...and it's not too "gifted" for me to have to clarify, but the teacher who took me up to the university was my favorite of all time.

When my gifted teacher found out I liked puppies she took me to the university and I dissected some.

i was, in several places, but it never was good (except in one new york public school) and my parents wouldn't let me skip classes as a kid.
it would have probably been good if i had stayed in one school system, except if i had gotten to stay at that one in new york, i probably would have had other problems, as getting a 93 on a test was not considered good and hunter and all thoses testing in things sucked--
i don't think it was the programs so much as the school switching as it's very much up to the schools and teachers.
i think that gemini or olymics of the mind or whatever they call it was better.
i always hoped "Head of The Class" had been a better show

i would go on about the different teachers and why they sucked but i'm trying to keep it at a minimum for the ones who want me mum.

brevity
soul of wit
*loses wits*

I always tested well, but because of learning disabilities and behavior problems, school was kind of difficult. In 6th grade I was finally admitted to the enriched program, even though the principal had reservations (he was later fired for doctoring test scores).

By high school, I was such a little wanna-be delinquent(and wanna-bes succeed if they try hard enough, I was suspended 4 times and arrested once)that all that stuff seemed incredibly distant from me, even though I still read a lot. Plus even then I sort of hated the attitude some of the smart kids had towards others. But it all came back to haunt me when I managed to somehow get into a good college (my mom was freinds with a secretary in the admissions department who kept nagging them) and found myself woefully underprepared, which made for a dismal failure.

i wasn't in the gifted program, but i'm rumored to have a stratospheric IQ.

Odd thing about the men on my dad's side of the family and academics. My paternal grandpa attended St. John's for 2 years then his father died and he had to take over the family store at Fulton Fish Market. My dad went straight from high school to Vietnam and never attended college, and you heard what happened to me. My uncle mike graduated salutatorian, but one night he went swimming when he had had a few drinks and drowned.

Eerie.

on preview: my tested IQ is 127, which means I'm basically smart enough to know how smart I'm not.

Yeah - the only thing I remember about the test was putting these tiles with pictures on them in order. My grade school MG teachers were almost universally horrible. High school was much better; I got to take some really great classes, including one where we just read science fiction books and discussed them. My absolute favorite teacher of all time, ever, taught that one.

In my elementary school they had "Mentally Gifted Minors" for the fifth and sixth grades. My parents didn't want anything to do with that and kept me out with the "regular" kids. I'm glad now knowing what went on in there (I had a friend that was in it) because it would have only encouraged my own personal learning disability: laziness.

I skipped a grade in elementary and then got put in advanced classes. My school didn't really have a gifted program so much as a letting-you-take-classes-with-the-big-kids thing. That probably explains my tendency to socialize with people older than I am.

I was in the gifted/accelerated (as they called it at my school) program, and skipped a year of school (going to university when you have just turned 17 is NOT FUN AT ALL), and it did shit for me, except get me through stuff quicker.

Then again, I hated my teachers and had an attitude problem. The best part of being in the program though, was that I could skip school and often not get in trouble. Yeah, it's unfair and I abused that, so?

gifted programs work best if the teachers are trained specially for what are, in fact, special needs classes. Lots of gifted kids have emotional or behavioural problems and not all teachers are prepared to deal with that. My daughter is in one and it kind of sucks, to be honest, because the teachers are such a mixed bag of competencies. She takes the courses that have the good teachers not necessarily the ones with the most intrinsic interest to her and that is kind of sad.

Was in G.A.T.E. (gifted and talented education) for awhile in elementary school. Mostly learned that 3rd grade boys will take every opportunity to call someone "G.A.Y.". The only question on the test I remember is one of the ones I missed - i was supposed to rearrange 4 tiles into a face - probably an indication of future antisocial tendencies, which was why they didn't want to put me forward a year.

Oh, I forgot I got to hang out with high schoolers and learned how to cuss and got to see naked people for the first time in Zeferelli's Romeo and Juliet. So it wasn't a total wash.

I was in the "gifted and talented class" (although I'm not sure how the talent part came into play) in elementary school. As I recall, there were only 3 of us, and we were ostracized as we would just up and leave class, seemingly at random times. Our teacher was very cool and basically we just worked on puzzles and discussed things. Strange in second grade I suppose. They wanted me to jump from second to fifth grade, based on some standardized as well as other "special" tests. My mom decided it wasn't in my best interest, so I didn't. That was in a small public school in Indiana. Every public school I attended (only public schools mind you) afterward had no such program. I think I must have been smarter then, somehow... I wouldn't consider myself gifted nor talented. Frankly, I feel less intelligent everyday. Must be all the "extra curricular" activities I engaged in.

I was in gifted classes from third grade through seventh, and I skipped the eighth grade.

In gifted classes, we studied things like essay writing, logical fallacies and filmmaking. My teacher, who's still in the biz, was, with the possible exception of a few creative writing instructors, the best teacher I've ever had in my life. (She has a masters in gifted ed., which in light of above comments may be worth noting.)

The test was just the usual proficiency test, which at that time and place was the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.

they called it AP or accelerated program at some of the schools, but these were also public schools where there were 8 to 11 year olds taking senior and college classes.

i think i am dyslexic as well but there has been no way to find out as i've worked beyond it too long ago and too far to tell.
i knew a guy who was very smart and dyslexic but his misreading was consistent enough for him to read. what he would write was inspired in that freudian untintentional way, but not. he had many other problems as well, though, but was a damn interesting performer for a time.

Count me as "gifted-but-learning-disabled", whatever that means. I absolutely hated public school. Overcrowded classrooms, buzzing florescent lights, no hands-on experience, teachers droning on and on about the most rudimentary and boring shit. I hated doing homework and busy work. Rote memorization tore out my soul and pooped on it. Look, if I can prove I can execute the concept of long division, why in the hell do I need to do it 50 times a day for years on end?

