Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Introduction

Before writing my introduction, I have been riddled by self-doubt, or rather, the question: but why on Earth am I posting?

Indeed, it is not to "prove" to myself that I can succeed academically or professionnally (it is already done!). It is not even to "prove" to myself that I've got some intellectual assets (though I'm not sure exactly which ones).
Is it, in some way, because I am still in search of an "identity"? The "gifted" one? And why, when I have quite a few even more valorizing identities as a successful person?

Maybe it is because being successful and finally entering a place full of academically successful people (though my choice of career has led me later on to enter a place full of decently-successful-but-not-as-"out there" people) has left me, even there, with a feeling of loneliness?

Maybe it is because I am still wondering in puzzlement how it is that I have, when finally grouped with a handful of the brightest minds in my country, in the same field as I've always been the most talented (Maths), found people who were as good, a little less good, or better at Maths than I was... but not found like-minded people?

Is it that I'm missing the point? Is it that I've got an "unusual profile", maybe disabilities and abilities, or maybe that specific cross-disciplinary mind which makes me, nowadays, love mainly those people who have proven they had very sharp mathematical minds coupled with a love for litterature and philosophy?

I am not PG, but I am somewhat bright and somehow a little bit "strange". Who am I then?

Not too bad academically - reading chapter books at 4.5 (my parents taught me, beginning at 4, at my request), solving problems like (I'm not sure of the exact translation) "there are 5 rows of 6 places. Bottles are put everywhere, except in 11 places which are empty, how many bottles are there?" quickly in my head at the same age without any previous instruction of multiplication. This basically meant I was bright enough to have no academic issue at school, skip two years, then do accelerated curriculum at University level (my place facilitated such unusual university careers, and I took advantage of it, compacting 2 years of maths in one and 1.5 of physics in one in parallel the same year, then 0.5 years of physics and 1 year of education studies in one the following year). When I was not yet in university, my parents did an enriched curriculum at home, and I was nicely compliant and did what was required at school.
Well, but though academic success did bring me some compliments and jealousies, what really set me apart was something else�When I was around 7, I went to play in a cemetery (it was an old cemetery, and nobody we knew was buried there), with a group of other schoolkids. But while for them this was only fun play, for me, a moment came when, seated on a tomb, I suddenly saw my life as if judging it from above, out of time, and realized how I was running from one game to the next without taking the time to distance myself from my life, examine it, and think. At the same time, all the melancholy of the cemetary suddenly flooded into me and I began to cry. Because nobody could understand, I went away, to begin solitary thinking in an isolated part of the cemetary, pondering spiritual and existential issues� I spent the rest of that year doing the same, during all recess. When I left the cemetery (my classmates began feeling tired of playing there, and I followed them, too frightened to stay in the churchyard alone), I tried to go back to play with others, but was rejected by those who were playing physical activities, while I rejected those who were playing other games as too meaningless and �empty� as compared to what I had been living thus far. At home, I did read, play, and do everything else, but in school, at recess, I went on spending my time thinking. I felt nobody could understand, and therefore did all this just for myself.
In fact, I went on with that strange relationship with school recess for years � except for 6th grade and the beginning of 7th grade when I spent most of my time playing physical games (ball games, or hide and seek, etc.) -, until, by the end of high school, I decided to integrate myself into the �school society� and became a clown.
That, finally, I was faced with so little overt rejection, in retrospect, speaks rather favorably of most of my classmates!
However, knowing there was a key part of myself I could not share with others clouded even nice moments with friends, or my little moment of fame, when I was elected class delegate with an absolute majority even though I hadn�t been a candidate!
I also had very precise ideas of my future career � achieved at last today! � and could not wait. I wanted to go away at 9 already to achieve my dream, but understood I could not � one could not be independent from one�s parents until 18 -. When my brother remembers his school years with longing, I cannot but feel definite pleasure at being, at last, in the workforce, and, even better, in my dream job! Childhood? That�s waiting for me! Nothing to particularly long for�
Nowadays, I do not spend my time thinking about existential questions � though I may do it occasionnally- and I do not necessarily need to speak with people who have begun that search at 7 (though, at a time, I felt as if, until I met such a person, I would forever be faced with people who �could not understand�)! I do think, nowadays, that adults (at least, those former children who have truly grown-up, not those who seem to have just changed their outer appearance) can understand better things they did not experience themselves than children did. I also think that there are many ways to grow up, many paths, even for people similar to me, and that when I spent most of the first half of my life on existential questions, and the second part of my life as a clown, first, and then as an active professional rather than as a thinker, others may have the same potential, but may have chosen to focus their early interests on a thousand other subjects�
However, people with whom things do �click� easily include a man who had skipped 2 years (almost 3) as a kid, was brilliant at maths and litterature, a dreamy and sensitive kid, and did Maths until the end of high school and litterature afterwards.

