While by no means a “genius”, I’ve been considered gifted for my whole life. Whether thats true or not I really can’t say, because I’ve never really felt gifted. The trouble probably comes in the fact that we often judge intelligence upon a single concept, when it is in fact a whole spectrum of abilities.
For example, I have always done average at best on math-related skills, and thus never so well on IQ tests which hinge on that. In fact, I actually score below-average on such tests. However, I was two answers off perfect on my verbal ACT score, graduated an accelerated high school at the age of 16, and am a junior with a 3.1something GPA in college at the age of 19. I was reading adult novels in fifth grade for my own amusement, after already going completely through the class collection of books before the year was halfway over. I say this not as a boast in any way, and it in fact embarrasses me when my mother brings it up in front of others, because I know a lot of people who are much smarter than I. I simply mention it to build my anecdotal case.
Being gifted, to me, in no way means you’re excellent at everything, merely that you’re above average at something. I see how words fit together, twist thoughts in odd ways. Others twist numbers and see connections in equations. It all comes down, in my mind, to instead of thinking better than another person, simply thinking differently. When one is able to see different connections than those around them, one can sometimes leap from A to E or even sometimes Z. These leaps are blessing and curse.
One point already raised is the triviality threshold. When someone fails to make the same leaps as I do, frustration can often set in. It isn’t always because I think the other person is stupid, but rather because I don’t necessarily know steps B, C, and D to lead them through. Because I’m already at E, I don’t have a clue how to get them to the same place normally. Thats often my true source of annoyance.
Another point is we can often become too reliant on these leaps of insight, depending on them instead of actual work. When a friend of mine gets a paper assigned, he starts researching up a storm, building outlines, shoveling through drafts, finally turning out a product which is the best he could ever do. I, on the other hand, wait until two days before at best, do online research so I can insert three quotes and complete the obligatory bibliography requirements, then type out a paper hinging on my gift to impress professors. It often works, pulling me As for 10% of the work my friend did. The problem occurs when it fails, landing me a nice fat C instead, and my friend still got his A.
As for the “emotionally challenged” idea posited in the OP, I think its phrased wrong. Are gifted people more likely to be socially eccentric? I think the answer is “yes”. Sometimes that also translates into socially maladjusted, but it really all comes back to seeing different connections. If you see things differently, you’re going to communicate concepts differently, and react to the world differently. Sometimes these differences are small, sometimes they’re actually positive, and sometimes you react so differently that you just can’t fit. A lot of it also hinges on the group you’re in.
For example, I was tormented throughout grade school. I would come home an absolute mess because I simply couldn’t fit in with the group. When one is reading Jurassic Park, conversations about Hardy Boys novels can be rather hard to get into, let alone the latest baseball game. Because the class I was in could not accept such weirdness, such deviation, I was picked on in an attempt to make me conform.
However, when I went from fifth grade to prep year at my accelerated high school, most of that tormenting stopped. It wasn’t because I thought any less differently than the rest of the class, but rather because we were all thinking differently, thus tending to be more accepting of weirdness. Thus, one group’s social maladjust is another’s average joe.
