Not that good a place, I guess. I make rent and food by doing the bare minimum at a lower skill level than I should be at, and I got bored and aggravated while at a doctoral program in a difficult subject, because some of my mentors and most of my peers didn’t seem to achieve any quantifiable results, and I knew I could. Ticked me off, sort of – when I get bored I learn nerd stuff like new languages and, in my downtime, drink too much or take too many pills.
I think the ‘evidence’ of our ‘adult genius’ is that the strong majority of us here write really well - not just in standard English, but also in slang, inside jokes, logical arguments, etc. That, to me, is the mark of smarts.
I also think that a Gifted program instills the value of learning and somehow ties it to a child’s identity. That, to me, is a good thing.
Sounds like you need to hire me, as cleaning up after a bunch of genius engineers with no skills is basically my real job description, even if my resume says operations management and system administration. I’d move to NYC for, say, $130k/yr and a decent vacation plan.
Bulbous bouffant. Macadamia!
Sorry for the hijack, but it had to be done.
Well, you wouldn’t get paid that much first of all.
And as I mentioned, the last person we hired quit out of frustration. Most people don’t like not being given any direction but then constantly criticized when they try to do stuff on their own.
You know, there IS a reason people beat up nerds.
Heh, I’m getting paid the equivalent to that much here, after you factor cost-of-living. My wife just hates being rural. =P
Scores obtained from adults are more reliable, generally speaking, than those obtained from children, but longitudinal scores from the same individual are still highly correlated.
IQ scores (validly obtained) are some of the most stable psychological measures that exist.
I was ‘gifted.’ (Actually, it’s funny because my parents had me tested when I started to do badly in school and got a letter from the board of education saying I needed intervention (not realizing at first that it was because I scored high, not low).)
What did I do with that? I used my gifts to enable me to do other things. High school was a breeze so I got involved in music and bowling. I had three part time jobs. (And occasionally a social life.)
In university, I would do all my homework between Sunday and Tuesday (with the occasional stretch into Wednesday for a particularly long programming assignment) which gave me four days of goofing off/partying time. I also had part time jobs there and tutoring.
I used my smarts to enable me to do what I wanted to do and spend only as much time as I had to on the things I didn’t.
Now, I do about the same thing. I approach my life as a complex logic problem. Makes it enjoyable for me.
Am I successful? In my mind, yes. I know what I want out of life and I have accomplished those goals. Frankly, I don’t want to be more successful than I am. I don’t want the pressure, I would rather be happy.
Maybe I should move to where you are. My GF has a thing for bears and moose and such.
Let’s see… the usual story- could read by 2, read 1000 page novels by 2nd grade, tested extremely high on IQ and standardized tests, at least in the English part (have never scored less than 99th percentile)
Strangely, I’m not gifted in math. I’m not terrible- I’m usually in the 80th-85th percentile, but the actual mechanics of math come hard to me, unlike things like logical thought, problem solving, reading, etc…
Anyway, the funny thing is that I don’t always consider myself all that terribly successful, but it’s because I’m comparing myself to my pretty wildly successful peers. Compared to a lot of people, I’m doing quite well.
I mean, I make in the 70-80k range salary-wise, I have a BS in Computer Science, a MBA and a MS in IT and Management, I own my own home and cars, do BA/PM and some SQL coding for a job, have a happy marriage and a new son, parents and in-laws who love me, a really great friendship with my younger brother, and a wide range of friends from as far back as middle school who I talk with and do things with regularly.
When I compare myself with people I know, I get bogged down with comparing myself with high school and college classmates who are history/strategy professors for the Air Force, several other professors, senatorial chiefs of staff, mid-level State department diplomats, USMC squadron commanders, assistant DAs, and a lot of people just slightly farther along career-wise than me.
Reading by age 3, GATE program in elementary school, Honors classes, theatre, and all of the audition choirs in my high school. A’s and B’s in everything but algebra all the way though. For educational purposes, I was considered a gifted child.