But questions remain� Am I gifted? In Maths, there�s no doubt I enter all criteria in terms of percentile to qualify as gifted, highly gifted, and whatever else, judging by my rank in the many national competitions I took, and this even considering all gifted children who did not get a chance to develop their potential and therefore enter the competition� but more globally?
Is my difference giftedness? But then, why is it that I sometimes felt �dumb� as compared to my brightest classmates when I entered that 40 or so students� class grouping the top scorers nationally, while I still felt �out of synch� with them in other subjects (half of an explanation may be that I had already shut off too much to �trust� them and realize who they were, but, in my opinion, since my philosophical interests were not the center of conversations around me, it probably means it was not enough at the forefront of their concerns to appear in a general conversation).
Do I have deep disabilities alongside my abilities? (I sometimes really feel like that!!!� Especially concerning the processing of external information, or visual memory issues).

Or is it �something else� altogether?

Well� This is a probably a record in terms of length!!� sorry! (� do record-breakers win something?)

OK, I� post!

Light

It's a busy day for me, so I'll just pop in to say welcome and to assure you that your questions are pretty normal for a GT adult looking back.

I can't answer your questions, but I'm happy to support you as you ask them!



K-

Hi-Light(hee hee)

Based on your descriptions, especially that childhood memory at the graveyard, you are gifted. At least HG, maybe PG, who knows?

Perhaps you just need validation of it.

Just because you feel very different from people you consider gifted does not mean you are not gifted.

Here are some facts that you list about yourself:

Read chapter books at 4.
Skipped two grades.
Mental math easily at young age.
Experienced what sounds a little like existential depression at 7. At the very least a real questioning of the meaning of life(BTW, some people never question this, many people don't question it until their 40's, ie: mid-life crisis.)
Rank in an elusive percentage for math competitions.

Yet you feel dumb around what you describe as your brightest classmates. And you feel different, even around people you see as gifted, so you suppose perhaps you are not gifted?

If so, I liken this process to the fallacious argument of least plausible hypothesis. Here's an example I read: "I left a bowl of milk on my front stoop and now it is empty, clearly fairies visited in the night and drank my milk.


Maybe start thinking in terms of Occam's Razor, instead.

Anyhoo.... just a thought.

But, welcome!

Neato

Lovely to meet you Light. congradulations on entering the workforce! Have you read any of Leta Hollingworth? She also talked about childhood being a trial to her.

Are you gifted?
I guess that depends on one's definition of gifted. Mine is a person with special educational needs unlikely to be met in an ordinary classroom with agemates. So by my definition, the fact that you thrived on a multiyear skip says - yes, Gifted - case closed.

As for not being able to have satisfying conversations with others who score similarly in Math to you, well, that could mean a lot of things.
You will find out more as you live more of life. Just make sure that if you commit to a spouse of some kind that they are someone you can have an interesting conversation with - even after the hormones calm down. That is easier said than done! Perhaps you are a chemist and can invent a medication that protects our minds from the love hormones long enough to make a good choice?

