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I was told that when I went to college I would realize that I’m not that smart. Instead I met a bunch of people who got depressed because they weren’t as good as I was. I tried to explain to them that I was a freak who was masking so hard that I collapsed from exhaustion whenever I got home, and they shouldn’t try to compare themselves to me because the part of my brain that does logic ate the part that reads faces and understands how talking works. I wanted them to understand that there was a lot that came naturally to them that I would never be able to do easily.
Giftedness easily becomes a social disability if your environment isn’t good for it. The education system isn’t ready to handle you constantly being ahead of the class? Get ready to sleep in school as the best years to take advantage of it pass by. Your topics of interest are too complex for everyone else around? Have fun enjoying your friendships less than everyone else. You don’t mask your intelligence? Here, have 10 lottery tickets to get bullied, no, you can’t return them. Congratulations, you graduated from college. Do you have the money for a masters degree? Oops, guess you studied for nothing. Got into debt and got a masters, but the job market isn’t booming? Do you have rich parents, or rich friends? Aw shucks, guess you couldn’t network your way into the type of job you would have liked.
Being intelligent helps, if you’re patient, hard-working, and have the means to look out for the less conventional options, but not so much as one would instinctively think.
Was everything super easy for you? Congrats, you never learned how to struggle and persist and you get discouraged easily. Good luck growing your skills and knowledge now…
Hey that’s me! I coasted through high school and got to college having no work ethic or ability to really study material that I almost, but not quite, had down. Dropped out senior year to work in IT, got fired a year later, and had to move back in with my parents for almost a year before I went back and finished my degree and got a new job.
It was very humbling
I coasted through elementary school and ran up against undiagnosed autism, ADHD, and GAD (it was the 80s and I wasn’t disruptive) once homework started getting real. Had no problem learning the material, aced the tests, struggled with homework and writing assignments. “Not working up to his potential” became “lazy.” I took myself out of the gifted classes in middle school and bailed on “college prep” classes in my sophomore year. By the time I graduated I had failed English three times and wanted nothing to do with college and its endless papers I’d never write. Went to tech school for IT/electronics and did field service work for a bit before getting burned out and laid off. Landed in corporate IT and got real intimate with depression. 25 years later I’m still trying to recover from a lifetime of fighting uphill on hard mode against AuDHD, anxiety, depression, trauma, and the resulting burnout, keenly aware of my shortcomings the entire time while simultaneously fostering a deep seated contempt for the orphan crushing machines that define modern life.
My life would have been a whole lot easier if I had only been sociopathic.
It’s rare, but you ain’t alone. Man, I feel your pain. This happened to me, too, in the 80s. I was undiagnosed ADHD, which was never suspected because at the time it was just “ADD” and I wasn’t hyperactive. I had a lot of difficulty focusing, which affected my ability to learn and got me labeled – yep, how’d you guess? – “lazy” unanimously by all the adults in my life. I still got excellent grades most of the time, which just reinforced the lazy theory.
But wait, it got worse! I hit a wall academically when we started learning more advanced stuff and I wasn’t able to brute-force my way into A’s and B’s, and so I immersed myself in art (as a way to cope, I’m now realizing in hindsight), graduated in the bottom quarter of a prestigious prep school, and graduated 5 yrs later from college with an art degree. And I didn’t know what to do with my life, so I went back! For a second art degree! And I nearly flunked out again and had to reapply and finally graduated again…jfc, this is exhausting having to recount, haha…anyway, fast forward a lot and guess what? Now I’m a programmer. Web developer, specifically.
Never went for the CS degree. I wanted to, but I honestly thought I was stupid and utterly incapable of handling the curriculum - especially the math - so I wrote off that career path entirely. Like, I never gave myself a chance. I’m finally where I feel like I should be, but it took so long to get here, ya know? I wish I knew when I was younger that I wasn’t stupid.