They tested me for various learning disabilities and whatnot in 3rd grade, about the time I gave up on public school and started willfully aiming for a straight "F" record.

At that time I tested at college undergrad skill levels in every subject except math, which was at 3rd and 4th year high-school levels. Language reading and comprehension was at 3rd or 4th year college levels during that time - go figure. I vastly enjoyed reading and writing - when left to my own devices - and I was reading "heavy", "serious" literature at a very young age.

They tested my IQ at 190+ during the same period. At the time I didn't really have any grasp of what an IQ test actually was, and as such I really wish they hadn't told me what my score was then. It's simply pattern recognition and spatial reasoning skills, not a measurement of skill, aptitude, nor social skill or compatibility.

I spent almost 3 years homeschooling, between 6th and 9th grades. My coursework was self-defined and consisted mostly of reading everything I could get my hands on from the gigantic local main library, which to this day I am mighty thankful that it even existed - even more so that it existed with such an enormous collection of books and materials. I read the entire technical section, all of the sci-fi, most of the reference materials, a huge mountain of the periodicals back-catalog. I remember spending days on end pouring over the microfilm records and just soaking up everything I could.

I never graduated HS. I even flunked out of my GED on a technicality. (I "accidently" doodled in my test booklet. Verboten! I would have aced the simple test, though. I just never went back to retake the test, frustrated and trod-upon.) I do have an AA in commercial design, and a smattering of undergrad credits, but no real degree.

It hasn't really stopped me, though. I was briefly worried after HS that my teachers would be right that without a HS diploma it'd be hard to get jobs, but the only jobs that have ever even cared that I had a HS diploma were total shit service-industry jobs. All of the corporate-grade tech and/or design work jobs I've had never even blinked an eye at the lack of it, though I interview well and am articulate - if not spastic - enough to communicate about my skills effectively.


On preview:

Frankly, I feel less intelligent everyday. Must be all the "extra curricular" activities I engaged in.

Same here. It's like I can feel my brain just becoming less and less plastic every day. Though, if anything my "extra curricular" activities allowed me to dull and tarnish my hyperactive brain a little so I could actually stop and hear myself think for once. Seriously, if it wasn't for recreational psychoactives I probably wouldn't be here today.

Without them there'd probably be some archival footnote somewhere in history that read "Maladjusted boy genius builds 50 GeV cyclotron in garage, opens wormhole and vanishes - along with 10 city blocks and countless innocent bystanders." S'truth.

also, interro, the only people i know who used their cooper union degree are major assbites and all are at least baby boomers.

adding to rumple, who is spot on there, many teachers will take out their own issues on their students to try and undo what happened to them. i will refrain from examples, but i see this in many teachers who try too hard to thoses who don't try any more.

Yeah, but the only cool thing we ever did was make a stop motion film (and that was cool). But really, the people I knew in GATE didn't want to stand out, always had, and this didn't help.

It was called MGM when I was in school. We were called "mentally gifted monkeys" of course. I was in the MGM class for third grade. The school wanted me to skip fourth grade and go to fifth. I tested high enough I could have graduated high school. Anyway, my mum said I wasn't ready. All my friends were accelerated. This (among other things happening at the same time) has affected my life ever since. And not in a good way.

loquacious - I've no clue of my IQ nor can I draw literary comparisons.

However, Cheers to psychedelics *clink*

*raises hand*

Former "Mentally Gifted Minor" here. It's been long enough that I don't remember much about it, other than a special trip to the Exploratorium.

Oh, I also remember being cornered at recess after tests by people wanting to know how I answered question number 6, what did I put for 12, etc., when all I wanted to do was play kickball like a normal kid. I hated standing out that way, so between the boredom (" hated doing homework and busy work. Rote memorization tore out my soul and pooped on it." A-fucking-men to that) and wanting to fit in, I pretty much stopped doing homework around 6th grade.

When they mailed out the high school diplomas, I was sure my envelope was gonna be empty. It wasn't.

My gifted teacher taught me to speak french and program BASIC (this was in the mid '70s, so that was a rare and new thing). She taught me about geodesic domes and that the squiggly white thing in an egg yolk is the germinal disk. I loved her.

But then my folks moved me from the city (with the "bad" schools) and out to the burbs, where all you learned was to fit in at all costs. Most of the teachers were just biding time until lunch/summer/retirement. The gifted teachers were flakey as hell.

And it was then that I started getting bullied. "Scrabble Queen", "Encyclopedia Brown." I don't even remember all the taunts. But it was clear that smart was bad. I was never more than a B student after that and tried as hard as I could to keep my mouth shut so that boys would like me.

Yeah. I'm bitter.

i taste just like chicken.

I'm way too smart to fall for the "I taste like chicken" trick, Mr. q, sir.

I taste like bratwurst.

Now bratwurst I like.

I have no idea what I taste like, but I'm told I smell just like freshly baked bread.

with sauerkraut.

I was in some gifted thing in elementary school. I remember it was a lot more fun than regular school, and we got to play with tangrams.

Those were the days, man.

I'm still in the gifted program.

I was skipped a year in primary school, but then discovered laziness, so was put back again. It was all downhill from there.

Top one-tenth of one percent, if I recall correctly.

And no, the Gifted Programs (as such) did little for me.

Our pants are all, clearly, of the smarty variety.

Yeah, top one-tenth of one percent.

Except every five years or so, they (amazingly enough) track me down and send me a nosy questionnaire, which I decline to fill out.

Does being special count?

In my school days it was the "accelerated program" limited to one school with only about 25 gifted students per year for the whole state (I think it has been much expanded now though). It was a big inner city school, and the gifted students were kept in the same class together throughout the whole of high school with minimal interaction with "normal" students.

