I was in the disabilities program, but now I write endless, long reports, so this one hits a bit close to home.
More than one way to the top I guess…
Adult who was in talented and gifted and then burned out is the nerdy “I coulda went pro but i tore my acl”
I think it’s mostly “I had an undiagnosed disability that I was expected to just get over because I was ‘smart’” but that’s my personal bias.
God, I feel that.
I feel it’s mostly just that us “gifted” kids happened to have brains that matured at different rates than our peers in certain areas. And often it’s a result of more fundamental neurodiversity.
I’m a decently intelligent person. But I’m not as great a genius as my high school academic record might imply. When I tell people I took AP calculus my freshman year of high school and got a 5 on the exam, they think I’m a genius. My teachers in high school wondered what fields I would help transform with my brilliance.
I’m nearly 40 now. I love teaching and have a long list of degrees to my name. I can even brag about finishing my engineering bachelor’s in three years. I’m someone that most would consider decently well read and intelligent. I’ve taught at the undergraduate and K12 levels, worked on technically complex billion dollar engineering projects, and worked in numerous technical, scientific, and educational roles. I am a decently intelligent person. But make no mistake, I am no Einstein. I’ve contributed basically nothing to the fundamental advancement of human knowledge, and I tried. I really did. I spent far far too long chasing a doomed PhD. Did great in the coursework, teaching, and lab work. But I just couldn’t make progress on the writing and lit review due to undiagnosed AuDHD. I dropped out of a PhD program after several years. I dropped out even though I had a 3.9 GPA in doctoral level engineering coursework.
I’m decently intelligent, but honestly I just think I was an early bloomer in math and science. My final knowledge level is no different than those in my field that were not labeled “gifted.” I just hit the peak earlier. At the same time, a lot of my softer skills like social skills were deeply stunted.
I wasn’t a genius. My neural development was just min/maxxing to math and science academics. The adults around me saw that I was succeeding in class, getting good grades, and not disrupting things. And that’s all they saw. It wasn’t until years later, after I finally hit a brick wall I couldn’t get through, that I actually put the time and resources into figuring out what was wrong.
Similar, I was academic, top of my class, had a Johnny 5 appetite for knowledge, everyone just assumed I’d get a degree, a postgraduate or two and be a high earner. I quit school after A Levels. And now I’m a currently unemployed loser who can’t get anything more than minimum wage retail jobs.
And apparently it’s all my fault, rather than my parents taking any responsibility for hiding that my GP wanted me to get an Aspergers assessment when I was 15.
Thankfully I wasn’t quite that bad. I did get through an engineering undergrad and have two master’s degrees. But I couldn’t make it through the long term unstructured task that was the dissertation when I tried the PhD. I’ve had a rocky career that’s gone back and forth between engineering and teaching. Hit burnout at seven different engineering jobs in periods from 1-24 months. I learned later in life I’ve been struggling with undiagnosed AuDHD my whole career.
The one thing I’ve found I’m really good at and can maintain long term? Teaching. I’ve taught extensively at the undergraduate level and done a lot of K12 tutoring. I had planned to go completely into proper academia, become a proper professor and everything, but hitting a wall on the PhD prevented that.
After the PhD attempt I gave engineering industry jobs one more try. I was able to parlay a 3.9 GPA in doctoral level engineering coursework into a sweet industry job after dropping out. I pulled an acrobatic trick and failed my way into success. I was hired at a high level engineering job making $125k per year, with the potential for far more in the near future. I hit burnout after 9 months. That was last July. I’m currently working as a substitute teacher. (I believe you call them supply teachers in the UK?)
That was my last attempt at doing office jobs. I’m tired of doing this to myself.
But life is fine. I’m married to a partner that doesn’t have the same AuDHD struggles I do. He’s also an engineer, so even with my career troubles we’re. We’re both pretty frugal people and are wise with how we save and invest. I’m just lucky enough that I was able to hold things together long enough, that I could get far enough in schooling, that I workable living even with shaky employment. And we keep our expenses below what we can afford on just his salary. I’m not making a ton of money right now, not at least until I go through a proper teacher certification program. Right now we basically live off his salary, and my work is more about us reaching our savings and retirement goals.
Right now, I’m actually working on a mid-career transition into K12 teaching. Teaching is the one job I’ve ever found where I don’t hit burnout. I suppose in a way, it’s just surrendering to fate. The school environment has always just worked well for me. At some point you just need to lean in to what works.
