should have known this too I don't wanna look dumb or like a bad kid who doesn't care about the class. But teachers love answering questions, Brittany, it's literally half of the reason they're there. BUT WAHHHHHH)

Then my parents got divorced which was hard on everyone and I started wetting the bed again which sucked and my dad started having a shorter fuse and my big brother's teenage angst was in full force and we were still getting used to the fact that my little brother wasn't normal (he always had tantrums and didn't always get social things and now he's been diagnosed with Asperger's for a few years but back then we were all confused and worried and didn't get it and it was this thing) and it kinda was weird for a while.

My dad is a pretty good dad, we had meat and veggies everyday and sit-down dinners that were home-cooked and he had a good job with the air force and we had good baby sitters and all the stuff we needed/wanted. We went on hikes almost every weekend and my siblings and I have always been tight so that was good but it was still a VERY weird time.

So while my brothers basically got the brunt of it I learned to fade into the background. I stopped being as bubbly and open and I got really quiet and insecure but that was okay because if I didn't do anything then I could't do anything bad and I wouldn't get spanked as much and I'd only rarely get yelled at.

So my grades were ok but not wonderful and school became this Thing and I was not very fond of or impressed by the whole idea of grades but I was too young to really question anything or rebel.

And then in fourth or fifth grade my dad started dating my now-stepmom and she's never been that great with any of us, especially my little brother, and her daughter was used to being an only child and not fond of the whole "boom, here's three new siblings that you have to get used to, you're the outsider now, oops". So we thought she was a brat for a long time and she kinda was but it was probably more of a protective coping strategy. She's gotten a lot better as she got older. But my step mom still isn't great with my brothers and she thinks we're all spoiled lazy little shits who refuse to listen to her. Which translates to, we listen to you most of the time but we aren't going to sing a happy working song, if you know what I mean. This translated to her thinking we hated her. Whoops? I mean, I do try to empathize with her and not totally demonize her but. It's hard. (Especially when she doesn't even try to work with my brother. "Ooh, we should ground him" she says with a smile. Or winds him up more and more at the dinner table until he explodes and gets sent to his room. And her still smiling. Dad are you seeing this. You're right there. That's your son. Where are your balls? Oh, firmly in her grasp? I see. Years of this shit. And her shaming me for eating sweets and chocolate when I already know it's stress related, (and who's my one of my main sources of stress? Oh yeah) and my complexion is kind of a sore point for me, stop fucking bringing it up. Years of this shit. Sorry for not being more caring of YOUR feelings, cunt.)

So, er. Middle school consisted of me doing 60-70 percent of my work and playing pokemon or harvest moon alone in my room (when I wasn't grounded) and spending the last two weeks of each quarter or semester playing catch up. I am the queen of catch up. I also had really close friends then, so I did get out more, which was good.

But we went to different high schools so didn't see each other much after that. And people didn't invite me places too often. And when they did I wouldn't do because it made me anxious and I always thought I'd mess it up. So I had friends and socialized, but only at school. And people rarely thought to offer hugs to me because I guess I seemed closed off, which sucks because I love hugs and affectiony stuff :(

And I would spend a lot of time in my room at home. (You're such a troglodyte, dad would say. Stop screwing around on your devices so much, they would both say. You haven't done your paper so give up your phone, tablet and stuff until we feel like you've earned them back. (No, don't you fuckers, I bought that it's mine it's how I interact with the world what about the fan fiction I'm writing what about my role-play groups what about my online friends))

And then I guess the depression didn't help. Or my mom moving suddenly. Or worrying about all three of my brothers. And trying to protect my little brother because I was the one who could work with him the best and calm him down or know when to give him space when he needed it because I was the one who paid attention to him. I spent time with him. Not what the internet said about autism or Aperger's, I knew what worked with him. That was the difference. Too bad I was too terrified to tell the parents that. (Actually I tried communicating about things multiple times but they blew me off while being condescending (especially her. and it was hard to talk to dad alone and when I had the chance I was afraid it would turn into an argument about me not loving or respecting her enough, don't you know she feels alienated by you kids, Brittany.) so I guess you can't say I didn't try) When he wanted me I was there unless I was feeling teenage-angsty, which was more often than I'd have liked. But we're still close so that's good.