I do vaguely remember the test - pretty much a standard IQ test as far as I recall, plus a series of interviews to determine our 'suitability'. Given the number of interviews I had to do I'm still somewhat amazed they managed to fuck that part up so badly as to let me in the program.

We had one or two teachers who were outstanding, a number who were indifferent, and one or two that I truly hated with every fibre of my being.

Given our social isolation from the rest of the school, the hyper-competitiveness of many of the gifted students (especially the ones with pushy parents), and the fact that many of the rest were in turns neurotic, anti-social and generally quite messed up and 'difficult', high school was not a particularly pleasant experience.

In the end it put me off higher learning pretty much for good (until fairly recently anyway) - I left at 16 and never went back.

Sorry for the rambling - as is probably clear I still have a number of 'issues' related to high school and gifted student programs. Thanks for the opportunity to vent!

I'm glad now knowing what went on in there (I had a friend that was in it) because it would have only encouraged my own personal learning disability: laziness.

Yup. The "QUEST" program at my school allowed me to be lazy and arrogant, without requiring me to stretch myself and be disciplined. I firmly believe I'd be much smarter today -certainly more intellectually rigorous- if I'd never been in the wretched thing.

I got a National Merit Scholarship for being so brainy!

Of course, now I'm trying to find a seasonal job at Target, because unemployment is running out this week, and I can't see anything coming on until tax season in January, when I can work three 10-hour days a week doing stupid people's tax returns for more money than I should be getting for it.

Overall, I have determined that being smart sucks.

We moved every year so nobody had time to put me in a gifted program. There never seemed to be any doubt that I was gifted - my IQ is the same as Jon's - 127 - and I test extremely well: 98th percentile on standardized tests, 1570 SATs, etc. My parents always went on about it and every new school got all excited, but nothing ever happened. Except that I was bored and lonely and eventually self destructive, got in trouble and hated changing schools every year. Eventually I dropped out of high school - that was my third high school; I'd been kicked out of the first two. Didn't matter. Those SAT scores and a National Merit Scholarship finalist - I got into college no problem.

Ah, recreational drugs and why bother showing up when you can get Bs by being there once a week? An attitude I still have, fortunately or unfortunately. College was fun, though, I liked college - what's not to like? I was an art major and in those days in South Carolina, kiddies, we had beer in the student union.

Now I have a kid from another planet, who no one seems to be able to figure out, and tests are inconclusive as to whether his IQ is 85 or 185, and I take all of it a lot less seriously than I once did. He was going from Special Ed to Gifted & Talented like a ping pong ball until I finally yanked him out of public school and sent him off to live with the hippies Quakers and both of us are learning how amazing good education can really be.

Oh, did I mention that I went on to get a B.A. in English, a J.D., and an LLM (that's a "Master of Laws and Letters") in Taxation?

And I can't DO anything, you know.

Yeah, I was considered gifted. They wanted me to skip a grade but I didn't.

School was utter hell for me.

Two out of three of my kids were placed in the gifted program at school. The one that was not is as smart or smarter than the other two. Go figure.

I'm back in school now, and dang it feels good to get A's on midterms.

You didn't pass the bar, yhbc?

1. Yep, I had those classes in elementary school. We didn't really have a similar program above grade 6, just optional honors and AP classes.

They wanted me to skip grades. I didn't, and am glad of it.

2. I took two different tests, both of which seemed pretty odd at the time. They made me take the tests in the principal's office, and didn't explain anything about it at all, so I spent most of the time wondering if I was in trouble. Especially when they made me take the second test a month or so after the first one; I just assumed that I'd fucked up the first time around, but couldn't fathom what I'd done wrong.

3. I vaguely remember some of my teachers, and a few of the sillier projects. Mostly it consisted of playing logic/strategy games with our friends for an hour, then going back to the normal classes.

it's not so frowned upon to be smart in other countries. i had to explain this dynamic to some professors who didn't understand why their colleagues treated their secretaries and such so badly.
i knew a girl who was 14 from south africa who was going to college in the US. i've known a lot of people from other countries who had problems with the bad schooling in US precollege schools as well as precollege aged people in uni doing just fine.
personally, i do think it is much about the teachers and how/if they struggle against any guidelines they have to adhere to, depending on where they are, which is very subjective according to locale.
also, i started kindergarten at 4 but now the limit is 5 in the US and as far as i know, a lot of nationwide standards are still being thwarted as much as the nationwide driver's license.
also, IQ tests are so subjective to age and which they made you take where and when.

I've been a lawyer for 16 years, ortho. I just can't get a job - no law firm is hiring 44-year-old senior associates who never made partner and don't have a quarter-million dollars's worth of portable business.

Look, if I can prove I can execute the concept of long division, why in the hell do I need to do it 50 times a day for years on end?

Oh my, locquacious, I had the same attitude about math forever. I didn't even realize I liked it till geometry came along. (Aside: What schools did you go to? I know we grew up in the same town--well, I lived there for longer than I lived anywhere else--so I always wonder. I went to Eader & Dwyer & Sowers [we moved across town] and I would have gone to Edison had I gone to public high school.)

Anyway, when I was in public school, I was in GATE. I remember the first two weeks of third grade, my first year at public school, I had to be in the "regular" class till my teacher recommended me, and I just couldn't believe how *stupid* the other kids were. I know it isn't nice, but I was just shocked. I carry this bad attitude along still, but so often I just don't see how some things that seem obvious to me don't to others. Like a friend of mine says, "It isn't that I'm so smart. Just that everyone else is so stupid." I guess it's rude but then again it isn't.

As far as school goes, I had a terrible attitude (don't really believe in authority, you know) and was thrown out of my second-grade school for "asking too many questions." My mom was a hard-ass and shopped around and I finally ended up in challenging high school, where I did really well. And I loved it. Of course, I was sixteen when I graduated, and that was weird, but I can never re-wish my own life: I'd undo too many good things.

