Wow. There a people like me out there. I was the kid who teased for being too smart and never did fit in. I never had more than one friend at a time. On the plus side, I never tried to dumb down my abilities. Being an extremely smart girl in the 70s & 80s was very uncool. I dropped out of high school at 15. I took community college classes, boring, got in a little trouble and then headed off the university at 17. The best thing about that was meeting my husband - the only man I'd ever met who was smarter than I was and not at all intimidated by my intelligence. I still think so after 28 years of marriage.
I did not do well at college. My physics professor tried to fail me, and nearly everyone at the private college I was at said women couldn't be engineers. The point of this is that it took me until my 30s to find out what I really wanted to be when I grew up, especially since I am good at many things, and at 46, just 2 months ago, I graduated with my bachelor's degree. I was already successful in the eyes of the outside world, owning a pair of weekly newspapers, but I needed to finish and I desperately needed the mental stimulation. The classes were not challenging, but they were interesting.
My EG and PG children did better than I did, but still struggled. Two of them are in their mid 20s and finally succeeding in college. They were motivated enough to learn how to study and to "suffer fools gladly" (even when they are the professor.) I found this site to help my grandson who lives with me. Our whole family of happy, gifted misfits has decided we need to do more to help him succeed than we did.
Great topic. Brings back a lot of memories - good and bad.
