Gifted kids aren’t necessarily smarter than anyone else. They just develop their adult levels of intelligence faster than normal. So there is no guarantee that the amount they will be able to maintain that performance gap going forward. Indeed, they are likely to do worse as they never had to develop the skills to do well in school. So once school gets hard enough for them to need those skills they don’t have them.
As you get older, you sort of get used to the fact that the majority of your fellow passengers are oblivious to the fact we’re on a bus speeding towards a cliff, driven by depravity and delusions of grandeur. And you realize short of a miracle, nothing is going to change it. It’s either that or you go mad. ¯*(ツ)*/¯
Boy I sure wish I had a 6 hr video explaining the incredibly racist origins of the Bell curve which has no value at all scientifically speaking, perhaps even by a Liverpudlian narrator of sorts
You might need to elaborate. I’m confused at the Bell curve (which is a visual representation of the normal distribution) not having any value at all.
The Central Limit Theorem guarantees that the normal distribution will show up all over the place. To say that it has no value scientifically is simply false.
There’s that joke about wearing regular clothes on Halloween to go as the “gifted kid”, and when people ask what you’re supposed to be you sigh and say you were supposed to be a lot of things.
I could totally have seen this been a joke delivered by Dexter, going out for Trick or Treating with Asher and Cody, or going to an office costume party.
Ah, I see the stereotype of everyone thinking of themselves as “lazy genius” is something we’ve carried over from Reddit. We’re all above average intelligent and could really achieve something if we just bothered to work hard and apply ourselves!
Yeah, one of the most important epiphanies I’ve ever had is realizing I’m not a lazy genius, I’m just lazy. It was a rude awakening to realize that I need to work twice as hard to keep up. But it was probably the best thing to happen to me!
You’re gifted enough to cruise through the first few stages of your education without trying, so you forge an identity as “the smart kid” but never build up skills in learning or studying, so when you finally get to a level where your natural intelligence can’t carry you anymore you can’t keep up with the people who did learn those skills and you start to fail and lose your identity as the smart kid which causes you to break down because that’d how you defined yourself for so long… or so I’ve heard.
This is actually the reason. Because there is no such thing as “natural intelligence”. Not more than there is “natural strength”. There are natural predispositions, yes, but what you get is function of what training effort you put in. Whether you realise, and/or like, putting effort into training your intelligence, is is another thing. So people who are “above average” were in a favorable environment that fostered their development without it feeling forced, or unnatural. And then, when the environment was replaced by the school’s, it sadly didn’t foster personal development anymore. I would argue we would need to redesign education, now that we have internet. We don’t have to design courses around physical limits.
Because there is no such thing as “natural intelligence”.
Weell, some children have it easier to comprehend stuff on the logical/abstract level than others. Which feeds their curiousity. Which trains their intelligence…
It is also not always about our intelligence but our skill set. I rarely have hard time learning when I want, but issue in my case has been in addition to probable ADHD and mental health issues that the system wasn’t designed to teach me studying.
Also, when you see it happen and you actually start trying and do better but some teachers always give you a lower mark to “motivate” you so you’ll “try even harder”.
First half describes me, second part does not. Never struggled in school or university (although I did fail lectures because I was too lazy to show up for exams).
But I also never defined myself about being “the smart kid”, I always rejected that notion. Society didn’t and still projected it onto me. That’s why I’m breaking down crying every other day. I always tried to help people that do struggle, I always tried to keep my “gift” as far away from conversation as possible. It didn’t matter, I’m a failure.
I feel like you watched me grow up. For a long time I was smart enough to pick things up naturally, I was even offered to skip grades.
Then the math got complicated and I didn’t know how to learn it. I went from being the smart kid to being the stupid one in remedial math. Being smart was all I had at that point, so when I “lost” that, I lost everything in my eyes. I was stupid and I was never going to be anything because of it.
I ended up getting my GED as an adult and I now have a promising career in insurance- so I didn’t really lose everything, but when I was 15 it sure felt like I had.
More or less the same, except I ran out of steam somewhere in the calc 2 to calc 3 area…so instead of becoming an engineer, I became someone who works for them.
In some ways it ain’t bad. I’m “skilled technical staff” whose work makes my position “salary non-exempt”, which means that at most companies/employers, my work gets guaranteed salary pay, but if I am asked to go over 40h in any given week, they’re legally obligated to pay me 1.5x OT pay.
I am crossing this divide now. I have secondary education but no university and I am working to get to med school now (In Finland it is a combined undergrad and med school). I think I can do it but I don’t really know how to study. I know how to learn but learning in schedule is the issue. I was too ill to go to university when I should have and I could have gone to easier courses I could have gone to without an entrance exam and done OK but I always wanted medicine. Or well, I not easier but easier to get into like maths. After I got better I ended up in aid work, and stopping that is really hard. But I still want to become a doctor so I am trying now in my thirties. Having what looks like undiagnosed ADHD that is now under investigation and crappy childhood might explain part of why I never became what people felt I should have but the fact that I never had to learn to study because I didn’t need to get through is up there.
I try to remember that our education does not mean anything for our value, but it seems hard when it comes to you.
on the topic of iq, i have a lot of problems with the way people seem to interact with the concept. there’s a bunch of assumptions all baked into it:
iq is a variable that actually exists in nature
people’s iq is static and follows a standard distribution
iq tests are capable of objectively measuring or at least approximating this variable
this variable is a good stand-in or even synonymous with cognitive ability
cognitive ability is univariate or single-faceted, able to be described with a single number
cognitive ability equates to or correlates with usefulness, happiness, sociability, success, whatever
finally, that any of this really matters, like in a materially impactful way, or is something that we should focus on
it’s not that each of these statements is 100% wrong, it’s that each shouldn’t be assumed to be true. but the way i usually see iq invoked kinda just uncritically runs with all of them, contained within a neat little ideological package.
also a pet theory i like (that isn’t actually true or provable) is that gifted programs are meant to remove children deemed smarter from their communities and funnel them into middle management and academia, so they don’t become agitators for change in their communities and workplaces
That could be true, but I think only if there’s a systemic effort to diagnose and put those children into specialized establishments. Where I’m from, it doesn’t appear to be the case.
was just joking around with a sibling about how some of the most intensely “being highly intelligent is my identity” people from high school with supportive families grew up to be dumb as hell.
the gifted valedictorian became a nurse, then went full “iraq had WMDs, but it was classified” chud, quit the workforce to have 4 children, is a god-tier horder with rooms full of actual garbage, and now is entangled in several MLMs shoveling a spouse’s very high income into a blackhole.
the “actually, i have a 160 IQ” inherited a bunch of $$, bought a bunch of vehicles, had 5 kids, went full blown “dance mom” facebook+social media freakshow, and spends most of their effort trying to cultivate inappropriate relationships and fabricate dramas with other married spouses in their neighborhood.
excellence and success are subjective. a life of curiosity, personal enrichment, family, and friends can be excellent without needing accolades or other features of careerist striving. but i’ll be damned if some really “smart” people don’t take their potential and, in defiance of the odds, turn it into a shit smoothie.
You sound bitter and cruel. Nursing is a wonderful profession that requires a lot of intelligence. There’s nothing wrong with having children. Hoarding is a fucking mental disorder and one of the most intelligent men I know struggled with it.
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