I was considered gifted until around seventh grade, when I was suddenly deemed ungifted, but had more to do with being high and horny.
It’s been downhill since then. I’m about two bad weeks from living in a van down by the river.
But at least the van is paid for!
Have you ever read Why Nerds are Unpopular? I thought it had some good insights.
Meh - not gifted, but above-average. First kid in my class to read a novel, could skate through most of my classes, etc. Gave up a spot in an excellent university program where the professor called me personally to say I got into the program because I had a mental breakdown that summer.
Wish it wasn’t like that. The one thing I never learned was to sit down and do something 100%. I always figured 2 hours of work for a 90% was better than 4 hours for 97% - the extra two hours could be used for fun pursuits. This doesn’t work in the real world, where you are paid for 8 hours of exceptional work a day, as opposed to 6 hours of great work. I wish my teachers would have pushed makework on me as opposed to just letting me dick around when I got my work done early.
I participated in Johns Hopkins’ CTY summer program for smart kids; I took the PSATs and then the SATs in 6th grade and scored well enough to be invited to the program.
It was a blast, and the first time that I ever really spent with a large group of people who were like me. And, by like me, I mean, interested, quick, quirky, and looking to be friends.
In public school I breezed through most everything, getting Bs (and occasionally lower) only when the work didn’t interest me much. Was the male valedictorian of my 8th grade class (w00t!), and think I managed to get straight As either my sophomore or Jr. year in high school; took all honors and AP classes, etc etc.
My flighty nature and underdeveloped study skills killed my GPA my senior year (though I aced all my AP tests, even if I did poorly in some of the classes), and I ended up dropping out of college.
I’m currently a 30 year old musician making very little money. I’m happy enough, though financial stability is a dream that I have yet to figure out how to achieve for myself. Maybe someday . . .
I was under the impression that it’s been conclusively proven that a child’s IQ and academic performance are barely correlated, and that IQ results at a young age aren’t often very consistent into adulthood. It just hasn’t trickled down to the educational system.
I was in gifted programs growing up. I haven’t taken an IQ test since I was 11 or 12. I hated every second of school, did/learned very little, and dropped out of high school. Now I am a contented underachiever who has no interest in having a career (although I do value my independence, work full time and support myself).
In the course of seventeen years, I went from being “literary prodigy” (in the eyes of my parents and elementary school, because I could not only read, but also put together a couple sentences on paper in kindergarten) to “the first IB student to nearly fail to graduate” (oh, in retrospect do I have many words for my first high school “guidance counselor”) to “kicked out of college on academic grounds”* to “well, shitty GPA, but got that degree” - which I’m ultimately happy with, because at the end I worked my ass off to learn enough about things like Maxwell’s equations and Einstein’s theories of relativity and ancient Greek grammar and Kantian ethics to earn those B’s and C’s.
And right now I’m underemployed in a crappy part-time job, but that’s more my stubbornness and financial idiocy than anything academic. However, I am still writing, have had two small essays published in real publications (I even got money for one!), and most excitingly, just recently got a rejection letter that wasn’t a form letter! I mean, it wasn’t the “This isn’t quite what we’re looking for but please send us more of your work” letter that I hoped for, but they used my name and made specific references to my work and gave me suggestions, which is kind of huge.
*I went to what I think is the only college ever where you can have a passing grade in all your classes, be well within the attendance policy, etc - and still get kicked out on academic grounds.
That’s interesting. I was under the exact opposite impression – namely, that the only proven value of an IQ test is to fairly accurately predict academic success, though many people try to claim it holds greater significance.
I think we have a resident IQ expert – is it Stranger on a Train? Maybe he or someone else could enlighten.
I also think it’s interesting how many people report doing the ‘‘bare minimum.’’ I always tried to do my very best. It might be naive, but I’ve always sort of believed that if you’re bored, you aren’t applying yourself hard enough. I still bust my ass. In fact, I’ve never worked harder in school than I’m working now. I could work half as hard and still get As. But I would only have learned half as much.
To address your second question:
I feel that, based on my own experience with no G&T, and my daughter’s with G&T starting in 3rd grade, it provides two things:
1 - It lets the G&T kids move at an accelerated pace. There is a big push toward mainstreaming slower kids, so not only are smart kids made to go at the pace of the mid-range kids, they are forced to get slowed down by the slow kids. This leads to boredom and frustration
2 - It gives the smart kids a well-defined peer group, which comes in very handy as they approach middle school. They will still be made fun of (as will everyone else), but they have the opportunity to identify and band together with others who are smart.
A good (short) thread on some G&T experiences is here
Check out the first few pages of results from a google search of ‘IQ academic performance’. Apparently a lot of studies have been released in the last 10 years. I skimmed, but it seems like most of them support, somewhat, my vague idea of the current research*. It seems that while intelligence is somewhat predictive, other factors such as motivation and self-discipline are far more important in determining who will ‘succeed’ in school and in life.