Some highly gifted people don't like to talk at all, so that limits the participation in deep conversations. Personality really makes a huge difference, as you will see as you read some of these previous posts. Some say that gifted people differ more from each other than they do from TD (typically developing) folks. One of my best ways of finding good conversations, is reading books and sending emails to the writers. You can give that a try.

The good news is that once you find one or two folks who met your requirements, they are likely to know some others, so it's not as much work as it might seem. Don't forget to check your parent's friends. They are old, but if your parents like them, there is a pretty good chance you will too.

It is possible that you have gotten into the habit of loneliness. Perhaps this is the greatest risk of being a PG kid. Well, second to the habit of laziness. You don't sound like you have the laziness problem, so I expect that any habit you've developed, you can find ways and resources to develop out of.

So pull up a virtual chair, and some virtual beverage of choice, and post a discussion quesion or book or movie suggestion, and enjoy our company!

Welcome!
Grinity

Your description of your childhood reminded me of bits of my childhood. I definitely struggled with existential depression and the meaning of it all.

I never thought of myself as gifted at all. I knew nothing of the GT world before having this kindergartener that hit the ceiling on the school's screening test. Now that I understand GT a bit better, I think those kids that perform best within the "system", tend to be bright or more moderately gifted. I had a heck of a time trying to stay engaged or find meaning in anything that was happening in the classroom. I definitely thought something was seriously wrong with me in elementary school. There was no gifted identification or programming in my small private school.

I have no real answers, but I can relate! Welcome!

Yeah, Kim, just said what I was trying to in my cryptic(and now reading it, somewhat brusque ) response.

My intention was to be welcoming, not abrasive.

Well thanks! I feel like I'm always the one posting "Yeah what <insert name here> said".

And edited to say - I didn't think your original response was brusque!

Yeah, I feel that way, too. What you said about saying, "Yeah, what she said."



(True confessions: I've been working with Microsoft Publisher on a homeschooling event for 13.5 stright hours, stopping only to eat and visit the restroom all day. I'm more than a little punchy!

I'm on my way to get a stiff drink and a long hard sleep before I start up again in the morning so we can meet our deadline.

Egad!)

Hello all!

Thank you for the warm welcome!

To clarify a bit: being less good at Maths than the 2-5 top successfull people in Maths in my country does not make me feel "not gifted", but it does make me think that, if I do not feel like I can discuss in a setting in which, at last, I am "average" enough in Maths, then there is something else than Maths ability at play here, to explain my difficulty finding "soulmates".
It is true, too, that I was acting a little bit "like a bear" there, limiting most of my interaction with classmates to in-class interactions, even though we were all living on campus! I only knew the names and faces of those classmates I was in class with, save for a handful of others, and therefore probably missed on a wealth of potentially satisfying interactions. What I meant was "just" that I felt like my profile was not "the mainstream one", even though I can easily have missed out on individuals with my profile. I did interact with others well enough, despite it all, to have an idea of "'mainstream interests".
In fact, it's interesting that, when I was in science, most people around me read science fiction rather than literature (I do read science-fiction too!), did sudoku (I'm not sure the game is famous in America too... is it?) rather than crosswords, and generally did display a more "mathematically oriented" profile than I have. That's why I was wondering about the "Maths-only" vs "Maths and literature" profile...

