Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments High school and busy work

The problem with too much work, though, is that overwork can lead to burnout and chronic depression.

Austin, and this thread in general, has obliquely raise a point that I have been considering for a while. Is it advisable for 2E kids to be aiming for the kinds of career paths Austin's friends have successfully pursued? Are they always going to need more down time, longer to get things done, etc. Is it ever going to be realistic for them to have a sustained output that is both intellectually more than average and output volume and hours per week more than average? Can they be mentally and physically healthy with that sort of load? Sure they may have the intellectual capacity to be head of surgery at a major hospital - but is that life a good idea for them?

My eldest DD is 9, she's most definitely not PG, I am guessing she will show up MG when re-tested next month. She wants to be a cardiologist or a neurologist. And I believe she has the capacity to get there if she wants it, but I do wonder if med school and early years of practice as a surgeon is something she is cut out for, and whether we should be encouraging something that is challenging and stimulating but she can pursue and still have a more balanced life. Does that make any sense at all?

I'm a cardiologist. At age 9, kids really don't know what they want to be. She is at least 25 years away from being a fully practicing physician- who knows what the practice of medicine will be like then? Alot of fields, including cardiology and surgery, can offer a good work-life balance.
These threads offer up a general theme though for some kids who grade skip- when they get into the higher grade levels, like high school, the amount of busy work associated with taking Honors/AP classes can be overwhelming if they are alot younger than their classmates.

Medicine is one of the last fields out there that offers a real salary. I'm still thinking about going into it now because it's one of the last places where you easily can make $250,000 based on something other than your ability to sell and market. I don't really feel like enduring the training, and it would waste another 8 years of my life, but the salary provides you enough so that you can actually live something resembling a life.

I don't know about the US system, but we are in Australia, where Medicine is generally direct entry from highschool, requiring incredibly high marks AND a second medicine entry exam and interviews. And it most likely requires careful subject choices in highschool - balancing what she will get best marks from and prerequisite subjects for medicine. She's in yr4, 5 years from now she will be making subject choices for the following year that may "matter". If we thinking she may not be that well suited to the level of pressure and output required to get into medicine, to study medicine and to practice (some fields) of medicine then we should probably start gently encouraging any other ideas that come up pretty soon so she's at least not thinking on one track, which she has been for a while now. And to be honest I could have predicted medicine and vet science would he high on her interest list from her interests as a toddler.

In the U.S. we have enough D.O. schools that you pretty much only need a barrel of cash. Or access to federal debt origination.

Plus, there's always the Caribbean.

My point was simply- children mature at different times. Maybe at age 13 or age 18, etc., a child that seems flaky or not able to achieve at age 9 might do better later on, or vice versa.

In my DDs case she is steadily improving but she is 2e and although we are doing a better job of picking up and remediating her issues than our parents did, family history tells me that some of her difference will be lasting.

I just wanted to address and clarify a few things. With my dd10 being distinctly 2e, I have to admit that I don't really view dd13 as 2e. Yes, she does have avg processing speed which is seriously out of sync with her other abilities, but she isn't ADD, not dyslexic, has no ASD... I really view the SPD dx she has from her younger years more as part and parcel of being HG+ than a disorder. That and the avg speed are the only things one could possibly call 2e and they really don't rise to the level of 2e in my book.

I also really don't think that being a year or two older would make a difference in this circumstance for her and I don't believe that we are now seeing the negative aspects of a grade skip for that reason. She was a straight A student all the way through an IB middle school with fairly large work output expectations. She won regional writing contests, academic and citizenship awards, and scored about the same as the avg high school junior at this very high achieving high school she now attends on the ACT when she took it in 8th grade shortly after her 12th bd. She participated in clubs, had lead roles in musical theatre productions, was pretty popular...

The list goes on and on and, while I can't say for sure, I really don't think that 5 hrs of nightly homework would be more managable for her at 14 or 15 than it is at 13. I also don't think that she'd do it any faster. As I said earlier, the work is not in any way too hard for her. It is just too much quantity and I think that would always be the case not b/c she is 2e or younger, but b/c it isn't a fit for her as a person to work that much.

I am sorry to have hijacked your thread cricket! I should have started a new one!