Dear everyone,
First of all please excuse my English. I am a French/German national and am almost certain you will find some mistakes in my post (if you feel like it, please correct them, I am always happy to learn).
My IQ has not been tested but I am quite certain that I am gifted. I identify with all 5 overexcitabilities (psychomotor, sensory, intellectual, imaginational, emotional). I went straight from kindergarden to 2nd grade upon counsel from teachers/school director.
In school I was quite assiduous while being very reserved. I have dealt with some minor bullying, but looking back to it I was mostly respected by my peers. However, I always felt "different", not in a positive way. Like I had trouble establishing meaningful connections with peers. I mostly tried to fit in by acting as "normal" as possible. Looking back to it, I was pulling the brake a lot of the time.
I graduated high school as the best student in my class while being the youngest (16 1/2). I was especially good in the natural sciences (mathematics, physics, biology). However, I mostly felt like I completed school assignments to "please the teachers". School was to me, completing homework/passing tests, and I had trouble linking school concepts to the world around me, or simply didn't feel the interest to do so (e.g. calculating the acceleration of skier of mass m and down a slope of angle alpha in physics. Never actually cared what acceleration actually means as a "concept".)
I enrolled in engineering school in France at 16 1/2 while being very insecure about that (didn't really feel like "I chose"). I started skipping most of the classes. Spent a lot of time playing computer games, watching movies, hanging around with friends and, unfortunately, smoking a lot of weed and sporadiously engaging into the binge drinking which was quite common in my age group at the time.
I had mediocre grades (except for one exam in 2nd year physics which I had first failed and had to take a 2nd time. Probably the only exam where I actually gave everything I had, and ended up having a very good grade).
After 2 years I wanted to get out of there because I couldn't handle the skipping/smoking. I felt pretty confused and wanted to start over. Enrolled in a psychology curriculum back in Germany.
I skipped a bit less but looking back to it, didn't feel really challengend. I got rather good grades but repeated same patterns as in high school (only do what's necessary. Very rarely truly "dived" into the subject).
Outside of university, I enjoyed playing music and was in a band for a while.
At 20, first crisis. Decided to stop smoking weed. Started having crying outbursts. Decided to do psychotherapy, which partly helped, but partly I think I tricked myself and the therapist into intellectual overanalysing instead of pointing out the real problem - procrastination, general avoidance of taking responsibility for my life.
After first trying to get the easiest subject possible BA thesis subject possible - second crisis, what the hell am I doing. Went for a more hairy subject in psychological methods, which got me rolling a bit more while I had now trouble dealing with overperfectionistic tendencies (crying almost every day in the university library). Then went straight for all advanced master classes, instead of doing the introductory lectures. That made me feel like I had to put some effort, but I only did so for my own assignments; when it came to listening to other people's presentations I felt like I "didn't understand anything"; overcomplicated thoughts running through my head; also think that I was feeling quite bored by the subject at times.
After that, left with 4 exams and a master thesis to complete, spiralled back into dropout behaviour. No structure in my life. Partying, drugs, that kind of stuff. Overthinking, being lost. Started working in social science research. Started a second psychotherapy after having suicidal thoughts. General doubt about my studies - generated new ideas, for example studying environmental sciences. Never followed through with it.
Long phase of introspection through therapy. Understood that I was feeling a lot of guilt the whole time because of "not studying enough". While guilt never helps, remorse can still be a sign that something is wrong. This whole time, I didn't have or develop the internal drive to exploit my abilities by putting regular effort into my endeavours. Also understood that choosing psychology was partly out of interest partly avoiding natural sciences (maths, computer science), which are intuitively what I am interested in, because I didn't make it as a teenager in engineering school and until today, cannot be sure if it is because of a lack of abilities, or a lack of self-discipline and motivation, and the inability to handle studying at a quite young age.
Fast forward to today. I finally passed my last exam (after failing it the first time because of insufficient studying, lack of interest/motivation in learning stuff by heart, and lack of study strategies for overcoming the lack of motivation).
I am interested in things related to AI (intuitively). Directly related to my field, are (computational) neuroscience/psychiatry research or psychometrics. However, I lack the training in mathematics or computer science to be good in the field. I question my interest in psychiatry because, having been through phases of suicidal thoughts, it is painful to dive into the subject for me. I don't feel a real interest in psychometrics. I see that the more promising applications of machine learning algorithms are in bioinformatics/medical research or climate research, if thinking about the classical scientific setting, or data science if thinking about the industry (which I feel a bit less drawn to).
However I won't have the required degree to make it to there. I tend to worry a lot about all of this, compare myself to what others have already achieved at my age. I tend to spend a lot of time imagining what I could possibly become "one day", instead of doing "what I have to do", as my therapist said: get my degree, and then I'll have new options opening up. [I had various phases of general self-doubt about science in general. In phases of dropping out, I thought about becoming a writer, a musician... caused a lot of overthinking because I was seeing choices at the small scale of a student as deterministic for "the rest of my life", which, as I start to understand, is just a stupid way of thinking somehow engrained into part of the population. Hard to get rid of though.]
Options just don't feel great at the moment. Makes me feel kind of helpless. Like a labyrinth I have gotten into when I was 16 and I am trying to get out of ever since. At least, I have better eating/sleeping habits, have quit all drugs except nicotine and an occasional beer. Also started discovering that I can actually enjoy sports/physical activity after being rather lazy on that side in earlier years.
TL;DR: skipped 1st grade, very good at high school, former engineering school dropout and weed smoker, struggling to finish a psychology degree while already thinking about new fields or challenges to discover, trying to become a more consistent person.
My questions are:
- how relevant is my introspection into the reasons for my behaviour? [overprotective parenting; tendency to "refrain" my abilities in school; mild bullying; lack of self-discipline] and how much am I maybe enjoying the introspection for the sake of it, rather than letting go and finding challenging activities for myself?
- how much should I try to "exploit my abilities as much as I can"? And how much should I accept my life path for what it has been, and that it is okay if I am not the stellar physics student doing a PhD while working for the UN Global Pulse lab and developing algorithms for satellite image analysis or medical X-Ray image segmentation?
- related: how much should I push if I feel that this is more who I want to be, rather than a guy generally struggling with consistency in his life? [Because this also means - and I already feel it sometimes - getting distanced from old friends, and wanting to meet new and more "motivated" people.
- how can I be confident about who I am and want to become, and get rid of the labels that go with it (e.g. "I am a nerd, no one likes nerds, etc.)?
- how do I build back confidence after feeling like I failed at university?
- how do I become more aware of my needs? I tend to feel obliged to finish a job even if it bores me, instead of more actively taking control of my career. E.g. I could have switched from psychology after the bachelor, but felt like: "I started this. Now I have to finish it". I have now a job as a research assistant in a digital mental health startup. Until now it has been very boring, and it is hard to keep focus when I'm working. How do I tell my boss that I need more difficult assignments? How do I stop being satisfied with doing "the easy things"?
I'll leave to that for now, I am happy to open a discussion on my case and to answer any more precise questions.
Hope the message wasn't too long.
Regards,
Raphael
