... when EVERY subject teacher your child has ever had in secondary schooling career has, at more than one point, GUSHED about how much natural aptitude she possesses for the field/discipline.

"Oh, I hope that she goes into ______. She has such a natural feel for the subject. She seems to really have a gift with it. Please let me know if you EVER want a letter of recommendation for anything-- I'd write you a glowing one!"


I mean, I get that teachers may say this sort of thing to a lot of students. I'm just thinking that a surprising number of my DD's teachers think that their field... is HER "thing" too. Even when it most decidedly is NOT.

So her math teachers think she is "mathy" and her English teachers think she's a literature major in the making, and the science teachers think she is a future researcher (in whatever subdiscipline they teach), and the foreign language teacher thinks she's a linguist, etc. etc.

She wows them ALL-- they kind of experience cognitive dissonance when they get hints that she's that singular at other things, too. Like her beloved English teacher, who was clearly blown away to realize that as a 13yo junior, she was acing AP Physics as well as AP Lit.

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.