Being intellectually gifted, however, does nothing to heal having emotional wounds, so when I left high school, I made a score of stupid decisions that resulted in marrying young and not happily, not finishing college, and having all sorts of other issues.
Just the same, I’m not really doing all that badly. I’m still working on finishing college, when I have time. I have a beautiful son, I’m now in a wonderful relationship, and I make a pretty good living doing a job I absolutely love.
A common opinion of law enforcement is that people who become cops do so because they’re too stupid to do anything else. I run up against this all the time. I enjoy proving people wrong. Especially when those people are jerks.
Personally, I consider myself pretty successful overall. I’ve got a long ways to go, but I’m on the right track.
I entered the gifted program in 1st grade. I could read and write by 2 years of age and could do long division by 4. My mom was a teacher. I was in special programs until college and have national science olympiad medals. I continued to do well in high school, even though I was quite promiscuous and developed a habit of doing heroin and smoking crack senior year. I had a great gpa leaving high school and accepted a large scholarship to a small liberal arts college. I even got an additional scholarship for my “Why I choose not to use” essay that I wrote while drunk. Even though I cleaned up my drug habits, when I got to college, I didn’t fit in. I was very unhappy and while I did well in my classes, I was alone most of the time. I transferred to a less prestigious school in the city. I did well there and graduated at the top of my class. I still didn’t fit in with other students, but in the city, I could find other friends.
After I graduated, I had a terrible time of keeping minimum wage jobs. I couldn’t land a better paying gig despite having really great internships and great grades. So, I got a job at a nearby strip club. I’ve always been a good dancer and its a fun gig, even if the management is horribly misogynistic. I used the money I started making to become a certified yoga teacher (I graduate next week). I also recently was offered a day job as a project manager, so I’ve been doing that too. I make about 1/5 of what I make at the club.
Outside of work, I live in an arts collective and do tons of volunteer work. I’m the president of a local non for profit and I enjoy hosting large underground parties.
I’m doing much better than the boy I started in the gifted program with in 1st grade. He lives outside his parents house in a tent because they dont trust him in the house anymore.
And as an adult, I dont find that I’m any more intelligent than others. I do find that I gravitate towards those 10-15 years older than me (my partner is 37).
[QUOTE=Maggie the Ocelot;12628706Thanks for this thread, Olives. I’ve always felt guilty - got the impression that I was expected to be the next Marie Curie/Elenore Roosevelt/Harriet Beecher Stowe/Gloria Steinem, go out and change the world, make it a better place for everyone. That in choosing to live my small life and not do something like that, I was letting everyone down. It’s nice to see that there are others who started out similarly but who haven’t Made The World A Better Place.[/QUOTE]
I came to say the same thing. I was gifted, too. Reading way ahead of my grade, joined Mensa at 16, was told I was capable of achieving “great things.” But, as others have pointed out, managing boredom and having a work ethic are requirements for achieving great things. As a result . . . well, I have a nice, middle-managment state job and am doing okay. But like Maggie, I won’t Make The World a Better Place in any noticeable way. And I feel guilty about it too.
I was a “gifted child” in the “gifted program” in my school district. I was placed in an elementary school that housed the gifted program as well as the local elementary students. It was quite a strange environment because it was so segregated; which incidentally also broke along racial lines as well as the “gifted/local” ones. The elementary school was (and still is) in a very poor, mostly black area of the city (Flint, MI) and the “gifted kids” all had their classes on the 2nd floor of the school; while the local students (or the “downstairs kids” as we used to call them) were all on the 1st floor.
I don’t think I benefitted educationally from such treatment; rather I think it merely reinforced certain racial divisions already very heavy here in Flint.
There wasn’t any such thing as “gifted programs” when I went to a parochial elementary school in Chicago at the tail end of the Baby Boom.
