When my intelligence was superseded by my lack of work ethic.
When I coasted through highschool but then failed college classes because I never learned study skills.
Around 4th grade. I was in the gifted program so once a week we got to go to the library to participate in special projects. I believe the school of thought at that time was that “gifted” kids needed additional challenges or stimulation to keep them from getting bored, dropping out and becoming hookers or whatever. I enjoyed it a lot but I knew even then that we weren’t really the ones who could benefit the most. The lower performing kids needed it more. I had fun but it changed nothing for me and I knew it. I had one particular kid in mind and I used to think about how much it would do for him to have a chance to succeed at something other than reading. Poor kid could barely read and it was humiliating. I kind of felt a little guilty because none of us were truly gifted or talented. We just performed well on standardized tests and could sit still in class.
My mom was a teacher in my school- she was giving me the inside scoop. In our school district, being in the “gifted” program wasn’t the result of any test or anything official.
If parents asked for their kids to be in the program, the school did it. The end. That’s how it worked.
I think about that often- how many kids weren’t actually that smart, but because they were treated as though they were intelligent, they were introduced to challenging concepts and developed not only the skills, but the confidence to understanding challenging ideas.
I dunno. Neat. It’s all horse shit, but it’s neat.
It’s not BS. It’s just not a one way ticket to success either. It’s one attribute of who we are, and a successful life (whatever success means to you) is not going to be obtained by one attribute in the vast majority of cases.
My “gifted and talented” designation is a stupid high IQ and all the pattern recognition, rapid learning, abstract connections that come with it. I was moderately successful until my late 20s because I could basically enter any problem solving environment and become the top contributor in no time. But i was miserable, drank a ton, was high all the time, and never felt like I was breaking through to anything ever. I was forever the guy behind the scenes while my less capable coworkers promoted up or made it on to grad school or whatever.
Then I realized, ive just been coasting through life because my IQ makes a lot of things easy. I never developed discipline or work ethic or ambition. I just did the minimum with 0 effort because that was always enough to shine relative to my peers, so why do more?
Since that realization I’ve been trying much harder. It’s been about a year now. I’m sober, I exercise a ton, and I’m building a nest egg to break into entrepreneurship. I’ve also learned along the way a bit more about what “success” means to me. I expect big things in my next 5 years, but of course gods laugh at man’s well made plans.