I attach little importance to what people think of me or any other measure of success (I never once cared if I got an F or an A for instance). I have a fortunate capacity to entertain myself, but as a negative I don’t have much interest in the world around me. I spent my time in school doing things I was interested in - mostly reading voraciously, also writing and drawing. I learned a heck of a lot on my own, and continue to, as I don’t have any formal education. I also missed out because of my refusal to participate in school. I managed to get halfway through high school knowing almost nothing about math (seriously - I didn’t even know the times tables). As I moved into the working world, I was able to realize I needed to learn more about topics I had dismissed as boring or unimportant to get by, and did so without many problems.
I can’t begin to understand what motivates people like you to work so hard and achieve so much, olive, but I’m thankful you’re the majority in this world, otherwise things would fall apart.
*gleaned mostly from NurtureShock, I suspect
I was a bright kid, in the gifted and talented program, etc. My family is a old-fashioned working class fallen on hard times, and I think they didn’t quite know what to do with me. They worked hard to cultivate me in whatever ways they could- summer classes, piles of books, museum trips, etc. There was always this air that I was someone special, and that I was going to be be the one to do great things.
My G&T programs in school were next to nothing- just switching into more advanced reading and math classes on occasion. My poor school wasn’t really equipped to do much more. I think I benefited mostly by having the chance to meet more people like me, although I was subject to a lot of teasing and I remember elementary school as a mostly unhappy time.
In Middle School I had a bit of a crisis. I felt like I was subject to so many expectations that the real “me” got lost. It felt like the achievement was the only thing I had going for me, and I was fascinated with the idea “What if I wasn’t smart?” So I tried it. I stopped doing work. I failed classes. I got in a lot of trouble. Having answered that question, in high school I did okay but not stellar. I didn’t want the pressure of a perfect GPA to maintain. I didn’t slack, but I didn’t work hard. Mostly I did my own thing- reading Russian novels, making movies, going to the punk rock shows. I had enough friends and had a good time without making too much trouble. I did enough to keep my parents off my back and went to one of the less prestigious University of California campuses, which was still above and beyond anything anyone in my family ever did.
In university, finally on my own and free of anyone’s expectations, I thrived. I worked hard and achieved spectacular results, graduating with honor. But I was unfocused and didn’t really have a clear plan. I was just learning for the love of learning, but never really thought about my life after school. My social life was there but kind of incoherent. I hit my quarter-life crisis early and hard. My career goals fell apart and I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself now that I wasn’t a student. I struggled for a bit.
Eventually I found my way. I joined Peace Corps and spent four years as a teacher abroad, an extremely fulfilling experience. I’m going into a good grad program in International Development and have some clear career goals now.
I do think being smart has made a big difference even though I’m not a rocket scientist. I’m “big picture” smart, and I see a lot of connections that others just don’t see. I just intuitively “see” things that others have to think long and hard about. I pick stuff up quickly- I’m not amazing at Chinese, but I got pretty good at it without a lot of formal study. Stuff just comes to me. Things just seem to work out. People seem to believe in me without any real reason to. I don’t know what my future holds, but I’m confident it will be good.
The G&T program where I live must have been doing something right.
First off, if I hadn’t put my kids into it, one of them would have got all the way through school thinking he was the smartest person in the universe, probably–because he was always the smartest in his class until the G&T program.
Second, when he got into high school he was strongly urged by the GT staff to go into the IB program, which he did. Not all the GT-identified kids did well in this–some of them didn’t like to do homework–but it made my kid work hard for his grades, and unlike some others, when he got into college (full ride, good school) his first couple of semesters were much easier on him than on some of his peers.
The other kid, also GT but one of those who didn’t like homework, dropped out of HS to work on computers. By the time he would have gotten through college he was out-earning his parents (and his college-educated brother, who took about four years to catch up).
They didn’t really have friends until the G&T program because nobody understood their kind of weird sense of humor. Actually, they did have friends, but it wasn’t until G&T that they developed a real sense of kinship with other kids their age. That was the draw. Until IB, the program was (or seemed to me) both easier and more fun than the regular curriculum. In other words: not especially challenging per se.
So anyway, one of them is now working for a very famous company where he’s practically the only one without a college degree, and the other is an electrical engineer for a Fortune 500 company and pursuing a PhD. Other kids from the program (i.e., their friends) have ended up at NASA, at the CIA, on Broadway (it’s not all math skills!), as dentists/orthodontist (well, one dentist, one ortho), as a wedding DJ, as a paramedic, and as a golf pro.
I came in to post a link to that article too. That article convinced me to raise my toddler with praise for effort and perseverance, not praise for being smart.
Pubmed.org has a few interesting cites on the long-term life satisfaction and success of gifted children.
There are several, it would be nice to have yours. You point out that your husband is smart, top 10% of any of his classes, but was never classified as “gifted” or “given the gifted treatment”; you don’t mention whether his schools had any such classification. Would having been officially labelled as “gifted” during childhood and having received special positive treatment be part of your definition of “gifted child”?
Good point, but on the other hand, at least it helps engage intellectucal forays. Research indcates that schools are best at educating average kids. Gifted kids tend to deal with a lot of the same issues that kids with learning disabilites or other “resource room style disabilites” or classic disabilites who are being underserved by poorly trained resource rooms.
I was SO bored in school b/c nothing really gripped me.
