Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Just remembering how much I enjoyed this article -

http://www.stephanietolan.com/gifted_ex-child.htm

I was thinking about Stephanie Tolan and how well she expresses so many ideas.

Enjoy the article, my gifted ex-chid friend!
Love and More Love,
Grinity

Oh, I love that one too

I hope you don't mind me offering up a favourite of my own:
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_adults/Lovecky_CanYouHearTheFlowersSing.shtml

Giftodd

Ah, yes. I was just in a completely different discussion, arguing this point. In my profession, the oblivious incompetent with good marketing skills is generally well-compensated (because the end user has no ability to independently assess the quality of the work), and the competent person who is painfully aware of her own shortcomings (because the field is too broad for anyone to know it all) is generally not. The market is not good at recognizing what adds value, and what's hype.

@alexsmom - yes, I agree.

I have mentioned before, I am in the i.t. field...
I always think about this in terms of 'certifications' being used as a badge of 'competency', which, at least in my field, is totally unwarranted. The folks I have known with the greatest number of certs have always seemed like the last person you would want to ask about a complicated problem. (one requiring logic to resolve).
Now, unfortunately, I am in a position where my role requires I obtain some certifications, so I have obtained my first minor one and am studying for another. I know in my head that this body of material I am memorizing is extremely unlikely to make me better at my job, but I recognize also that people will look on my resume in the future as warranting greater pay and respect. Sheesh.

Maybe there are other fields, like accounting, medical, etc. where certifications/exams really get to the heart of one's ability to perform?

*sighs* These articles are interesting and good, but at the same time a bit depressing. I think it is a lot like being a prodigy. It's not that you lose your abilities, but you have gone from being the youngest person to do x, y, or z, to a heterogeneous environment with lots of age ranges where eventually you don't stand out so much.

Thanks for posting that. I, too, love Stephanie Tolan's writing.

Working in the medical field (and in an education position where we train and certify many medical professionals), I'd have to say that certifications rarely get at who is the most competent in that field either. There are physicians even who take the same courses over and over to achieve the bare minimum score to get the certification. They have the same certification as those who got 100% in the fast track version of the class the first time around. No one (other than us) knows who is who.

I can only speak for the accounting field, but in my experience, that's not the case. The average CPA is likely to be better at any given tax or accounting task than the average non-CPA. But certification tends to weed out people who are not good test-takers, or who are lower income (can't afford prep courses), rather than people who lack the logic to resolve complicated problems.

After ~10 years of tax experience, I finally gave up and got my accounting hours and sat for the CPA exam. The classwork was interesting, and not completely without value, but didn't really make me better at my job. Same for the exam. But it was easier to become a CPA than to convince my clients that I wasn't one, and having it made me significantly more employable.

You've really hit the nail on the head here. Giftedness doesn't disappear, it's just harder to find it because the way its measured disappears for the most part once you leave the school environment.

This is one reason why so many gifted adults get lost - they have a hard time seeing their own giftedness once they reach the workforce because of the way it was accentuated earlier in their lives, and they don't have as many opportunities to show it or use it either. Strangely enough, many employers, even though they may think they want innovative people to work with them, actually discourage innovation. So where does that leave all of the amazingly creative and innovative gifted adults?