And don't understand apostrophes's.

PS to loq: I loved loved loved that library.

I must be getter smarter! -- Because I just now for the first time was able to comprehend a comment by ethylene.

For once, it wasn't as if the comment had gone through three cycles of the Google translator.

Maybe I'm just getting used to her, but I swear
it's as if she wrote in full sentences with, like, verbs and conjunctions and punctuation and stuff.

;)

Dame, I got thrown out for being "uppity." I've come to realize that while I love to learn, I hate to be taught.

The horrible thing about being smart is having to laboriously explain all the steps that led to your off-the-cuff conclusions.

He he, jrossi4r. The only thing that made me good at high school was that it was an insanely competitive school and I am insanely competitive. It worked out pretty well: I had no social skills but was always at the top of the class, so I got respect & interest I never would have warranted with my social stupidity. Also, my teachers there were the first adults who took me seriously.

*only learned multiplication tables because it was beat into me by rote*
*only new thing i learned after 2nd grade of school*
*must be more pedantic for the sake of orth*
*no*
*believes in hope for good alternative schooling and well run homeschooling if suitable schools are not available*
*withholding stories of such*

wow, goth, that's so cool.

You were lucky, Dame. I think only a quarter to a third of my graduating class went on to secondary education (and that included trade schools). So there wasn't much competition. Jocks ruled. It was all very Heathers.

And I don't find you socially stupid. I find you deliciously frank. :-)

Mygothlaundry, how does your son like his school? We're considering sending the wee one to a Friends school.

i agree, deliciously

Oh, may jeebus kiss you both.

Nah. He always tries to grab my ass.

It's been great - I think it quite possibly will eventually save his life. He was kind of on the short road to what happens to good looking charming unmotivated kids with too much time on their hands. And he loves it, he really loves it. For the first time in his life, I haven't been called in for a freaked out parent teacher conference yet this year.

AMS isn't a seriously academic type Friends school though - it's much more experimental and much more about the community. They raise a lot of their own food, maintain the school and grounds themselves, and go off on work service trips. They just got back from a trip to Penn Center, where they go every year and do things like maintain trails, rebuild chimneys, help in building reconstruction, etc. Every year they hike part of the Appalachian trail and also take a 3 week trip to some other part of the country or to Mexico - and those kinds of things are considered as if not more important than the academics. My son is pretty ADHD and just a very unique person, and so the mix of doing a lot of very physical things and learning a lot of real life skills has helped him tremendously. He's much more confident, much more mature. A lot of my friends went to various Friends schools and their experiences have been pretty much uniformly positive.

also, interro, the only people i know who used their cooper union degree are major assbites and all are at least baby boomers.

I'd like to use my Cooper degree at some point, even if it makes me an assbite.

I was in a gifted-readers program in the first and second grades, but the school system didn't offer much in the way of G&T education for years afterward. They did offer decent extra help for learning-disabled kids, though, and my parents now regret paying more attention to his needs than mine. In any case, I was used in a G&T program "evaluation" in 11th grade, but by the end of that year I had a counselor recommending me to the local community college, where I spent the next year. Oh -- in 10th grade I made the mistake of asking a counselor how to get an IQ test, which got their tentacles into me. At one point I had a grad student seeing me weekly as some kind of education for her, but not much benefit for me. (I did eventually test at 145 or so.)

Unfortunately, at the end of that year, the new administration at the high school refused to accept my credits, so I had to get a GED.

Then I transferred to college, but didn't finish.

On the whole, it was a mixed bag for me. I wish I'd understood about Asperger's, or at least Geek Syndrome, because at that age nobody really did, so I attributed most of my problems to depression and other things that I put into a kind of "character failings" grab-bag.

Today, my nieces and nephew are in the same school system, receiving an enormously expanded program of emotionally/learning-disabled education.

You know, if I were making a half-mill as a corporate tax attorney, jetting off to Antigua or whatthefuckever to check on my important clients, do you think I would really be able to spend all my time here/on MeFi/on MeTa/on 9622? Do you think any of us would, if we were really successful in our chosen/imposed fields?

I think it's safe to say we have self-selected for intelligent underachievers.

Sorry in advance if that hits anyone too hard.

that makes no sense, give it a rest
heh.

JOKE, TOTAL JOKE
i have a football question later, my dear commish
no hard feelings on my end

interroo, i have your email, if it's the same, and i'd like to help, but i don't know exactly ehat your major was.
i will be ircable
even if i have to make my own room.

what
not e hat

because teh and l33t and pwnd has nothing to do with common typos

I was in Gifted Language Arts, Gifted Art and Gifted Math from 2nd grade till 5th. In 5th, I went to France for three weeks in a foreign exchange program, and was completely lost in the math class and my sleep schedule was way off, so I ended up dropping out of it.

In middle school, I was honors English and French, then in high school I was honors/AP English all the way through (and French for two years). I was an honors student in my Journalism school in college.

But I stopped doing homework on a regular basis in 3rd grade (probably because I was bored with it) and was bullied in middle school, so I didn't have the GPA to match my intelligence. I graduated both high school and college with solid 3.0s, after screwing around both freshman years before getting serious.

... be able to spend all my time here/on MeFi/on MeTa/on 9622? Do you think any of us would, if we were really successful in our chosen/imposed fields?
I think it's safe to say we have self-selected for intelligent underachievers.

Underachiever and proud of it!

Seriously, though, as much as it hurts, you are probably right on the money. But at least we're intelligent, right? That's better than being successful, isn't it?

ah, honors...
i remember honor
you are pretty gifted, me3

i'd ask how the party prep goes but i don't want to derail
you've seen the torso cake right? with the organs of different flavors in an edible ribcage?
frankly, i think i'd rather go to your party but i may ditch out on this one, too.

you're part of my posse, dg. i bet you still didn't listen to "motor away"
it's a car song, see?