Any advice for someone who just graduated but never did any real work due to the same problems (gifted but adhd). I just finished college but I just struggle so hard with the job aspect.
Sure! Note that everybody’s different, so what works for one person may not work for another. The following is based on what works for me.
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Have you been prescribed meds? Take ‘em. If you were prescribed Adderall, Vyvanse, or their generic equivalents to address the “inattentive” type of ADHD (like me): they are classified as stimulants and you can only get a month’ s worth at a time (assuming you’re in the U.S.), so set a recurring alarm on your phone so you don’t forget to call in a refill or do it online. Put your local pharmacy’s phone number and address in your phone, and take note of other pharmacies in the area in case there’s a shortage (which is a thing nowadays). You are gonna have to advocate for yourself if they are out of stock, so get used to the idea that you may have to call and ask the pharmacy for the generic equivalent or other locations that do have it in stock. Side note: if you don’t have insurance, GoodRx might be worth a look.
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If you get overwhelmed easily, do whatever is necessary to make yourself comfortable and eliminate distractions so you can focus. Music is good. Disabling phone notifications during work hours might help. Interruptions suck, especially if your task requires intense concentration, so don’t let them disrupt your shit.
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Keeping track of tasks and deadlines will help you stay organized and feel more in control, so get in the habit of checking and updating your calendar (and/or task management app or text editor, whatever) every morning so you don’t get caught off guard by stuff that is already planned. I know, everyone says make a list, which is cliche and doesn’t always work for everyone, so find what works for you. Think of it as doing your future self a favor. You’ll be grateful for past you looking out for you.
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Take a break once in a while. You might want to set an alarm for that. Step away from the computer and get some fresh air or something. Meditate or do breathing/grounding exercises if that works for you. You aren’t a machine, and you really gotta be kind to yourself and remember that you have human limits. Taking a break is crucial, especially if you are hyper-focused on something and can’t make progress; it’s just gonna frustrate you more if you force yourself to spin your wheels, so be kind to yourself. For real, sometimes allowing your brain to relax can help when you get back to the task. Sometimes things fall into place when you look at them with fresh eyes.
Anyway. Sorry for the bigass bullet point blocks of text. I hope none of that came across as obvious, cliche, or old person condescending, but that is what works for me. It sucks that you have to deal with this and that you have to put in extra effort just to function in everyday life… believe me, I empathize with you. It can be a fuckin struggle. But the truth is, you can’t control everything, so address the things that you can control. Do your future self a favor…identify the things that mess you up and find ways to work around them. And be kind to yourself, you deserve it.
I sincerely hope that helps. Feel free to reply with questions or vent if you need to, or DM me.
Heey, thanks for the advice. I read it at the time but was too anxious to reply😅. You really did help me at the time. I am currently working in a hospital lab which is amazing for adhd people cause you need to do ten thousand things at a time while knowing a little about a lot. I really found my place and i’m in a good mindset.
Again, thanks for being so caring to response and I wish you all the best!
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Oh I feel this so much. There’s a range of jobs and environments where I do really really well. But the way most organizations are structured I can never find a place where my strengths are desirable in the long term.
And selling myself is not one of my strengths.Try smaller businesses maybe? Corporate isn’t for everyone.
I got hired for two simple tasks and quickly realized the company (being small) was lacking in a lot of areas I specialize in or am passionate about. I started doing all these extra things and I got a lot of recognition and $$$ in return. I also don’t hate my job, it’s a small team and we all get along great.
Trust me, the same thing applies to the green region.
BuT yOuR pOtEnTiAl!..
Green region comes with a higher propensity for self “medicating” as well. Honestly makes me feel like less of a failure because I may be useless but at least I’m not an alcoholic?
School said I was gifted but I think I was just a big fish in a small pond.
“Gifted” in school basically just means “above average” and as we all know…
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
–George Carlin
His last name is DROP TABLE Students;–.
