Hey milquetoast, the article isn’t that lo-A PUFFY TAIL YOU SAY?!
If it helps. . .I’m pretty sure he was wrong.
I’ve tested extremely high in IQ, but honestly, it really hasn’t meant anything. My school used to give me IQ tests every couple of months and it wasn’t until I was applying for college that I knew what my scores were.
I grew up in a rural area with few educational options. My five siblings are all brilliant, so I had them to talk to. And I’ve always been fairly self-contained and extremely frivolous, so I didn’t have a huge amount of angst over any of it. I did think that going to college was going to normalize me in a larger group, but it didn’t. By then, though, I guess I just didn’t care. I’m blessed in that I’m hard to bore, so I never found school torturous.
So, the only thing I see of myself in that article is a kid with a high IQ.
Nope. I don’t resemble any of those people in the least. High IQ, moderate expectations, happy, fulfilling life. No prob. 
These describe my experiences more closely than the article. It probably helps that my IQ has never tested above 140. (My older sister’s is 148. She lords those 8 points above me. Grrrr. And I lord my ACT score over hers, so ha.)
The things that ring especially true are what Priam says about vocabulary and talking to adults. It really hurts when your friends ask you to “dumb down” what you’re saying because they don’t understand you. It’s not that you try to confuse them – the words just come naturally. My best conversations are with my parents, for god’s sake. One of my best friends? My high school English teacher.
As noted above, I have an older sister with whom I have a very competitive relationship, despite that she’s 8 years older than I am. It’s good-natured, though; we don’t sabotage each other. My younger brothers are both completely average – average IQs, average interests, average everything. I came to resent them a bit when we were all still in middle/high school. I’d be getting straight A’s and comments like “Sarah is very intelligent and a delight to have in the classroom,” on my report cards, and my parents wouldn’t say a thing. My brothers, on the other hand, would get a range of grades from A’s to D’s and my parents would pour attention on them, urging them to try harder. Hello! I wanted acknowledgement! And it didn’t help either that they wanted to go to my brothers’ baseball and football games, while my concerts and plays were duty attendance.
If anything, I’m resentful that people that are completely average intelligence-wise have an easier time navigating through life socially. I hate it when I’m talking to a guy and I let a “big” word slip out or I’ll say something about the show we’re watching totally reminding me of Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene.” His eyes will sort of glaze over, while I realize I’ve shot myself in the foot. I hate to have to limit what I say because my knowledge is so much a part of who I am.
Oh heck yes. I’m guilty of this as well, though for me it generally manifests in annoyance towards historical inaccuracies in movies. I once insisted that my friend pause “Crime and Punishment in Suburbia” two seconds in because the opening quote was from Dostoyevsky before the firing squad. Nowhere did it indicate that it was a faked squad. The only way he would’ve died that day was if he tripped and fell or choked on a chicken bone! … and I’ve started again. Anyway, after about two minutes of me being pedantic, the movie was duly restarted.
It’s just I can’t realize most people don’t know this stuff or even care very much. They don’t care about Emperor Basil II Bulgaroktonos. They don’t realize what an impact the advance of Islam in the mid-first millenium had on shaping the modern world. Let’s all face it: I’m just intelligent enough to be an annoyance to myself and others. Except teachers… teachers love me.
I do the historical innacuracy thing really heavily with costuming. Panniers are so not Elizabethan. (I’m looking at you, glut of Elizabethan period films from the mid-90s.) For some reason, most people really don’t care about things like that. A Knight’s Tale nearly gave me an apoplectic fit. Good thing I watched it by myself.
Priam, we must be the same person in different bodies, because teachers love me, too.
Warning: This post will include some boasting and arrogance. Don’t blame me, I didn’t start the topic 
I was a very gifted child, probably in the “profoundly gifted” category, although people rarely made a fuss over me about it. However, the fact that I always knew I was smarter than everyone else my age was a very defining feature of my general worldview… it was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that even in the worst depths of junior high school, I never really lost my self esteem despite being very much an outcast, and never felt any need to succumb to peer pressure, conformity, etc. A curse in that I was an arrogant asshole, and am still only partially recovered from that.
I was (and am) lucky in that I come from a VERY bright family in which intelligence and learning are valued (and, in fact, expected). Both my parents have PhDs. Of my paternal grandparents’ 6 grandchildren, I was the 4th to go to college, and the 1st NOT to go to Harvard.
A few random comments:
-I definitely felt that the educational system didn’t do me right, in many ways. In particular, I was smart enough that I basically never had to really intellectually struggle. So I breezed through high school, breezed through much of college, and then when I hit things that were truly difficult (in my case, complex analysis) I just didn’t know how to deal with it, and I failed at it miserably, whereas people who had less natural smarts than me but were used to really applying their intellects knew how to work at it until they understood it
-I’ve long wondered what affect I had on my (older) sister, who was plenty bright in her own right (she did go to Harvard), but less so than me, at least as far as standardized testing, etc., was concerned. I think it must have been very difficult and intimidating for her, particularly in the intellectually oriented family that we had. On the other hand, that might just be me wanting to overstate my own importance in her development It certainly is the case, however, that she was the “rebel” of the family, in that she smokes and drinks and listens to rock music, unlike my parents and I, who are big nerds.