Dame wrote:

Oh my, locquacious, I had the same attitude about math forever. I didn't even realize I liked it till geometry came along.

Oh, I like math. I'm highly analytical and logical despite my strong intuitiveness/perceptiveness. I'm just not very good with formal systems. Well, at least I think I'm not. I can discuss and intuit my way through theoreticals like there's no tomorrow, but give me a stack of simple multiplications and I'm reaching for the calculator.

Tangential: I had the following exchange with a totally ancient and old-world third grade teacher who I mostly loathed. "You have to learn your times tables?" "Why? Computers are going to be everywhere. They're going to be in our pockets, on our desks, on our wrists, in kitchens. They'll be everywhere." "Oh, no they're not! Computers are just a fad! They're expensive and large and slow" "..." "Do your times tables!" "Uh, no. Sorry. Can I program the computer to do them for me?" (Proving that not only can I effectively multiply, but I can itemize the processes and organize them into a self-solving machine state. I don't think she grasped that part. I don't think I really grasped that part either, but understood enough basic CompSci to know that to be able to program a solution is to understand the question intimately.)

(Aside: What schools did you go to? I know we grew up in the same town ...)

Sounds like you were more south-east HB. I was in north-west HB. Park View, Glen View, College View, Ocean View, etc. (Aside for others: Yeah, they called every single school in that district "*namehere* View". Unimaginative at best. It honestly sums up the cookie-cutter mindset this school district was locked into for the duration of my experience with it.

Anyway, when I was in public school, I was in GATE. I remember the first two weeks of third grade, my first year at public school, I had to be in the "regular" class till my teacher recommended me, and I just couldn't believe how *stupid* the other kids were. I know it isn't nice, but I was just shocked.

I think I had my first painful revelation like that in kindergarten. For my 6th b-day my grandpa gave me a 4 lens compound Bushnell microscope with an assortment of prepped slides. (It was probably a surplus find or something, my family wasn't really wealthy or anything.) I was mounting my own simple wet and dry slides within a few weeks of getting it, using the 450x power oil lens and everything.

This neighborhood kid is over and we're playing with the scope. Almost immediately he dialed it over to the 450x lens and drove the lens right down into the stage, crushing the slide, and the flat-ground oil-contact part of the lens. Totally smashed it.

I was completely baffled, hurt, outraged, confused, etc. "What are you doing! STOP! STOP!" I yelped, probably shrilly and nerdily. But at that moment I just sort of had an epiphany that most of humanity around me wasn't all that smart. And considering that I didn't think of myself as being all that smart, it was a world shaker.

PS to loq: I loved loved loved that library.

That library probably saved my life. I've yet to see any library so large and so well stocked servicing such a relatively small town. I still miss that library, and the parks around it. Though the last few times I've been through there visiting it just feels really dumbed down and consumerized to me. Thanks a lot, Friends of the Library! I feel like I'm at the mall!

yhbc wrote:

I think it's safe to say we have self-selected for intelligent underachievers.

Fuck yes. Slack isn't just a religious dogma, it's a way of life.

I'm massively comfortable with not being Type-A, and with living a relatively simple life. Almost all of my clothes are second hand. My computers are second hand. The car my GF drives is almost 20 years old and second hand. 90% of my gadgets, tools and electronics are second hand. One of the few things I didn't buy second hand was my bike, but that's because I wanted the warranty. But it was on a massive discount, 'cause it was a whole season old when I bought it. But I've easily put tens of thousands of miles on it since I bought it.

I love being a free agent generalist. All my life I have had pornographic fantasies about locking down and applying myself, working hard on one thing, be it the next Great American Novel or off playing mad scientist in some high energy Physics lab or playing Dr. Frankenstein with in some machine intelligence field.

But even in my fantasies I get panic attacks at the very thought of A) Having to actually work and B) Having to actually focus and dedicate myself to one very narrow field of interest. I'm interested in far too many things to sit still for that. So instead, I just sit still on this wonderful internet thingy and be spongelike in more ways than one.

There's (supposedly) no real lack of genius in this world. But there's plenty of slack, and an utter lack of any real focus or perspiration.

My dream job is at an NGO, non-military blue-sky think tank somewhere, working as a generalized futurist. Preferably right in the sweet spot of the intersection in the Venn diagram of art, science and culture. I'd work for peanuts somewhere like that.

Hell, I'd probably pay to work there.

Ethylene, I'm not familiar with "motor away", but I tend to listen to lots of music involving cars. Anything with a motor interests me, in fact.

it's the song i dedicated to you on my first mix, by guided by voices. it had a motor theme and it's a good song so i thought you'd like it.

i believe i am being obfusticating and off topic again, to everyone's chagrin, so i'm gonna stop commenting in this thread

I was in the g&t program from first through fourth grades. It saved my life. And then, when I was in the fifth grade, some angry mothers whose kids weren't picked for the program lobbied to have a more "inclusive" class. It was called SAGE - "Shared Approach to Gifted Education." Instead of just us too-smart-for-our-own-good kids, it was us plus the rich kids whose parents had the time to complain. Instead of science projects and oil painting, we wrote haiku and, and at the nadir, fingerpainted with chocolate pudding. I was old enough to know dumbing-down when I saw it, and I was very bitter.

Along with the rest of the smart kids, I dropped out.

I spent my senior year of high school at a teeny-tiny school for the "profoundly gifted." That was indescribably great after so many years of feeling like a freak. I spent every Wednesday with a mentor, a working artist, and we'd go to museums or go over whatever we were working on. Sometimes, we'd just walk out of the school's front door and just wander around for hours putting the city into our sketchbooks.

