I was “academically gifted.” Straight A student until middle school, put in a special “smart kid” class in elementary, and throughout high school breezed through without needing to, or ever learning how, to study properly. It bit me in the ass in college, nearly failed out my first semester.
Parentally, it meant nothing I ever did was good enough (“you’re so smart you’re stupid”), while my sister was cheered on and celebrated for barely making C grades. Led to pretty bad neurosis and a paralyzing obsession with doing things perfectly, which led for a long time to not doing them at all.
Nowadays I’m an IT engineer, consider myself smart enough (though not a genius), and my only real hobbies are reading, music (audiophile on a budget), gaming, and exercising. I occasionally watch anime or movies/TV, but rarely and wouldn’t consider that a hobby. Haven’t really abandoned any them, since they’re the main things I enjoy (except some of the exercise can go to hell, but I need to do it for my health).
Turns out I was “gifted” with mild autism. Go figure. 😅
I wish I was a doctor…
Feel like I’d be somewhere between. Still have had people who say they think I’m some sort of super-genius. So I guess I’m somehow now an “academically gifted” adult? But I still struggle with some basic parts of my job (like dealing with the stuff on my desk next to me I’ve been ignore for hours to stroll here).
It’s a joke. I can see how both types exist, but they are like extremes on a spectrum, and most are between these two
It’s just stereotypically BS
I was the dumb kid in school so why did I still end up with anxiety?🤷♀️
i know how you feel. I’m still dumb though.
I was the dumb kid in school (almost failed elementary school?!?), still ended up university professor and well adjusted
or end up stressed post docs with a lot of discarded hobbies and scientific projects
You okay?
its not as bad as it sounds. But it is the other side of the coin of academic freedom. You can do what you want, but that just means i end up wanting to do everything and then of course failing to finish evreything. But i have learned the solution is to find collaborators, and to accept that some things will simply not get done. The only problem is that the things that do not get done are sometimes important, even if they are not the most interesting (such as filing travel reimbursement forms). TL:DR no worries but do think carefully before going for a phd, there is very little external structure
Ahhh, i still need to fill out the reimbursement forms for a conference I attended last year. And also another from five years ago. Might be a bit late for that one though.
Post docs count as docs!
Being bright made me lazy
I didn’t have to put in much effort to get through
I never cared about being top of the class, so I just coasted with minimal effort
I’ll work my arse off when I need to, but outside of that I put in as little as I can get away with
100% this. I try to automate everything, so I don’t have to bother and that’s usually where I apply myself the most; trying to remove tedious busy BS from my life.
Nothing is really challenging. I got my degree with very little effort and I have a good career but the work is still just tedious and repetitive more than challenging. Otherwise I generally check out.
I don’t spiral into self hate, but it can get close. More like deep sadness at “failing at perfection”. And yes I have a trillion hobbies. Yay Autism. Yay Autism that wasn’t diagnosed until late adulthood.
I didn’t have to put in much effort to get through
Name checks out.
Name does not check out, preparation matters for fisting.
Same. Now I’m an unemployed Mr Doctor who’s trying to begin to learn how to impose self-structure. Want to go back to school but another BS (or a first Master’s) is hard to get funded and a PhD requires solo research to even have a competitive application.
Maybe our group should at least be teaching the next batch of gifteds and adding in our lived shortcomings to the lessons. 🤷
It’s a joke - and academic achievement doesn’t correlate with mental health - that’s a stereotype we would benefit from losing
It’s actually worse: academia has a huge mental health problem across the board
Maybe (like everywhere?) but that’s not the point I was trying to make. There is a stereotype that autism and generally being neurodivergent is somehow compensated for by academic talent - it’s not fair to make this assumption
I don’t think the two categories are disjoint; the doctors also do everything in category one.
They can also be both. Successful career, but forever haunted by a fear of inadequacy that just won’t go away.
Sometimes it doesn’t go away even if you spend 70% of your time at work goofing off and 30% being ultra productive to the point that no one notices.
I recommend magic mushrooms.
Good news, though, is that this disjoint between your capability and your self-perception of your own potential and your dissatisfaction with the life that you are leading will eventually resolve itself somewhere in your mid-40s.
The next 20 years of your life after that have a very good opportunity to get substantially better.
If you are in your 30s and going through it right now, like myself, then just know there are brighter days like a decade away, stay the course and keep doing the work.
I’m in my mid-fourties and my brain doesn’t to have received that memo…
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The Japanese rap duo Creepy Nuts made a song about this. It’s in Japanese but the YouTube video has English subtitles so you can at least read what they’re basically saying. It’s called “To Us Former Prodigies.” I’m still waiting for iOS 26 to roll out the advertised “translate lyrics” feature (it’s there but can’t be tapped), but in the meantime a bunch of these modern Japanese songs have official English translations on YouTube.
I feel like it’s a song about me, written by guys who probably couldn’t communicate directly with me (nor I with them). Though supposedly if we’re both wearing AirPods we can understand each other? Not sure if that’s real or just more smoke and mirrors from Apple, seems to be a common theme with them the last couple years.
Fuck.
Apologies for the one word comment. I was barely awake and this hit hard.
