The Trouble with Bright Kids
Like others who have posted here, I have s story similar to this. By the sounds of it, I wouldn't call myself as "gifted" as some who have posted here but, relative to the environment I was in, I was "gifted".<p>I grew up in three small towns. For the first 9 years, in a town of less than 1,000 where the 3rd and 4th grades (for example) were in the same class.<p>When I was 8 I was doing the same work as the 7th graders without any real trouble. It's all this small school could really do for me. This was actually mostly OK. Sure I was largely around (much) older kids but it really wasn't as isolating as some other experiences posted here.<p>Next was a slightly larger town (5-10,000) for 4 years. In the 4th grade my spelling tested at the 10th grade+ (I ran out of "test"). In the 5th grade I was doing algebra and trigonometry. By the 7th grade I was doing calculus. Honestly, maths was really the only thing that interested me. Until that is my family got a computer we couldn't really afford (a VIC 20), which turned out to be fairly limited (much less so than the C64 that came after it).<p>I can distinctly remember at age 10 reasoning out that God didn't exist (I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic primary school with nuns and everything).<p>It's in this period where I think it became first apparent just how socially well-adjusted I wasn't. I think it's fair to say I didn't particularly know how to relate to others. Honestly, I'm not sure that still isn't true.<p>By 9 or so I could beat anyone I knew at Chess. Actually I think this was true at 7-8. Not that I knew anyone particularly good (not even remotely). Attempts to find a challenge from, say, chess AIs were pointless. They were pretty weak back then and tended to be defeated by going "off book".<p>Then came a move to a mining community of ~15-20,000, which I basically hated for the 5 years that constituted high school. The awkwardness and isolation from primary (elementary) school was compounded. It's always seemed to be that when it comes to social interactions and relationships, I somehow "missed out" on the instruction manual, or at least the training wheels, and the people around me were always speaking some language I just never understood.<p>I understood numbers and computers.<p>One of the problems was that I was <i>bored</i>. I found school so insanely easy. Nothing was really a challenge. I'd get told how smart I was. Only many years later did I fully appreciate just how much damage it does to be told you're smart. It demotivates you and isolates you.<p>I would fail assignments and classes because I didn't do them. Not because I couldn't do something but <i>something</i> was never good enough. Or I'd fear the embarrassment and "humiliation" of not knowing something and having that pointed out to me.<p>I can remember having conversations with my parents where I'd bring home a 90% in a test and I'd get asked "what about the other 10%?" I don't think this was asked in a way to be mean. In a strange way, I think it was a weird way of showing pride because all you can "complain" about is a missing 10%. Whatever the case and in spite of well-meaning intentions, the message that was hammered in was that nothing ever seemed good enough.<p>My father was a fitter and turner in the British merchant navy. His father and grandfather were likewise tradesmen. My mother dropped out of high school (although her father was a school teacher and principal for much of his life).<p>Basically I don't think they knew what to do with me. Academic pursuits weren't something they were equipped to deal with. My two sisters were cut from the same cloth, neither being remotely academic and neither finishing high school.<p>I took notes in class but never looked at them again. Either I didn't need to (particularly for maths) or I didn't care to (eg human biology). I never really learned how to study. I can remember scoring 85% in multiple choice exams for subjects I knew nothing about just by figuring out the skills to pass such exams.<p>So after finally finishing high school I went to university.<p>It may sound strange but I don't think it ever occurred to me in high school that I might do computer programming for a living. It's not like thought about it and either wanted to or didn't. I never even pondered the question.<p>I ended up applying to do a science/engineering double degree because it looked hard. A bunch of other people in my class also ended up applying for engineering because they didn't know what to do either but, as I learned years later, I seemed (to them) to know what I was doing. I have to wonder what they would've become had I gone to school elsewhere.<p>Whereas high school was structured, university was not. Nobody checked your attendance. Painful shyness quickly caused me to avoid going to lectures altogether. I was completely unequipped for university.<p>I barely skated through first year and bombed out in second year (when you actually had to work). Some years later, work finally cured me of many of the aspects of painful shyness (eg standing up in front of people and giving presentations).<p>At one point my parents thought to send me to boarding school (in a 1 million+ city). I fought this and deeply regret it. It was an unknown. I wonder how much better I could've done if I'd been put in an environment where academic excellence wasn't a recipe for instantly being ostracized (as it was in my shitty state high school).<p>Likewise I wish I'd stuck with university long enough to find some guidance and mentoring. All in all it feels like I drifted through the system and eventually fell through the cracks.<p>At no point did I ever really find people like me either. Through primary and high school, the towns seemed too small for that. The university had a computer club but I found that lot, as a whole, to be a pretentious lot with whom I had precious little in common. It seemed like university just had a different cookie-cutter mold for the "in" group.<p>Largely I was left alone (something I realize I quite clearly contributed to). To me though that seemed to be an improvement from high school so I just went with it.<p>Now my sisters both have children and I see them both laud their children by telling them "you're so smart". I try to tell them how damaging this is and they shouldn't but they just don't get it. Old habits kick in.<p>I envy those people who grew up in households where at least one parent had gotten a college degree (a friend I later made had a PhD in lithography stuff, 3 members of his immediate family had PhDs and a great uncle or something won the Nobel Prize for Physics a number of years ago).<p>I really don't have a solution here other than to hammer in the point: <i>stop telling children they're smart</i>. I don't think I'm any kind of genius but it certainly did me absolutely no good at all.