I don't like to think about what would have happened to me if those programs hadn't been there for me. Thirteen years of teachers making fun of me for using words that they didn't understand, parents beating the shit out of me for working on art projects instead of doing my religion homework, who knows how many years of lunchtimes spent in the library until I just gave up and did what I thought I had to do in order to fit in. It wouldn't have been good.

Has anyone mentioned yet how poor the US education system is at measuring kids' intelligence? I mean, actually, useful, important intelligence?

Standardized tests? Fuck 'em.

I test poorly, but I'm a smart person. I never learned how to study. Didn't have to -- I was in the 'smart' classes. (No, not 'gifted' -- was/am too bad at math for those. Plus, my high school didn't have them. Middle school, yes.)

No matter. I know things. I can probably fix anything that you've recently broken. It's possible that I could fix your car. I know random facts that most people wouldn't care about. I can write my way out of a paper bag, and have been paid to do it. If I worked where you worked, I'd give you a bit of an inferiority complex.

But tests? I suck at them.

Mygothlaundry (as usual) pegged it for me: Send the kids to the Quakers.

(Sorry, bang bang. I realize that I didn't answer the question you asked. Just adding the perspective of a nonvalidated gifted person, I guess.)

My school system didn't have a gifted program, or classes. Well, there was one in sixth grade that some of us went to and which I remember very fondly. I think postmodernmillie was in that class (two years later), as well.

I would probably have been more interested and done better in school had there been a gifted program. I typically got better grades in the supposedly more challenging classes in high school. Otherwise, though, I thought it was all a waste of time. I skipped classes and school quite a bit. They even made me meet with the assistant district attorney who told me that truancy was a crime and they could send me to the state underage boys criminal facility. That set me straight...for the rest of my junior year. Then, as a senior I didn't go to many of my classes. I enjoyed being a drummer in the band—I sometimes think that I would have dropped out of school were it not for band. Even so, I came close to not graduating and I had to take two correspondence classes to get the credits.

Basically, I was the smartest kid in class, who wasn't there much of the time, but when I was there I was a smartass because the whole enterprise pissed me off. Teachers still liked me anyway, but I drove them nuts.

And having written my comment, I realize that I'm still pissed off about my schooling. Frustration—a huge well of frustration and anger is there when I think about my childhood school experience. I do recall that at the beginning of every school year I would be excited about learning. By the time we had textbooks, I was taking the textbook home and reading the entire thing. And then I'd go to class and be frustrated the entire year. Starting in sixth grade, I mostly just took paperbacks to school and read in class.

I took the test in 3rd grade. I remember parts of it, mostly the question they said I got wrong and that I argued with them about.

The question: "You have lost your keys somewhere on a football field" (test giver hands me a sheet of paper and a pencil), "draw the most logical path to walk in order to find them again as quickly as possible."
I drew a spiral starting at the outer edge, because I have great eyesight and I figured I could see really far in towards the center on each turn, covering the field in record time. They said that was wrong, I should start at one short end (why the short end, they couldn't answer) and go back and forth across the field under I had covered it all. I still think I was right, but looking at it as an adult I see they were more concerned with covering the whole field in an efficient manner than with actually finding the keys. Fucking bureaucrats, eh? They'd rather you follow directions than get something done.

I went what would now be called a charter school but was called an "open alternative" school. There were only 120 kids total in grades K-8, and only two of us took the test. My mom still won't tell me what I scored but our school got extra money from the state afterwards, though not enough to have separate activities for us. It didn't matter, the whole school was based around self-directed learning and every kid worked on different things most of the time. Plus there was mandatory parent participation, so there were always adults around to help explain things or show you what they did at work or teach a choice class. There were a lot of hippies and original thinkers around. I loved school.

Then I had to go to high school and hit total culture shock. It was so strict and seemed more about following rules than learning, though learning how to fit in has come in very handy so I guess they knew what they were doing. I got thrown out of GATE class for turning things in late and creating a multimedia presentation instead of just reading my paper like the other kids (seriously). I escaped to private school after one year, the friends I left behind either dropped out or started doing lots of drugs.

Aaaaanyway, I test really well in verbal skills but only about average in math. Dame, I'm convinced that people can be divided into "algebra lovers" and "geometry lovers" and I'm firmly in the algebra camp. It's just like grammar, equations are like sentences and they just seem so sensible and practical. Geometry was filled with assumptions (my teacher called them "givens") and seemed so incredibly abstract and impractical that I couldn't convince myself to care. I get confused trying to do simple equations in my head, I can't focus on the numbers and my head starts spinning. My one real math skill is if you give me a question where I have to, say...match four kids' names to which flavor of ice cream they like and what color house they live in based on limited clues? I can just zone out for a sec and the answer comes to me, though I don't know how I know it and if you ask me to show my work it'll take me twice as long as the other kids. This skill has never once come in handy.

Whoops, sorry. That was LONG.

I still think I was right, but looking at it as an adult I see they were more concerned with covering the whole field in an efficient manner than with actually finding the keys.

You were right. And that's a good story.

ha!

Gifted class, my aching ass.

When I was 10, my parents were told I was the smartest kid in BC. Not only was I NOT told, my worried parents redoubled the restrictions on the school as to what i could be exposed to and what not (protecting religious beliefs). I left school at 13 to marry the father of my unborn child.

Years later, it took 3 months to challenge my way into Uni so i could become an RN. Faking my way through the organic chemistry exam was the toughest; some things a person just picks up, but org chem was a new language.

:) I totally relate to kmellis' "well of frustration and anger is there when I think about my childhood school experience". It's comforting to know that they'd never get away with shit like that these days.

I was tested a few times as a kid. My parents were strange about the whole deal because they were clearly excited about something but refused to reveal the results of the tests to me. They also refused to bump me up a grade as well. They were adamant about me being with my friends and in the "normal" classes. They called the program QUEST where I went to School. It should be obvious to you now from this narrative that I was not a part of it. I am ambivalent about their choices.

