• Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Fun fact: programs for gifted kids have historically been far more underfunded than programs for other exceptional students.

    By the way, the euphemism of “exceptional children” pleases my autistic brain way more than any other word for Special Education students. It has all the compliment-sounding qualities of “Special Needs” but is even more literal than any previous euphemism. It literally means “kids that teachers need to make exceptions for”

    • Misconduct@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      “Gifted” programs royally screwed my education. I had huge gaps in my knowledge because they decided that being top percentile in reading/writing (and being the weird kid) meant I could just skip out on classes for special little weird classes or sit with higher grade classes. I just had ADHD btw and really liked to read. Anyway, I would LOVE to know wtf they thought they were doing moving a kid around that much in 3rd-5th. I suffered the hardest with math. I was missing bits and pieces, which is pretty gd important in math, and I’d still somehow get the answers right but talked to about my overly complicated or ✨creative✨ solutions lol. Even now I hide my work if I need to solve something because I’m probably doing it weird… Then later it was really fun finding out that I couldn’t really live up to being “gifted”. 0/10 being special made me less educated.

    • SolarNialamide@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I had to do an official test along with a psychological examination for reasons when I was almost 18 years old, so I know at some point I was in the blue zone or above, but it doesn’t really fucking matter when you have autism, a mood disorder and have been neglected by your parents so you never learned things like determination or frustration tolerance. I think I shaved a solid 10 IQ points off anyway from almost a decade of substance abuse issues, so now I’m just autistic and dysfunctional without the gifted part.

      • areyouevenreal@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Serious question: what kind of drug abuse does it take to shave off 10 IQ points? I’ve done my fair share and would prefer not to have that happen to me - if it hasn’t already.

        • SolarNialamide@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          A ton of amphetamines and other stimulant research chemicals and a fuckton of alcohol. I think probably the latter is mostly to blame.

  • talizorah@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I still suffer from this. Promising early start, intense self-confidence issues and depression by the end.

  • snooggums@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I am good with knowing my deficiencies. What sucks is being told that they are my fault because I should be “smart enough to overcome them”.

      • snooggums@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Or being a jack of all trades and getting potshots for not being an expert in everything just because you pick up the basics quickly.

    • SolarNialamide@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s actually insane how many teachers and other education professionals waved me off with ‘you’re smart enough, just try harder’ while I was obviously suicidally depressed and extremely dysfunctional. Having undiagnosed autism because I was a teenage girl in the '00s was fun.

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

      • 7heo@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Zatore@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I don’t mind being aware of everything, but I do mind that nobody else is

    • ButtholeSpiders@startrek.websiteOP
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      1 year ago

      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)

  • The Menemen!@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The guilt that “you could have done more with your life”, despite being a successful engineer with a happy family.