Stumbled on this today, and it kind of made me laugh...


(from http://giftedservices.com.au/adults.html)

All this time, I thought I was pathologically indecisive. Turns out I'm just gifted.

Kidding aside, like many of you, doing all this research and thinking about things for dd has got me thinking about my own upbringing, and that's got me feeling a little upended.

I sooooo have this problem. I ended up picking my career by choosing the class that was hardest for me in HS.

I like it but now, 10 years later, I've found that my passion lies elsewhere. However, for the time being I'm sticking with my current career and doing what I really like on the side.

My husband chose his college major by reading the list of majors and selecting the one that sounded the hardest.

He loves his mathy-computery career and has been extremely successful at it. He needs to learn new things all the time, though, or he gets bored. Luckily, his field offers a lot of newness all the time.

I have always been a humanities generalist at heart, a serial monogamist of sorts in terms of my interests. I get passionate about something for a few years and learn everything there is to know about it, but then I burn out and move on to another passion. Writing novels has been a good fit for me because I can immerse myself in one world, write the book, and then move on to another world. It took me a good long while to figure that out, though!

I think it's good to play to your strengths, but more in terms of approach to learning than in terms of subject matter.

I'd love to read your novel. Are u published? I like stories.

I hope to be, but I'm not yet. I'm editing my second book now, and it will be the first one I send out to agents to try to sell, hopefully by the end of the summer.

Thanks for the interest.

Oh yeah I'm interested. If you were my neighbor I'd enjoy reading the computer print-out copy. Good luck with that.

Serial monogonist. I like that. I think that's the way to go, at least personally. I envy people like newmom, who have a long-lived passion. I know what you mean about being a novelist (or writer in general). Good luck, indeed. I don't usually wish luck to capable people, but there is such an element that is out of your control.

I think under different circumstances going with the hardest pick might have worked well for me. Alas, by the time I started college, I had a horrible attitude towards school. I guess that's what's killing me now -- things that I've seen as personality flaws, I'm now realizing actually have at least some degree of cheetah-in-the-cage syndrome. Ah, well. We can only move forward.

I'll take the luck, with gratitude.

If you'll allow me a little fortune-cookie-esque wisdom: It's only too late to change course if you're dead. Forgive yourself your mistakes and do better next time.

Upended would be an understatement! Love the fortune cookie wisdom.

I think many of us learned a whole lot about ourselves, our spouses, our parents and siblings, etc., etc. from our research to try to help our kids. I know I did, and it's a common comment here.

Nothing wrong with that!

I love the quote. I am what I wanted to be since 3rd grade (a vet) yet I took everything I could in college because I felt like it was my "last chance" to be immersed in different subjects. Don't ask me why I felt like it was my last chance, I have no idea! But I am so thrilled that my son has such a HUGE variety of interests. I hope he keeps it up and keeps changing majors til he has tried them all (as long as I win the lottery ha ha ha). Nan

That's so true! I wish I had used my college experiences to learn more about myself. "Strategic" is my #1 strength-finders attribute, and I spent life until I was 30 singularly-focused. I *knew* I was going to be a corporate lawyer when I was 12 (a joke, since you don't know what it really involves until you are one!), so my college majors, extracurriculars, jobs, even law school classes were all focused on that. (Why, oh why, did I voluntarily suffer through Secured Transactions and 3 semesters of tax law when I could've been having fun with Shakespeare & the Law??) I had a wonderful career before I gave it up, but probably want to switch gears and get involved with something related to gifted/early education when my children are off on their own someday.

At this point, I am thinking of a "third career" as a Head Start volunteer or gifted education teacher. Our family has been so incredibly blessed with these gifts, and I'd like to be able to continue to give back with all that I'm learning. I don't see that happening for another 15-20 years, though. As my husband recently put it one evening after we had been talking about DSs' education, "it takes a lot of energy to be the parents of gifted children!" LOL

Haha. I have to laugh at myself. On the one hand, it's been great hearing all the comments. On the other hand, while I'm reading part of my brain is thinking stuff like "Vet! How neat would that be!" and "Tax law! Secured transactions! Man, I'd love that s3$%." (Shakespeare and the law I could do without, however.) Grateful, I hear you about the third career. Though, in some ways I think my ideal job would be to do something like "Pretender" (not that I'm anywhere near that level, but it would appeal to my *interests* if not my abilities...) But, honestly, I'm happy with what I am doing now -- I just saw myself/my career journey in that quote about indecisive gifted adults.

I think one of my bigger problems now is how to balance my family and career goals. It occurs to me that that's hardly a gifted issue, BUT perhaps it's a bit worse for the gifted population because our kids have unique needs that can be hard to meet and because we can have unique drives and needs to personally achieve.

I completely identify with this! The reason I started writing is because it fits with my kids' needs and still fulfills me.

You know, it's something of a personal crusade for me to get smart, well-educated SAHMs to cultivate their personal interests. My theory (worth exactly what you paid for it!) is that a lot of the helicopter momming today exists because the moms have cut themselves off from their interests. I think that's really unhealthy and leads to obsessive parenting that's not good for anyone.

Obviously one cannot easily career-jump from veterinarian to tax lawyer to whatever else. But I think there's nothing wrong with exploring a number of options over the course of a lifetime. And I think becoming an amateur expert at whatever interests us is a good way to experience all those different callings that we can't really answer.

That's what writing does for me. I'm just hoping that I might also have found a way to get paid for becoming an amateur expert at all the things that interest me.

Boy do I have this problem... and it doesn't help that I'm a perfectionist on top of it. So not only do I not know what I REALLY want to be when I grow up, I take the "easy" road, picking jobs WAY below my ability because I fear failure when something SEEMS difficult.

Sigh.

This is where I am right now. I think I may know the direction I need to go, but it requires school/certifications - with needing to work full time, be a mom, be a wife, etc... it's hard to balance the time and attention (that and I think I make too many excuses to just do it).

JJs Mom,
I'm right there with you. I work a cube job 40 hours/week that pays bills but isn't particularly challenging or intersting. (Dilbert syle company). I'd love to go back to school, but doing so would mean that DS would no longer get the extra curricular activities that keep him sane both due to monetary and time constraints. So I immerse myself in books of all types in my spare time and enjoy watching him explore and find his own feet

Oh my, that�s so me.

I chose my first career because it has vicious pay. After a couple of years of non-interesting works, I went back to school for another degree.

Now I am at my second career, which requires a series of very challenging exams. I am done with the exams, and I am bored in my spare time.

On a very lighthearted note, I thought of this thread this morning during my new and VERY humbling experience in a Zumba class. I took our discussion to heart and decided to "branch out" from my treadmill and explore some different options. It was a beautiful reminder that I have plenty in life left to learn, and that there are lots of unique ways to train our minds and bodies to do new things. I am also willing to concede that I am most certainly NOT rhythmically gifted, but it sure was a lot of fun!

This is why I've always been awed with dd11's focus. While I have never known what I wanted to do with my life or have switched around a lot, she's had her career plans mapped out since she was three and has done very little waivering. I have to wonder what one could do with that kind of focus coupled with her ability. I guess that I'll see in 20 yrs or so.

lol, for me it was torts -- I would have happily lived under the delusion that it referred to misspelled desserts.
I can relate to this thread. My youngest is starting full day kindergarten. I am contemplating what career is next. Law was two major life changes ago. The old careers feel too " been there done that".

Grateful, this is a great story. It also reminds me of the individual variability of whats challenging. Most (all?) of the things that impress people about me, I take in stride. Some of the things I had to work at and was proud of accomplishing (learning to drive a car, running 3 miles) wouldn't faze most people.