I just couldn't believe how *stupid* the other kids were.

I just remember the other kids having bad memories. I mean colossal, disorder-like bad memories. The first third of every new year seemed to be teaching them what they'd been taught the previous year, and like some strange monster movie, they'd stare at it like it was new with no inkling that they'd learned it before. Weird.

What about government, yhbc?
Yeah, underachieving, I hear you. I sometimes look at my life as one long avoidance of challenge, though no one else ever seems to see it that way.

Math was hell. Not because I didn't like it. I could have. It's just that I'd figure out the answer in my head and write it down, and the teacher would get pissed because I'd be sitting there, looking around or reading something else and he'd ask me why I wasn't doing the question. I've done the question, I say. Well what's the answer, he'd ask? So I'd show him, and he'd get more angry. "Well, show your work!" So from then on, I'd do the question in my head, write down the answer and the work in quick order, and sit there. I refused to "look busy" and he'd get pissed every time.

Can I just say that I find this thread remarkably comforting?

Maybe this was obvious to you all, but I guess in the back of my mind, I figured that all these GATE types - aside from me, of course - had become these hard driven world leader types while I shuffle along at my own pace. (I would have said "doctors and lawyers" but I no longer measure any kind of drive by that) Nice to feel normal again.

I was in a gifted program, gifted in the "God or The Void has given you a gift, that gift is not being good at math, find your gift elsewhere." I arrived at middle school with such a divergent, contrary understanding of mathematics (one which used as a fundamental axiom the notion that getting the same answer twice to the same problem was a failure and dammit try harder boy, I was well on my way to proving that pi = 4 by the time they interdicted my brain and brought be back to Cartesian land) I was placed, with one other dullard in a "special math group", a group of two, a math pair really, idiot buddies. We named ourselves "The Denominators" because while we could be fucked to understand factoring we had an excess of black humor, which has always stood me well.

Of this fact (and despite the fact that I am now ok on the math) I am prouder than any other academic accomplishments of my later days.

I wish that sometime in my pre-tertiary schooling someone had taught me how to study. Everything came so easily to me that I never bothered. Everything felt like common sense to me. Then I was lucky enough to get all great teachers in my final year of high school, so that the first year of university (including the infamously difficult organic chem class) felt like a repeat to me. So I thought I could get thru uni without studying, and on entering the honours neuroscience program the next year promptly flunked out. Took me a couple of years of serious hard work and *learning* study skills and concentration to get my GPA up enough to get into graduate school. blah.

Now, I appear to have lost everything that I have learnt and am coasting again. Which is going to be a problem.

I was in GATE! Bur I moved around so much that it (and the tests) were always slightly different. By HS, I got into punk, and became an all-ages concert promoter when I was 14, and pretty much gave up on education until I was 22, and my then boss essentially fired me to force me to go to University. Six years later, an almost grad degree, and I am ready to give it up again.

The one thing I learned early on was that intelligence was relative, so I never fully applied myself as a kid, but through talking to my classmates, got a sense of how much work they were doing, and then put in a few ounces more than them so I always came out on top, This was especially true for University, which was, at times, frighteningly easy.

Slackers of the world, unite and take over!

It is comforting to know that I am not alone in my gifted/slackerness, but all of us kind of already knew that about these places, right? Look at the meet up pics - this place is a nerd-fest!

I remember that testing, like in second grade. I was polite but inside saying "WTF" the whole time. Some accellerated program thing happened around me, but damn if I knew or cared. School was an elaborate system for preventing me from following my actual interests, which I pursued obsessively in my free time. Taught me how to master, absolutely master procrastination. "I will need to start that project...tomorrow afternoon at 3pm"

You know, if I were making a half-mill as a corporate tax attorney, jetting off to Antigua or whatthefuckever to check on my important clients, do you think I would really be able to spend all my time here/on MeFi/on MeTa/on 9622? Do you think any of us would, if we were really successful in our chosen/imposed fields?

I think it's safe to say we have self-selected for intelligent underachievers.

I've met these other fuckers, the "rich and successful". Have to deal with them all the time. Gawd they suck. I just can't get it up to share their anxiety about when to trade in the 750li, or how they'll get that Italian marble delivered in time for the carpenter to finish before the painter arrives. *rolls eyes*

Money floats best over the shallow pool.

Reliving the whole goddamn thing with my eldest son, who's different. It's strange. My wife will get frustrated and ask me "Why does he do that?" and I'll describe for her what the inside of his head is probably like at that moment, and she relaxes and says "oh, yea, I remember feeling just like that. That teacher I hated..." and off she goes remember that she was different too.

Yes, I was in the "advanced" program, in an advanced magnet school. Nerd nerd nerd. Lisa Simpson nerd.

I'm successful. I like the way I got my life set up. You have a bad definition of successful: it doesn't mean being at the top. It means being what you want. Anyway, just you wait.

Loq: Build us a time machine. We will go back to 1985, and the libary will be awesome.

When I was a kid, my two-years-older brother showed a lot of math potential, did his homework, and was a favorite of all his math teachers.

I showed the same potential, and my folks decided to accellerate my math study. They arranged with my fourth and fifth grade teachers to race me through several math texts per year, until I was studying algebra in fifth grade.

I resented the hell out of it.

When I got to sixth grade, we had a math placement exam. It was a multiple choice Scan-Tron test, and I remember every one of my answers to this day: A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A, B, C, D, E, D, C, B, A, B, C, D, E.

I finished it in a couple minutes, turned it in, and the test proctor said, "You sure you're finished?"

You bet your ass I was. My brother was getting ready to take differential equations or some shit as an eight-grader, and the high school didn't have it, so he had to go to the local community college three classes a week. I saw the writing on the wall, and kind of liked having a social life. This had to stop, and I was the one to stop it.

