I think Val is asking some very good questions. Just because you can do something doesn't always mean that a person should do that, speaking on a personal level.
What is "right" for one person is utterly wrong for another, first and foremost. Life isn't like a birding list, after all.
I'd also be looking carefully at whether or not you feel that socially-prescribed perfectionistic tendencies exist, and to what degree. This sounds a bit like that kind of mindset, honestly. Have you seen any signs of imposter syndrome?
Being "The Best Young _______ in the ______!!!" is the sort of recognition and heady affirmation that simply stops existing after a while-- for anyone. It's a particular pitfall, I think, for HG+ youngsters since much of the attention, especially for PG ones, is leveled at the things that they can do which resemble adult (or older juvenile) accomplishments. What happens when they ARE adults, hmmm? Now those things just look kind of, well-- solid, but not exceptional. Being able to read medical research papers at a rate of dozens of pages per hour, for example: extraordinary in a twelve-year-old, and not-so-much in a twenty-four-year-old.
This is one reason why the entire Wunderkind thing has always made me extremely uneasy when other adults do it with my DD-- I want her to be happy and challenge herself to enjoy LEARNING. Not showing how much further ahead of others she is already. Because those untrained/innate/raw skills, left alone, are ones that others will catch up to eventually, and maybe even surpass with superior work ethic and devotion. They aren't what makes her different or worthwhile.
The thing about this sort of attention is that even when it does continue to exist, it comes at increasingly heavy personal cost, often to the tune of hiding any and all struggle, work and vulnerability in favor of seeming effortlessly omnipotent-- something which none of us really are, at least not if we are challenging ourselves and being honest about the work that we put into looking that way.
If being "better" without working at it much is what individual self-worth is built around, it points to trouble up ahead, in my estimation.