Little Bobby Tables
“IQ” and other intelligence tests are incredibly flawed. The biggest issue is that intelligence is very hard to define. Not to mention the IQ test comes from racist origins and was used for immigration testing for a long time.
Why then does IQ predict success?
I imagine it’s because the attributes that IQ measure could be the same as we use to measure success.
Effectively if your test is based on the skills needed for STEM, and the STEM fields have jobs with high pay and respect, then you’re likely to be considered “successful”. But the same person could be awful at communication, politics, the arts, and just be ignorant at large to how the world works. They may even be hyper specialized to their field but lack the flexibility in their intelligence to understand other STEM fields (I hear physicists are guilty of this).
Another, simpler answer, could just be that already wealthy people have better access to stable education, so they were already successful in many ways.
Just to continue to throw wrenches into the preconceptions, let’s not forget that a huge part of what we consider success in the modern world can be attributed to emotional intelligence as much as spatial awareness and logic.
A lot of CEO’s and people who climb high in the world are excellent at understanding how others feel and using emotion to communicate, share and inspire people to follow. Sometimes it’s the only thing leadership figureheads even know how to do. It’s also very, very hard to manage teams effectively if you don’t have a good understanding of how people feel at different times, how best to address those feelings and an idea how to manage the emotional atmosphere in a workplace. Yes, having good logic and reasoning is massively important, but rarely alone.
Yep, I’m starting to see how useful studying psychology would have been.
I’m 15 years into a tech career and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the hard problems are not usually tech problems…
It’s not psychology, it’s attentiveness.
We know this, the issue is until a more comprehensive test comes around, the IQ test is the best we have, also measuring general pattern recognition can be pretty useful as a “quick and sweet” measure since pattern recognition is the base for all other forms of intelligence
Why do we even need such a test? It seems like you shouldn’t place people into arbitrary categories. Intelligence can’t really be defined. A test that looks for intelligence is always going to be biased and discriminatory.
It reminds me of social scoring and even of ethnic cleansing in the worse case. People shouldn’t have there lives defined by a test.
I can see where your coming from but i have to say, intelligence is definitely not arbitrary, it’s just very wide and can be difficult to define exactly. Kind of like consciousness, we know it exists but we can’t really place a finger on it
Some people are 100% stupider than others and some are definitely smarter than others. I’m sure we can all agree Einstein is smarter than a hair stylist, and while yes thats an extreme example, it’s necessary to get the idea across
The real issue of measuring intelligence (in my opinion) is that there’s so many different types of intelligence which is why the IQ test is flawed, it boils down hundreds of different spaces into a single number
I actually disagree with that. Why would Einstein be smarter than a hair stylus?
This is stupid. Noting that there is a bell curve of some innate talent we label intelligence is like noting there’s a bell curve on a person’s height.
My point was what makes a person intelligent? Einstein is a particularly interesting example as he failed school. He also had a very bad sense of style and to my knowledge was not good at cutting hair. In that respect, a good hair dresser is far superior. They are way better at being a hair dresser than Einstein.
We all have talents. It just is a matter of finding what we love. Also it helps to we willing to learn as you can be as smart as can be but still be lazy.
The reason for testing is that people on either end of the bell curve need to be educated differently to the people in the middle and to each other
A man who single handedly created: Brownian movement, which helped prove the existence of atoms and molecules. Thequantum theory of light, which explained how light can be both particles and waves. Thespecial theory of relativity. Which explains that time and motion are relative to the observer. The link between mass and energy E = mc2, which also forms much of the basis for nuclear energy
This man basically discovered and explained the universe’s workings before we even had the technology to prove him right
… vs a person who makes hair look pretty
I have to ask. What makes you think we’re all the same intelligence?