Sixth-grade general math was fun, though the teacher wouldn't let me stay for more than a couple weeks before bouncing me up to a class where my boredom wouldn't distract the other kids (fat chance -- I graduated summa cum laude in Disrupting Classes).

The thing about it is, I've never like studying subjects I don't care for, and I've never cared for math. I do math for a living now, and I find it mildly diverting. Not particularly interesting.

I think if I hadn't made the executive decision to take myself out of that accellerated math "program," I would have grown up to be a very strange man.

So clearly it made no difference at all in the end.

No, dame, I'm successful too. That's why I wrote "rich and successful," which is a formal term around these parts. I ain't rich, but I am making way more money than I thought I ever would, and more easily than I'd expect, which I take to indicate that I'm in a field that suits me. But it's not banker money, and I live in the northeast, where too many people really don't have a sense of proportion. Too many people around me view life as a zero-sum game they must win.

Now it's all coming back.
I was so indifferent to, and lazy about, school, but so diligent and tireless in my own interests!
I had a very fruitful correspondence, over the course of years, with a kind librarian at the Smithsonian, who did the most obscure research for me and sent me photocopies and clippings about ridiculously arcane aviation trivia (e.g., "the Bell XP-77; from what kind of wood was it constructed? Was there a version with a normally-aspirated ranger engine?"). She did more for me than any of my grade school teachers just by validating my interests and drive.
I created a 10 page report on the re-entry of skylab with clippings and text I'd written, but I never even thought to show it to my schoolteachers, because they hadn't asked for it and, I assumed, wouldn't care.

I'm still frequently amazed by what people respond to out of me. There will be a document that I just knock out in an hour, and people rave about it, while I'll slave over a piece of analysis or a very difficult plan for many days, and I get the meh. It's weird. The things that are fun for me I do really well with no effort at all, and the things that are trying for me to do take tons of effort and come out only okay.

Does anybody else here find that to be the case?

Six years later, an almost grad degree, and I am ready to give it up again.

I hear a lot of this also in this thread. I take it that another group tendency here is to take it all and chuck it every few years? My only problem is that new careers are taking longer and longer to try out given all the training/educ needed. I'm near the end of a three year contract and it's killing me.

Does anybody else here find that to be the case?

Oh yeah. Throwaway stuff of mine, in work and elsewhere, everybody loves. The stuff I put effort into gets a shrug.

I obviously need to cease all effort.

I was in in gifted in grade school, I don't remember the test.

It was a one day a week thing where I took public transit to a different school for a class for all the local "gifted kids"

Thing is, it worked out such that from grade 5 to grade 8, the day that I went to gifted was the day my regular class had music lessons.

Now, music being a graded subject and part of the cirriculum, I had to get a mark in the subject.

The music teacher, who never saw me, always gave me a B. Always.

jonmc, I'm with you.
*drops laptop onto floor*
*puts feet up and opens beer*

It is odd that so many of us ended up in this place.

Off the cuff:

Me: the answer is ...
Teacher: but where's your work?
Me: I dunno, I just know the answer.
Teacher: you gotta show your work.
Me: why?
Teacher: because I said so.

Argh. Most of the time I had no idea how I got the right answer, I only knew it was right. And it was! I hated that shit.

"Intelligent underachievers"? Intelligent maybe, but I don't know how to achieve.

[ lots of deleted crap ]

Although I couldn't articulate it as a kid, my attitude was basically "why bother doing something worthwhile?". No matter what I did it didn't matter: there wasn't anyone to care, I never knew what the family situation would be (who's playing "daddy" this month?), I never knew where we would be living, or where I was going to school. So why bother? It was easier to hole up with a book and let the world go by. I still do that.

Me: the answer is ...
Teacher: but where's your work?
Me: I dunno, I just know the answer.
Teacher: you gotta show your work.
Me: why?
Teacher: because I said so.

YES! arrrgghh. "show your working" was the common refrain of every single goddamn teacher.

i read at a 78th grade level, fwiw

oops i meant 7th or 8th grade level

pliskie wrote:

The things that are fun for me I do really well with no effort at all, and the things that are trying for me to do take tons of effort and come out only okay.

Does anybody else here find that to be the case?

Yeah. There's actually a sub-field of pyschology about this. Check out the book "Flow: The psychology of optimal experience." by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

It's got all kinds of good stuff about that whole phenomenon about being "in the zone". How time seems to dilate during these experiences. How effort becomes effortless.

There's all kinds of examples of where this "flow" arises, from painting to rock climbing to solving logic puzzles - but it's obviously different things to different people.

Excellent book, and especially good for us overanalytical slackmeisters. It answered a lot of questions I had about this whole elusive "happiness" thing.

Thanks for the tip, loquacious, I'm going to check it out.
I think I know of the flow. I've certainly felt something that is like plugging into something bigger than myself. Love that feeling, too. What surprises me is when I knock out a task so quickly that I never even felt like I got into the flow. Like my subconscious was in the flow for 5 minutes and just got it done before the realization floated up to my conscious mind.

Wow, thanks for all the great responses, everyone!

Well, I made about 600K in a little over a year five years ago*. The fact that I'm broke today and hanging out here probably validates dios's hypothesis. Money doesn't mean much to me, I had no enthusiasm for "managing" it. I just did what I wanted to do with it until it was gone.

* But a significant portion of that I never saw. I took about 150K capital loss because I just held onto the stock in the company I worked for when I exercized my options and it eventually lost that much value. The IRS, however, considered it "work income" at that value, when I exercized the options. All of that 600K was taxed as work income, not something like capgains. So I also lost a bug chunk to taxes. Say, a third. So that's another 200K. So, really, what I had and spent was 250K during and over the following four years. That was easy to do.