And meanwhile dad was there wondering why his kids sucked so much and wanting to help but he was a lot better at losing his cool and screaming at us for an hour each about grades and missing assignments. You need to apply yourself. You're better at this. You can do the work, so why don't you? Gosh daddy, I really wish I felt I could TALK TO YOU ABOUT THINGS. STOP SAYING YOU'D WISH WE WOULD TALK TO YOU, WE'D FUCKING LOVE TO IF WE FELT LIKE IT'D HELP. MY LITTLE BROTHER ALREADY TRIES MULTIPLE TIMES A WEEK AND LOOK HOW WELL THAT"S GOING. Stop shooting down your kids and tell your fucking wife to shut up occasionally, she is not helping. She's bitter and bitchy, there's no other way to put it but I sure as fuck won't say it to your face and when lil bro calls her a fucking bitch he gets grounded even more.

At least in Junior year he sent me to a therapist. After he asked me what was wrong one afternoon and I burst into tears and cried all over his shoulder for a while.

I've always been SMART. It's just that smart doesn't really have anything to do with it. Except make you feel more guilty.

 

Yes, that's smol!Gregory learning white magic. You can see the blight still extends to his neck and arms. It's not as off-topic as you might think, either. Remember, Greg's mom was the genius, his oldest brother was the prodigy, his middle brother was the nerd. Gregory became a badass caster because he just worked like hell, through a disability that probably made his chosen specialty a lot harder, because being abused and crippled made him want to heal everyone. And when he lost it all he just shrugged, and decided to go invent an entire anachronistic music genre.

 

so many hugs @bornofthesea670

(oh also, i had no social life at all in hs outside of school. i have no idea how i managed to develop social skills. my parents started joking about giving me a reverse curfew in hopes that i would go over to someone's house, or party, or bonfire. ...i don't actually regret that at all. i always thought i would, but really i don't think i do)


@TheSeer i think i love you. dominic deegan was my life for like 4 years. i love how you can see the art style changing

 

Thank you, moss. Yeah, I think closing myself off in grade school really set me back socially. People intimidate the heck out of me. I wanted to be more social in college but it's just not happening XD unless you count online.

 

i think drama kind of helped? i learned how to put on other people and kind of learn from them

i was already kind of doing that though, i'd act out scenes from books because i liked how the words tasted

and weirdly enough, the mental breakdown in high school helped me crack through anxiety. mostly, i think, by plunging me into depression.
it went from "oh god oh god everything is happening all the time" into "i dont give a fuck about anything so fuck you", but it helped me look cool instead of insane all the time, so that was probably why i had actual friends.

so yay?

 

In grade school we had this awesome music teacher (back when music classes were a thing, assholes need to start giving money back to schools and stop with all this bullshit) and we'd put on musicals and concerts all the time but I was always in the chorus instead of an actual role. I've never liked playing roles anyway, not really my thing. Maybe working out stuff backstage and painting backgrounds and doing costumes could have been fun but in drama class you had to do the acting thing and I was like 'noooope..."

I was in cooking class all through high school, which was great. I didn't end up going to the big regional contest for a chance at scholarships but I did win a pretty knife set from a local contest :3 and it helped me realize that I like being in charge and bossing people around :D so that was good for me. And we catered a lot and the class involved working with people so that all helped me and I was good at cooking which helped my self confidence :3

we also had a video game club which was pretty freakin nice. I always feel more comfortable around fellow geeks. bless them.

 

My social life was always... hm. I was never as much of an outcast loner as I thought I was. Like, I spent a lot of time hating crowds and having trouble getting along with people and enjoying quiet time alone, not to mention that smart+gay+weird=bully target. So I assumed I was the introverted loner nerd stereotype. It turns out I'm an extrovert with social anxiety and probably autism. (Also I get triggered by drunk people, which can limit one's social life in college and late high school.) One of the silver linings to the "smart kid" thing was that I felt comfortable going for nerdy extracurriculars, where I could be with people and not have to worry about weird social arcana because we were Doing A Thing.