School was always easy for me, especially tests. I was pretty much bored in the grade school years, but I was a teacher pleaser so i did well. I never studied. I remember reading ahead and finishing my homework assignments in class when the teacher was explaining them. I was the youngest in my class, and proud to be still smarter than everyone, but I kept that to myself. I didn't always feel smart. Sometimes, I didn't raise my hand because I saw that no one was raising his hand, so I figured my answer must be wrong if no one knows the answer. Other times, when kids were confused about something that I thought was really easy, I would think I must be missing something (this happened all the way through law school). My mom recently told me that the 1-8 school I attended told her they had only one other student who scored similar to me on the standardized tests (mostly 99%), and there were only a few in the state. I never remember discussing that I was smart; I just figured I was a good test taker.
I got along with everyone, but only had a couple good friends in 1-8, and no good friends in high school. I met a soulmate friend through work when i was a junior in high school. I hated high school. I participated in the state's first post-secondary enrollment option by going to all my senior year classes at the local university instead of high school. My classic underachiever lazy self appeared and I didn't take the SAT when I found I was already enrolled at the local university and they didn't need an SAT score. So I didn't apply to any colleges (I was already in!). I did ok in college - always great grades in the higher level classes and decent but not great grades in the intro classes.
My boredom led me to want DS to go to school early. DH however, who was also youngest in his class but did not like it because of sports, wanted DS to stay with age-mates. We agreed to get DS tested to see of he qualified for early entrance, and go with the tester's suggestion on if he should. (She said let him play.) We will probably have some clashes because our school experiences were different, but I will definitely try to make it so DS isn't bored into becoming an underachiever like me.