-One thing I remember with some amount of resentment is that at college (I went to Haverford College in Pennsylvania), I was chatting with someone else in my math class who had taken the same national math contest that I had, and he said something like “well, I got the 50th best score in North Carolina, but someone else in my school got the 6th best score in North Carolina, so no one made much of a fuss over me”. And I was thinking “well, I got the best score in California, which is much bigger than your state, and no one made a fuss over me at all… and I didn’t even realize anyone should have. But NOW I do.” I wonder how my life would be if there had been more recognition and programs for the very very gifted when I was growing up?
Anyhow, now I’m 31, I have a satisfying job where my brightness comes in handy (writing video games). I don’t have any illusions that I’m going to change the world, or even ever convince anyone of anything in The Pit, but I’m basically happy with my life. For what that’s worth
Heh…I was talking with my brother on the phone just last night and he was ribbing me about something or other with “yeah, you always were a little slow. Late bloomer, that’s you.” He’s about my same age and we went to school together, so he has a unique perspective on the whole thing. I was a gifted child very early on (I don’t know if you would call it “profoundly gifted,” I don’t know where the cutoff is). I could read about as well by the time I turned 3 as I do now, to the bewilderment of my parents. My dad says it was a little disturbing somehow when he’d walk into a room and I’d be drinking a bottle and reading the newspaper. I remember being on a preschool field trip at the zoo and another kid asked the teacher “can we feed the monkeys?” while standing directly in front of a sign that said “do not feed the monkeys.” I said to him “the sign right in front of you says ‘do not feed the monkeys!’ Can’t you read?” I wasn’t being mean, I was genuinely confused.
Unfortunately, that was about the pinnacle of my academic performance for the next 12 years or so. About in the seventh grade, I started failing classes, and to this day I can’t tell you why. Partly, it was an attitude problem. At any rate, I was hardly “ostracized for my brilliance,” since any brilliance I may or may not have possessed was kept pretty much secret by my failing grades, except for being called into a school counselor’s office every other semester or so to find out why I wasn’t living up to the level of acheivement my aptitude tests indicated I was capable of. My ostracism was much more of the garden variety.
I kept failing classes all the way though high school. By way of example, in my computer math class in 11th grade, I spent the whole semester hacking into the math program and making it so a giant penis appeared onscreen when you booted it up. My grade for the semester was a 7. As terribly amusing as that was, it wasn’t so amusing when I flunked out and didn’t get to graduate with my class. My brother walked across the stage at the graduation ceremony, and I didn’t even attend. High school was a sad, lonely, and angry time for me. Don’t worry, though, my life rocks in every way possible now.
I see my boyfriend in the article, and, to a lesser extent, myself and most of my friends.
I don’t think people realize how much damage can be done by constantly telling kids how bright/special they are and what great things they could do. It puts on a lot of pressure, to the extent that living your life like a normal person constitutes failure. Taking kids out of bad situations or putting them in programs to develop abilities they show interest in developing is one thing, but forcing it is going way overboard.
Hell, I’m currently trying (at 21) to pull out of the whole Gifted Child mindset, and my dad is fighting it all the way–“But you have a gift for this, you have such intelligence, you need to be doing something academic, your mind is perfect for research”…I’d smack him, if it weren’t for the fact that he honestly thinks he’s helping.
People need to learn where to draw the line between positive reinforcement and making kids feel like they have a duty to what is, in the end, a genetic accident. Especially if performing that duty is at odds with being a whole person and living the way he/she wants to.
Missed this before, and wanted to comment.
While my intelligence and my brother’s are nowhere near the 180 range, we both hover around low genius. My poor sister, who is of above-average but not amazing intelligence, came between us.
She’s a much harder worker than I am, having attained basically the same grades in school by dint of exertion, voluntarily seeking out tutoring, etc., while I basically lazed through school. She also did a lot more with her time outside school–devoted herself to band, worked on a therapeutic horse farm, etc. In short, she’s a far more interesting person than I am.
While my parents make an effort to recognize all of us equally, it’s clear that it’s easier for them to put a real value on my academic achievements (CTY, this and that GPA, got into U of Chicago’s Linguistics PhD program, blah blah blah) and my brother’s academic and athletic achievements than on her drive to succeed.
She’s coming into her own now, but I know that for a long time she felt like she was just desperately playing catch-up to me, and this caused all sorts of problems between her and my parents and particularly between the two of us. Thank god everything’s all smoothed out and both of us realize we’re just people for Og’s sake–maybe it’s got something to do with the realization that she’ll most likely go way farther in life than her lazy-ass sister–but I dearly wish I could go back and make those years easier for her.
Not so much.
The people in the article were extremely gifted. But I was gifted enough to be teased about it in school and I did get questions wrong on purpose just so I wouldn’t have the top score again a few times.
If anything in adult life I’m probably not living up to my full pontential. I don’t feel like a fraud. I feel more like a slacker.