I was also wondering about disabilities simply because I can have been considered by the same people as "dumb" (once, I am really conscious that I began giving the guy a rather bovine and blank look when he explained things) and "really bright" (to the point that I was begged to stay in research when I left it to look for my dream job - I did take a windy path to arrive there, due to difficulties in getting the right information about how to end up in that kind of job).
I still see it in my current job, which is not in the field I master best, but a more "literary" one, when I see that, again, when it comes to processing oral information, generally both a little bit complex and full of gaps, I tend to shut my brain... so I "loose" against my Harvard educated colleague when it comes to "looking good" in meetings, and "win" again when it comes to "doing the job" alone in front of my computer. Anyway, I remember better auditorily (when I have to rote-learn something, I do it, as I was taught, in an oral way), but cannot remember any word in a new language unless it has been written up for me, I do think visually to solve Maths problem (by that, I mean a very symbolic visual solution, seeing "paths" to solve the problem as "doors" which I feel are either locked, closed, ajar but difficult to push, or completely open), but I cannot remember faces easily and of course have a ridiculous sense of directions (just shut my eyes and make me turn three times around myself, and I am lost!)... I remember how my brother, definitely less good than I've always been at problem solving (even though he was 2 years older), has always been, even when his Maths knowledge was lesser than mine, better than I was at following a Maths conversation with my father (a Maths University teacher)... It happens again in most conversations, and I suspect it would happen even in fields which do not interest my brother, and which do interest me. Colleagues and friends, who think highly of me, just think I will be able at this stage, inexperienced as I am, to synthesize all the (partial) information I've got and say "this is the right solution for education in Papua New Guinea" (for example), while in fact I am just there, in dinners, listening to them discussing work (well, those are older colleagues, since the youngest one is some 11 years older than me), and hoping they won't realize that when they laugh at how "stupid" someone's comment was, I cannot see what was particularly stupid there...
I remember how, in oral Maths exams, I got top marks almost all the time, but also sometimes lesser ones, because either I managed to find the solution (and then had only its development left to be done) during the time the teacher took to dictate the subject of their exercise to my other one or two fellow students, or I just felt "blocked" if the teacher went back to me before I had found the solution to the exercize. I couldn't stand the idea of the teacher "looking at how I thought'" and just scribbled in the little space on the blackboard I could hide from him with my body...
When I entered my top University path, then this is the latter phenomenon which dominated, and I felt like quicksands were sometimes opening under my feet. I taught hospital-ridden kids at some point in my life, and was marvelled at their ability not to have really understood the maths they were doing (they were learning rules rather than understanding and feeling the Maths!) and yet persist, and get an average grade!!!

This is the only reason why I have been tempted to take an IQ test (which I have not): the hope that, maybe, it would give me, past a "global IQ" number, which might be low enough, especially when questions appeal to culture (I've always been too lazy to "remember" the facts which make one 'shine' as having a lot of culture, and committed to memory instead things as "original" as half a dozen alphabets, Chinese ideograms, knowledge of alien cultures and religions, tiny pacific islands nobody knows about, etc.) or to visual memory (on online tests, I use "tricks" to compensate for my failing visual memory, when images seem to deform and deteriorate as soon as I stop watching them, but it takes time, which is not good on tests when each question is timed), some hints as to what really explains my mix of strengths and weaknesses. Those strengths and weaknesses do not manifest themselves in an "average" setting, of course, but with sharp minds, I am under the impression that I have a more uneven profile than most... Not many puzzles, mazes, or construction games anyway (while my gifted - 149 IQ I think- cousin was right into them). No visual memory, ridiculous ability to "notice" things (I even failed to notice when does crossed the road in front of our car, and I remember the only thing I "missed" in an old worksheets book was about "noticing" something similar in two images) poor fine motor skills, and feeling "dumber than my brother" (because of the memory thing) all my childhood, while he was feeling "dumber than me" because I understood things more quickly than he did, despite being younger (he even begged my parents not to explain things in front of me because "she will understand before I do it")... But well, jumping on my bed at 8 and realizing all my joys were as shallow and ephemereal as that one, and thus deciding to reject all those "fake" joys from then on in search of "true joy", one which would be eternal and deep is not usual (even though I question my decision now... not feeling it was as wise as I thought it was!)... and then I'm back to square one, to that strange slightly synesthetic self who sees letters and numbers in color, loves Maths and philosophy, can live in relatively poor material conditions (I probably just do not "see" them, as usual!) and cannot share colleagues' concern like in "oh!!! Poor them, that poor-looking house, with no fridge..." but am completely disturbed by the idea of human suffering as well as lost opportunity to open the human mind... That person who strives to *love* her colleagues and surrounding (maybe since I decided that, being similar to 50% of people, I may have chosen, like my brother, to like half and dislike the other half, but that, since I felt so different from 95% of them, it would be suicide to like only those who were like me... and therefore that I had no merit for being tolerant), and who can still has a hard time lying convincingly, even for diplomatic reasons...

