I've never been formally tested, but my SAT score qualifies me for Mensa.
- Early literacy: check. My brother forgot his 1st grade reading book one day, and I read it cover to cover that morning. I was 4. The day I was in first grade and had my first reading group in the same book was EXCRUCIATING.
- Emotional sensitivity: check. My mom always called me the sensitive one. She would frequently reserve punishing me because I'd be punishing myself harder than she would.
- Social isolation: check... at least through elementary school. I never had more than 2 friends, and frequently had zero. It didn't help that my home was quite broken, because apart from using vocabulary my peers didn't understand, I also wore torn clothes and shoes, and rarely got my hair cut. When I'd be teased, I'd react badly, because, see the item above.
Right about 8th grade I found myself enjoying far more success socially, because I'd begun making a number of accommodations. I had decided to emphasize my sense of humor, and I peppered my speech with much more slang and foul language to offset the advanced vocabulary. It also helped that "honors" classes had become an option, which at least put me in an atmosphere with kids approaching to my ability level.
- Rabid consumer of information: check. I remember a phase in elementary school where I'd become passionate about one subject a month, checking out every piece of material in the library about a given subject... space, dinosaurs, marine life, etc. The reason I burned out so quickly is because the material was so woefully unsatisfying in the elementary school library, and that was all I had access to. I ended up giving up and turning to fiction, finally recapturing that level of broad interest as an adult.
- Classroom issues: Check. My first-grade teacher approached my parents about a grade skip, which they immediately shot down for social reasons (I was already youngest in the class, since my birthday was just before the school cutoff... I was a late bloomer and small for my age... my mom wondered how a younger boy would ever have healthy, age-appropriate relationships with the opposite sex). So she shipped me to a 2nd-grade class for language arts. We moved the following year, and that was the end of any accommodations for me.
I was always done with my work first, and I was usually trying to talk to my neighbor while they were still trying to work. The handwriting was marginal, because I couldn't see any value in stretching the work out unnecessarily just to make it pretty. I got so bored and frustrated with repetitive 2nd-grade arithmetic that I'd ball it up and shove it in my desk, then defiantly tell the teacher I hadn't done it. Otherwise, I didn't act up very much... I had learned that school was a place to be bored and frustrated. I took enough pride to do my best work (except for the aforementioned handwriting, plus art, because that was boring to me, too), but I was depressed most of the day and shut down quite a bit.
After elementary I made some accommodations that helped with that, too. I'd use idle class time to indulge in my much-improved access to books, or do homework from other classes, or to write outrageous letters to my growing circle of friends.