I’m not even close to being among the “profoundly gifted” (if anything, I’m among the “fairly smart”), but I resonate with that article.
I may not have learned multiple languages at three, but I could read at four.
My first memory is not of thinking about reincarnation, but of waking from a nightmare and staring in fear at the light bulb on the end of my crib, imagining the buzzing filament inside and the wires connected to it.
I’ve never had a formal IQ test–the ones I’ve taken online have had such variable results that the’re almost meaningless.
During school I mostly had decent marks, enough to get by. One year–grade 11, I think–I had straight As, but that was not repeated.
But…
The social effects of school were very negative for me, and probably resulted in far more disadvantage to me than any advantages I may have gotten through intelligence.
During school I learned to hide myself and try to fit in. And those lessons, taught by the fists of bullies and the derision of classmates, started in kindergarten. I learned to do what was necessary to get by, but not much more. After all, I didn’t want to be singled out again.
There were entire types of skill I needed, that I had no idea existed, and that school as it was then couldn’t teach me. I refer to social skills: how to talk to and understand others, how to read body language, how to behave so that others can feel comfortable. I’m only learning those skills now, and I’m 41.
I wonder now what I would have been like if I had had the environment to really push myself, to see what I really could have become.
I wonder what would have happened if phys-ed had taught me how to control and use my body, how to dance, be social, and defend myself… rather than being a font of shame that I escaped at the first oppurtunity.
I wonder what things would have been like if I could have used all my vocabulary and mental skills and been open about it.
I strongly suspect that I am operating at maybe 10% of what I could be.
Not me, not close. Twice tested by Mensa. High enough IQ to sting if it were water temperature, but nowhere close to boiling. The first and last time I mentioned my (lapsed) Mensa affiliation was during my first interview out of grad school. It suddenly became the subject of discussion. The primary interviewer was clearly intrigued/intimidated and made me, then a 22 yo, squirm like hell.
To my mind, “astonishing intelligence” goes well beyond a standardized test. It’s multifaceted and rare–much rarer than, say, a 160 IQ or some freakish savant ability.
Nope. Dumb as a post. As a majority of my posts here will bear witness.
But I lern. I lern. Eee-vennn-tualeee.
Kind of sort of identify, not at 180 (I think I was 136) but it rings a bell. I’ve since taken care of the problem with drugs and alcohol. 
First, a shout-out to all you fellow CTYers out there. Definitely one of the more important things to happen to me, because, as GilaB said, I was, “finally among ‘people like me’.”
I’ve never considered myself ‘genius,’ but certainly struggled as someone who perhaps wasn’t objectively ‘smarter’ (whatever that means), but who retained info really well, had a high level of comprehension for all subjects, and got a kick out of exploring new things. I also had much more satisfying and rewarding interactions with adults than peers for a long time. I just ‘got’ adults more than other kids. We could talk about real things, and they didn’t feel the need to put me down or make fun of me. School was a piece of cake for me, and for quite a few years I was well ahead of the curriculum in a few subjects, (of course, I had to sit through what was to me remedial English and math because there was no ‘gifted’/tracked programs in middle school. There were three years of my life wasted). Didn’t have to work much; understood subjects without the reinforcement provided by doing homework. I was always on the outside, but I had a few other friends who were there with me; maybe one or two of whom did it with as minimal effort as I put in.
Well, I burnt out my senior year in high school. There was just a little too much work to be done (and I was someone who was used to doing no work and still doing well. Senior year, I did realy well on all my AP exams, but my grades in those classes were pretty poor because I didn’t get off my ass enough to hand in the required assignments more often than not), and I cared too little. I was tired.
I ended up in college for a few years but struggled seriously with getting work done. I’ve been in and out part-time since then, but basically failed out as a junior (credit-wise). Maybe I’ll go back if I have a specific goal or purpose, but the college-for-college’s-sake motivation wasn’t enough to keep me going. Classes still seemed to go horribly slowly, and I still ended up being one of the few to actually participate, raise my hand, and discuss stuff intellegantly, and after a month of that my mind and interests wandered, my grades slipped, and so the saga continues.
So, yeah, I struggle a lot with myself with regards to expectations and where I am now. I was the ‘smartest’ guy in my class for a long time, and now I’m a college drop-out. That’s hard enough to reconcile in my own head, but I also know that I’m disapointing my family to various degrees as well.
Sorry if this became more of a confessional-type thing for me. But, that’s a bit of my experience.
This article I ran across probably speaks a bit more to me than does the op:
Unless I am mistaking the reference, you also talk to stuffed moose and learn English…"from a boook!’
Hallo! Is nice today!
As to the OP, I’m another one of the “middling bright” crowd. I think I tested out around 130 in grade school, and range from about 125 to 140 on Internet tests. But nevertheless I had problems with math–so much so that my GPA was pulled down and I could never join the state scholarship federation.
My parents tell a story about how I identified the colors on a multicolored ball way before most kids do, as well as other typical stories about early reading and so on. But nowhere in their tales is any mention of precocious mathematical ability! 