Well... OK, to move things forward, maybe the question is:
- does this sounds like a simply "cross-disciplinary profile", which would explain that, even though I read science fiction and do sudoku, I remain insatisfied in such a setting, because I also love cultures, philosophy, religions or sensitivity in literature more than they do...
- does this sound rather more like some disabilities coupled with abilities (I KNOW I've got abilties at Maths, though I wouldn't bet on an IQ test result, and wouldn't bet on other abilities necessarily). How do I get to know what kind of disability that could be, then? And what good can it do to know that, beyond at last explaining who I am better (which would already be great)?
- meeting others like me through friends... My parents met one another in a kind of "club" for likeminded people, that's true, and most of their friends are from there, though they generally do not cumulate such depth in philosophical thinking, such academic success, and all the rest... My good friend with a Maths + literature profile is a better bet, since he is more "up at that level", though right now he's mostly unaccessible (he was working too much before - I even made him notice it was jeopardizing his family life! - and finally decided to leave his job to concentrate more on his family). Some Internet friends are good ones too...

Well, OK, so those are some more questions for you, and a big thank you for your answers!!!

Light

Be careful what you ask for Light! I LOVE to give my opinions!

Your questions sound a lot like the questions I had for myself some time ago. And the deep interest in and undersanding of philosphical thought at a young age; me too. I have a childhood history of people giving me the blank look, especially when questioning ideas that were very abstract. I mistakenly decided I was dumb. I have theories about this having witnessed similar interactions between both daughters and their friends, but in the spirit of not boring the living daylights out of anyone reading.......................

1.- cross-disciplinary profile. Perhaps you are globally gifted. I like to say "dynamic". I really enjoy people who are multi-dimensional and dynamic. I have different groups of friends who don't know each other and I like to flit from group to group because each group provides different things that are comfortable to me in a friendship.
BTW- I've never seen such a large group of super-dynamic people in one place until I joined this forum group!

2. Disability? Perhaps. Perhaps not. What you describe sounds to me like some type of information processing disorder. Please keep in mind, I have no experience as an information processing disorder diagnoses giver! In fact, you should take all my "advice" with a grain of salt!
I have a learning "disability". It's made things more difficult, but hasn't stopped me from accomplishing anything I really set my mind on. I'm a really high compensator, I bet you are too! IMNSHO, it's only a disability if it severely impairs your ability to function. So I don't think anyone can tell you if you have a disability except you, even if you do decide to pursue a diagnosis.

3. Meeting others like yourself. I don't know. I, too, went to a "club" of likeminded people. I didn't really find a whole lot, but didn't give it too much of a chance. I don't often find that friend that I can just let loose and discuss any subject with. But my husband is like that. You will find people that are likeminded. But you have to be in it to win it, KWIM. I've recently found a friend who was definately an intellectual match, but we were in opposite disciplines. We had a great time discussing everything and anything. It was very intellectually and personally fulfilling. Unfortunately, I found after time that this friend was very controlling and manipulating. So my perfect intellectual matching friend was really not a good match as a friend.
I define a friend as anyone who is pleasant to be around, caring, respectful and interested in discussing, whatever! Emotionally healthy is important!
I don't narrow it to having to be my match in philosophical discussions, academic or career success. And not all of my friends "see" me like some do. Actually, that's a good thing sometimes!

And internet friends are good too! Especially the ones who hang around here. In fact, I've depleted all my usefullness for the day, so anytime anyone else wants to jump in..........