It feels like I’ve come full circle. I have never exceeded my peers more than my high time in high school academics. And now? Twenty years after graduating high school, I’ve decided to just surrender to fate and become a high school teacher. This is apparently what the universe wants me to do, so that is what I will do.
Teaching just works with me the way nothing else does. Working with academic concepts but with the stakes being real human lives? The instant feedback you get from your work when you can see the look on a kid’s face whether he understands what you’re teaching him or not. The unique combination of a regular structure, well defined work scope, and opportunity for creative expression? It just all works with my brain in the way almost nothing else does.
It’s just the ADHD
“… but I took an arrow to the knee.”
FTFY
Thanks to crippling undiagnosed ADHD (inattentive) plus insomnia, depression, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder*, I was in both the gifted and disabilities groups during my public school days.
Which lead to weird mental whiplash like being given an aptitude test battery and scoring post-college level on almost everything with a reported IQ three points short of genius (which is how you know that test is bullshit, ha), except the reason I was given said test was because I was on the verge of flunking out of high school due to being incapable of doing any work.
I’d have killed for the ability to simply focus and get things done. Intelligence is nothing without a matching work ethic, or whatever you want to call a functional dopamine system.
* Mini-rant: I’m half-convinced this so-called “ODD” was solely the result of a lack of sleep. I remember nearly passing out every day at school, and the main symptom I display when tired is a lack of patience for everything when I’m normally the most laid-back person imaginable. The instant I started college I became a perfect 4.0 student, and the only major difference from before was that I got to start the day at a sane hour.
Are you me? I score really high on reading etc. I really suffered with anything that wasn’t engaging. I was SO bored in school. Only after learning more I realized I more than likely have the inattentive brand of ADHD, but I’ve never been formally diagnosed. I had bad anxiety but the meds both helped with that and the lack of focus. Throw in some coping mechanisms learned across decades and here I am, a shitlord on Lemmy and a successful day job
Are you me? Jesus, how did they miss so many of us doing the exact same thing.
Because they thought we “weren’t being challenged enough.”
Interestingly, the first time I hears that about myself was around the same time the Matilda movie came out…
G&T was just a holding pen for neurodivergent kids. Change my mind.
Part of it is that, but part of it is that can ruin a kid is they are kept in a non-academically challenging environment. Kids that should have been in G&T programs but weren’t seem to complain a lot more about not developing certain skills because they never needed to practice them in school.
Also, in a lot of schools, this is how they triage the kids who are definitely going to college and pulling them from the corrupting influence of the general population.
‘intelligence is nothing without a matching work ethic’ … that is what they told me too.
but my mom told me that its actually about motivation.
and my mom proved right. of course we only get dopamine rewards when we do what is truth worth doing.
I wasn’t in the gifted and talented program, I was the president! My sophomore year my friends packed the club whose only requirement was being in an honors or AP class and elected me president. Sadly, my only gift was a really good memory which kept me towards the top of my class through high school but was no help in college. I barely passed the AP calculus test and it really screwed me over. It took me 7 months to learn a quarter’s worth of college calculus and starting in calc II with a 10 week schedule was not confidence inspiring. Barely passing that class first try only set me further back until I hit my absolute limit with differential equations. I straight up changed majors after improving from an F to a D on a retake of the class. I spent 5 years in college and left 6 units short of my degree. I entered the workforce as a glorified secretary where I stayed for 25 years. I finally cracked $100k in that last year but I quit because I hated the job and was not earning the money they were paying me. I moved back in with my parents at 43. Having only ever contributed the bare minimum to receive the company match, even with no rent I still blew through my retirement savings over 3 years of unemployment and then started work at a government call center at 40% of my ending pay at my last job. 3 years later I barely make $50k, someone I got hired with just made manager and I never even applied for a senior role. Even if I was once considered gifted, being lazy trumped any advantage that could’ve granted.
Being on an “off road career path” myself i wanna kick you straight to the shins, what lazy person would willingly walk away from 100k a year, especially when it’s easy work 🥲
I of course get looking for perspectives, wanting more out of life and such. But at least line up something else worthwhile first before you throw away your winning ticket…
Not to shit on you at all - not my style. This story highlights a mantra I teach my mentees: you can fix stupid, but you can’t fix lazy. It sounds harsh, but that’s what makes it stick in your head. The idea behind it is if you don’t know something, you can learn it. If you’re unmotivated its a lot harder to fix.
