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    Schaps #138102 09/14/12 10:19 AM
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    Quote
    Life for him without me to sort of translate...not sure it'd go so well. We are best friends, but I am sort of his window to the rest of the world. Does anyone else feel they have this role with their spouse?

    Yes, but it's (ironically) because my DH is further out on the social spectrum than I am. He finds the behavior (and motivations) of others to be a complete cipher much of the time.

    My daughter and I both have natural ability as social chameleons, and he does not. She and I are about 1/2 and ~1+ SD (est.) further out than my DH is. We're just better empaths and therefore better at interpreting the incomprehensible/irrational behavior of NT (and not-so-NT, actually) people than he is.

    I often feel like a translator for him.


    I would also argue (and this may sound arrogant, but it isn't how I mean it)... that many of the people in MD/PhD programs are not necessarily at the same LOG as those in the corresponding PhD fields. My personal experience suggests that IQ increases as one moves from D.V.M./M.D. (unspecialized-- some specialties skew quite high) to MD/PhD and/or PharmD, to PhD programs.

    My own experience, anyway, supports that analysis quite amply. I'm probably unusual in that I have a LOT of experience with all of those groups of people.

    Anyway. That's neither here nor there, ultimately, as I think my earlier statement about my DH demonstrates. I didn't interview for a life partner by having them submit an application which included various sorts of data inputs such as IQ. wink

    Quote
    So, if he's walking the campus and wondering why he can't find that group that he fits perfectly with, he's not going to find it, because the people just like him don't fit with anyone, either. A group of nonconformists will naturally not conform with each other any better than they conform with any of the conformist groups. After all, if they conformed with each other, they wouldn't be nonconformists, would they? That would be a tautology.

    The answer to this dilemma is, "Don't try to find people like you. Just try to find people you like." One benefit of nonconformity is that you can find common ground with just about anyone. Share those common interests, and respect each other's differences. If he does this well, he doesn't end up with one group of friends who are his "peeps." Rather, he ends up with multiple groups of friends, some incompatible with each other, with whom he shares different kinds of experiences.

    The only person I've ever found who seems very much like me is my own daughter, so tell him that if you can't find anyone like you, you can always try to make one.

    Yes!!

    Though to be fair, aside from Mini-Me, there, my dad was also very much like us both. What a shame that he didn't have a chance to know his granddaughter. He'd have found her fascinating and hilarious.





    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
    Momesq #138113 09/14/12 11:03 AM
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    Originally Posted by Momesq
    After being mostly miserable and lonely for all of his school years, he went to a college which valued his quirkiness, for lack of a better term. He misses being there desperately and is having a hard time adjusting to the new normal of med school. My hope is that he can accept his own gifted ness so he will be comfortable with himself and that will attract other people.

    One of the problems with life, generally, seems to be that whenever you make a major life transition, from high school to college, college to med school, etc., your entire world is destroyed each time.

    I wish there was a better way to do things in life.

    This way just ends up being incredibly painful.

    #138215 09/15/12 09:17 PM
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    Originally Posted by JohnSilver
    I never considered myself gifted. I considered myself different and somewhat broken.

    wow. OK. That's it right there.

    I never understood my feelings of "otherness" and I definitely thought it was my fault that I couldn't quite fit in.

    Last edited by herenow; 09/15/12 09:18 PM.
    Schaps #138242 09/16/12 11:26 AM
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    Oh, wow. I've almost always enjoyed my transitions and getting to know new people. I have always wanted all the different spheres of my existence to interact with each other, but they usually don't want to! I should point out that I work pretty hard to maintain my friendships, even after I move thousands of miles away.

    Schaps #142153 11/03/12 08:21 PM
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    One of my greatest challenges has been finding balance between breadth and depth of experience, particularly in a professional setting. The conventional academic path in my fields leads to an over specialization in minutiae, which I find numbing, and most industry work is too superficial to be interesting. I'm a polymath. So are all my closest friends. I'm happiest when I'm solving a wicked, interdisciplinary problem that has societal repercussions.

    I spent my university years chasing prestige to feed my ego, only to realize once I had it that none of that matters a fillip. Maybe that's the greatest shortcoming for me of being "gifted": the notion that somehow, there is an objective "right" path or ranking system for human achievement. There isn't. There is only the matter of how many rounds we leave in the chamber at the end of our lives.

    My second thorn is the label "gifted". It's constraining. It defines you in reference to something you're not. I think over-identification with the label itself is problematic because it creates a mentality of entitlement based solely on potential. I struggle with this still. To me, true "giftedness" is the full and effective use of talents.





    What is to give light must endure burning.
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    Originally Posted by La Texican
    Somebody wrote "growing old gifted" but I don't remember why I first read it so I can't recall who wrote it.  I found it again by googling "gifted + old age".  It mused on about how gifted elderly people can observe the end of life without letting their ego distort their reality.  It seems the writer is saying she still has no one to "let loose" with at age 87 since elderly are age-segregated and fellow elderly are trying to tune out reality.  
    http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/PDF_files/argrowold.pdf ...

    For those who may be seeking this, it is archived on the WayBack Machine, https://web.archive.org/web/20120118061917/http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/PDF_files/argrowold.pdf

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    Originally Posted by islandofapples
    ...
    Annemarie Roeper wrote it and she died this month, at 93.
    http://www.care2.com/causes/education-pioneer-annemarie-roeper-passes-away.html

    The brief bio on Annemarie Roeper (1918-2012) referenced above is archived on the WayBack Machine,
    https://web.archive.org/web/20120523031448/http://www.care2.com/causes/education-pioneer-annemarie-roeper-passes-away.html

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