Im prolly the minority in this thread. I am deaf, gifted and learning disabled. Was mostly given sped style interventions (which were crap) and no gifted stuff, until I was going into jr year of high school…that was FUN actually. it was an enrichment progam at a local univeristy.
I taught myself to read at three or four…BUT, that was right after I’d gotten my hearing aids at three.
I wasn’t gifted but “above-average” during my early school years - I was reading at a high school level in early primary school, which isn’t mindblowingly impressive but my parents and teachers had high hopes for me.
Come high school I crashed and burned academically, and graduated in 2007 with a high OP (the aim is to get a low OP). It wasn’t that I couldn’t do the schoolwork - it was just boring. Intelligence means nothing if you don’t care about using it. Creativity has always been much more important to me and right now (after a few years of being completely lost) I’m studying music and business and working on recording demos for a few of my songs - the business part of my course is to help me market myself.
So I don’t fit into this thread exactly but wanted to echo the sentiment that it isn’t how good your brain is, it’s the way that brain is wired - I’m sure if I actually gave two hoots about school I could have done really well, but I didn’t.
You didn’t mention Columbia, but obviously, you didn’t have to. 
Sorry to have confused you for robby, another poster from NY.
I wish I had more enrichment as an 8 year old, honestly. I got a lot of it at home, since my parents were both teachers. When I was 8, all I wanted to read about was ancient Egypt, so I did. We covered ancient Egypt in Horizons when I was in 4th grade, and I was happier than a hippo in shit. Incidentally I’m a scholar of Roman Egypt now, so it wasn’t exactly wasted on me. My mother always tells me how she wants to find my old Horizons teacher and tell her I became an Egyptologist after all. [sub]Even though I’m really not, since I don’t do pharaonic Egypt.[/sub]
But school just dragged on forever each day without that stuff. I might have been a heck of a lot more engaged for the long haul if I had to work a bit harder, or could have at least opted out of the reading lessons and spent the time just reading.
I was surely in all honors classes in middle school and high school, but I lived in a small school district. Perhaps 20-25% of the kids I went to school with were in honors classes. They were a little better than the conventional track, but not by a heck of a lot. If they had cut the class down from 30 to 10, we might have gotten somewhere. But this is obviously not realistic. One of my classes was like this because it was notoriously difficult. There was not a soul in the class who didn’t get a 5 on the AP exam.
Sadly, I am not Napoleon, not even in my own mind.
Both of these are very true with my daughter - who luckily has a gifted kid in her cohort with a high school math teacher for a mother. She’s been getting the kids together over the summer. The peer group formation (these kids have one more year of elementary school before they are thrown to the wolves) is as important - or more so - than the math.
They also try and pull the gifted kids out when the class is reviewing basics. So she gets less bored learning the same concepts again. Most of the things she learns being pulled out will never get taught in a regular classroom - so she isn’t “advancing” faster, she’s enriching. Its more detailed problem solving with math. Bookclubs with higher level books. Wordmasters - vocabulary contests. An extra research project every year.
This could almost be me, word for word, besides the cynicism (I am a born optimist, and I also had low self esteem. I used the gifted moniker as a prop, and still do unfortunately. I’m working on getting over it, I swear!). And, I’m only 30 at the moment :D. I currently don’t really love my job (nor will I ever, as far as I can tell). I tended to rely on a fairly wonderful memory (I could cram then brain dump very well) and I always tended to easily grasp math. It didn’t hurt that I loved learning new things, so I would voraciously read / scan through my text books when I was bored in class.
Obligatory flirtback. 
Yep. Smartest pole dancer in my class. I can even spell “pole.” 
P.S. Brains do not help a girl stick to the pole, sadly.
I brought it up because I find it interesting that, after 20 years of basically thinking for a living, I find myself seeking mindless physical activities for fun. Things like gardening, pole dancing, cooking, making pepper jams… Anything I can do with my hands or body that does not require much brain power… I’m all about it. I think I’m just sick of being Thinky all the time. One of my smartypants friends has been trying to teach me how to play chess. It requires too much use of my brain so after about ten minute, my eyes glaze over and I tell him I just. don’t. care. And then I suggest we put on some music and practice swing dancing or something. I was not a jock or athletic in any way when I was young, so I guess I’m making up for it now.
I was in TAG for only a couple years because they didn’t even start up the program until I hit 4th grade, which would have been around 1980. Then I changed school districts and the new schools did not have any manner of gifted program.
Regardless, I have no memories of working hard before college, or struggling to grasp material, or even really cracking a book much before high school. The only homework I did was math and/or science (Algebra and Chemistry. Never did Geometry or Trigonometry homework because it was spatial and I didn’t have to try in order to rock it.) AFAIC, I was not challenged academically until well into college. I can write essays blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back, so the humanities courses were always a no-brainer for me.
Perhaps those accelerated programs have been refined a bit over the years and offer more rigor than they did when I was a pup. I don’t remember anything particularly special or different about it except that I got to read cool books that some of the other kids weren’t allowed to read. Like, high school and college level stuff while I was in fifth grade. Superb reading skills are useful in the real world as an adult, but I think only create an incremental advantage.