Because if we did consider everyone the same, it would take away credit and undermine the people who discovered all these amazing accomplishments. It’s the same reason we don’t view Olympic athletes the same as college athletes, they simply aren’t the same. Removing people’s uniqueness doesn’t create equality, it just creates a depressing dystopia where everything is the sameness, nothing has character, and nothing is unique. Kind of like the beginning of Fahrenheit 451 where everything is black and white because God forbid someone has a different favorite color
Instead we should be celebrating the fact that there are people like Einstein and inspire to be like them, and work towards that level of intelligence. Not pull them down because we aren’t on their level
Thought I read something somewhere like:
the most common thing in the world is unapplied intelligence
Must be butchering it pretty badly if Google’s blank
This is so true, the modern education system (at least here in America) was designed to create wage slaves. Raise your hand to talk, and take a piss, never teach them anything useful like taxes, laws, or banking, make them just smart enough to fill out paper work. And the sad part is that it worked
i mean, “gifted” is basically doublespeak for “on the neurodivergence spectrum” and society just fucking hates neurodivergent people.
It’s not really that we’re aware of our deficiencies, it’s that society makes us feel bad for things that are completely natural and should be viewed as sidegrades mostly.I see what you’re going for here, and I disagree.
You’re saying that “gifted” refers to someone who is neurodivergent. Implying that neurodivergent people are gifted. I assert that gifted people are more likely to be neurodivergent. Not the other way around.
Look, I know tons of people diagnosed with all sorts of neurodivergent brains who are pretty worthless when it comes to being “gifted”.
I do however, also know plenty of gifted people who have discovered that they are in fact, neurodivergent.
I’m just saying.
i’m not saying that neurodivergent people are “gifted”, i’m saying that the term “gifted” is a euphemism and i don’t like the term.
It’s a way to ignore the issue of people being different and needing individualized treatment, instead saying that they’re “gifted” as if they’re just blessed by god to do better in school, which is a toxic idea.
We shouldn’t call kids “gifted” and give them the next year’s textbook, we should recognize that it’s extremely likely they’re neurodivergent and need a diagnosis and different adjustments depending on the person. One person might just need a separate room to study in, one person might need permission to sit in the back with headphones on listening to music, one might need an extra teacher who personally helps them out.
i think blue should be either extended or completely replace green, “excellence” is not given just because you’re smart
You don’t understand how much green sucks…
An intellectual disability is 2 standard deviations from the mean (that’s 30 points).
For someone that’s 100, about 2% of humans are 30 points lower than them.
If you’re at the tail of the green?
Congrats, about 84% of the world’s population is at least 30 points below you. For bonus points, you won’t even know your IQ because it’s like measuring a mile with a foot long ruler. You can get a guesseatimate, but to really measure it just isn’t worth it. A Wechsler would already take 4+ hours to get that high of a score.
It’s basically Idiocracy. And just like the movie, a lot of the time when you try to explain stuff that sounds basic “don’t use Gatorade on plants” you only get insults and get told plants crave electrolytes.
Like, people say people in green like drugs because of “novelty seeking behavior”…
It’s not that, it’s because living in Idiocracy fucking sucks, and there are a couple things that can be done to level the playing field, and most of them are pretty enjoyable too.
And it’s not even rare. A 145+ IQ is about 1 in 1200 people, that’s about as frequent as people who are trans.
I was put in GT classes in middle school because I went to a (shitty) private elementary school where every kid went on to GT. Somehow I struggled through GT until those classes weren’t offered anymore (sophomore year of high school) and I hated every minute of it and was really bad at what they wanted me to do.
If I could do it over again, I would beg my parents not to put me in GT classes.
When I was a primary school kid we didn’t have gifted and talented classes. Kids who were ahead of the class could continue doing more and more advanced maths, move onto the next year’s work, though in 6th grade the problems only went up to advanced 6th grade. I don’t know what you would do if you were smart but unsatisfied with maths, I guess you’d be disruptive.
What does the GT stand for? I’m unfamiliar with the acronym, as it seems schools across the nation use different terms to describe the same thing.
Gifted and Talented.
I am neither.
