Oh, gosh, let me see if I can answer without writing a novel.
I have always been a worksheet person. I love them. So, yeah, I liked grade school for the most part. I did have huge conflicts in K with my teacher, who was horrible and patronizing and tried to make me dance with letter people despite the fact that I was already reading at at least a high school level, and who eventually recommended that I be held back for failing to learn to tie my shoes. After grade school, school was just a place for socializing and daydreaming as far as I was concerned.
I turned off big time in about the 8th grade.
It wasn't as if I was learning anything anyway...and that is not just what I thought at the time, but what I still believe today. I did everything I could, including actually asking my teachers for extra work. I was not given any accommodations.
I did go to college. I expected it to be challenging, but it wasn't. Then I went to law school. If it hadn't been for the law review, that would also not have been challenging--though I did at least feel that I was learning.
I am now a stay-at-home mother of a (highly+?) gifted child. I think that it is a profession that utilizes my talents.
Also, when I did work as a lawyer, there was a lot of challenge, and it was reasonably fulfilling.
I wish I had not been in grade school at all. I wish someone had recognized that I was PG before middle school. And I wish that in middle school when I
was tested someone would have bothered to change my educational situation instead of just being surprised and going on with the status quo. I wish I had known just one other PG person. (I did know a HG girl, but she was years younger than me, and while I enjoyed her company, it did not provide me with a true peer.) I wish I had not spent my entire childhood "learning" that hard work is pointless, that nobody gets me, and that nobody has any knowledge to share with me.
The irony is that I was in my district's gifted programming and participated in many enrichment activities, summer camps, etc. I am sure that my parents thought they were doing enough. I know they fought for me--after all, I would have flunked K if they hadn't intervened.