On the other hand, we had fairly good teaching by reasonably well-educated nuns (BVMs) and if one was inclined to do higher-level work, one usually could, at least by what would now be called middle-school, though one would still have to do the regular work and take the regular tests. My public high school was great–no gifted program, not a magnet school but plenty of classes where one could ignore the regular work after demonstrating you could work at a higher level, plus independent studies of all sorts.
I certainly don’t claim to be a genius but I was brighter than most of my classmates in terms of reading, grasping concepts fairly quickly, and writing (I was also brought up in a family that stressed reading and learning over other things). I’ve done OK (lawyer, reasonably successful, like my work very much, far from famous, quite happy).
The thing is, three of my siblings are at least as bright, went to the same grade school and high school, and two are not doing well at all. I strongly suspect that if there had been a structured program for higher-level work they might have done better; they are not adaptable, patient or very disciplined by nature.
All four of my kids are in the “gifted” range. The older ones went to a parish school and while there were a few teachers able to provide extra work and keep them interested, quite a few were either unable or unwilling. That was very hard on the two oldest–they did not underperform but disliked school intensely. It wasn’t until high school (competitive, private prep schools) that they felt engaged in the slightest at school. But all three got into good colleges and are doing well. None experienced the feeling of suddenly being dropped in a big pond or had any trouble keeping up high grades in college, perhaps because their high schools were so competitive they were used to it.
I transferred my youngest to public school for a whole lot of reasons; she went into a gifted program and is absolutely thriving. I admit I’m not 100% comfortable on a philosophical level with the tracking concept–for one thing I think learning how to interact with people who have different strengths and weaknesses is something kids need to learn–but there is no question in my mind that this child is happier and getting more from her present placement than she would in a “regular” classroom.
Of course long-term success has to do with all kinds of things besides being treated and educated as “gifted.” But I also think that this kind of program is a necessity for at least some bright kids in elementary school, and for almost all at the high-school level. Adolescence is hard enough without being bored out of your skull, and teachers nowadays (at least those in public schools) do not have the time or the flexibility to provide special coursework.
I was designated TAG, took several AP classes in HS (math and science), graduated as co-valedictorian from HS.
I never really thought of myself as specially genius or anything, but that’s how I was as a kid.
In college I studied physics. I was a decent physics student although definitely not the best and brightest. I generally got A’s and B’s, and a couple C’s in the harder physics and math classes.
I wanted to teach, so that’s what I did, for a couple years. I taught high school physics. I got my master’s degree first, to be able to do that.
Now I do seismic data analysis, which doesn’t require a genius to do at all. It’s a technical field and you have to be pretty good with computer science, logical thinking, problem solving, etc, but I’m not making any scientific breakthroughs or whatever. I could probably go and do a PhD in physics or geophysics if I really wanted to, but that’s the thing. You have to REALLY want it, and in the grand scheme of a terribly short life, I just really want a family and possibly even be a stay at home Dad some day, and that’s what would give me the most out of life, rather that some scientific career dedicated to bettering humanity.
I was tagged a MGM very early on, and so got all the enrichment programs available. Big whoop. I made it out of high school with a B- average, despite SAT and NMSQT scores that were off the charts. Took me 13 years to get my BA because nothing interested me, so I kept switching schools and majors. Middle of my junior year I said “Fuck it,” dropped out and entered the private sector. Owned several businesses during that time. Finally I had enough cash on hand to return to school and the maturity to focus. Straight Dean’s List from there through grad school. Now I teach AP classes at the high school level and coach the debate team. Been doing that for 27 years now, and I’ve loved every minute of it.
This zombie demands only gifted brains.
Gifted, found school and university easy. Choose jobs that interested me and did very well, but the jobs were not those that required the highest intellect, but strong leadership and organizational abilities. On the side, I privately became a top level “expert” in a particular corner of biology, and published a number of research papers. Have continued to do research even though I am now 12 years retired. I would say that by many standards I have been an underachiever (money, social status and so forth), but have been able to follow my own interests and passions while providing for and raising two very successful sons, and maintaining a long time marriage. My life seems to have suited me well.