former valedictorians, how are you really?

okay i'm here for the usual "did you get rich / did you make it" question lol. everyone asks that. i'm curious about the stuff nobody really brings up.

if you were the valedictorian (or like, top of your batch) back in high school, i'd love to hear:

• where you from?
• which school did you graduate? public or private? and roughly when did you graduate? (vague is fine, just setting the scene)
• looking back now as an adult... was being valedictorian more of a blessing or a low-key pressure? or did it honestly just stop mattering at some point?
• did people kind of expect things from you after? did you feel like you had to live up to it? do you still??
• did it mess with how you take risks or handle failure? like were you ever scared to screw up bc you were "supposed" to be the smart one?
• and the big one: do you still see yourself as "the valedictorian"? still carrying that around, or did you drop it somewhere along the way?

not fishing for a success story OR a sad story, promise. just really curious how that whole label sits with people years down the line.

say as much or as little as you want.🙏

I am 30, graduated summa cum laude from my (large) high school, got straight A’s in college without much effort before I dropped out when my Dad died in 2018. I love reading and academics but I make for a shitty employee, apparently.

Since 2018 I’ve been working jobs in retail, restaurant, or manufacturing. I have issues at pretty much every job I go to, mainly in food service. I am not fast enough, not organized enough, not mindlessly compliant enough, or just get told my performance doesn’t meet expectations in different ways. I have been fired about 6 times. It is soul crushing to be told repeatedly that you are not good enough. That your best doesn’t cut it.

People have told me I am smart my entire life, but yet I can’t keep a job? It’s demoralizing and depressing and I am so anxious at the moment over having to look for yet another job because my last job hasn’t worked out, that I could vomit. The existential anxiety that comes with feeling like my best simply isn’t good enough to keep an average job is awful.

Thankfully I live with family and don’t have to pay rent at the moment but eventually I am going to have to get out on my own again. I can’t do that without savings established so I can pay a security deposit, etc.

Hi, I (F29, MX) just found this sub and I feel like there's so much of my life that's finally explaining to me.

I was hyperlexic since Kindergarten, very good at math, sports, arts, grammar, etc. I got early puberty (first period at 8 and currently diagnosed with PMOS) and from there it all went down. I hated my body, myself, my emotions, my family, everything and everyone.

Middle school, I got my first 7 (what would be like a D in the US maybe?) and my life seemed over. High school, failed my first mid-term exam. This was also the time I first began my alcohol-related issues. College, I switched from my first major choice which was engineering due to lack of motivation and the fact that for the first time I felt like I had to work to learn something and I hated studying something I do not care at all. I switched to a sort of Liberal Arts major (It was journalism but it felt like that for me) I failed complete courses but I loved what I was learning. I feel like for school I had too moods: Type A anxious obssesed student and a carefree, picture Lindsay Weir from Freaks and Geeks. Now I'm in the workforce in digital marketing and struggling because I do not know or care for marketing at all but I'm decently good at it. The thing is, I feel like I'm stuck now and wasting my intelligence.

My questions are, what do you recommend for me to try to grow professionally on marketing or a similar area? I've tried online courses but my mind is not clicking, this is not something I enjoy learning and the anxiety is too much for me to handle due to me getting all these school flashbacks. I don't care for greatness, I want stability, be a home-owner and retire eventually.

Also, I'm seeing a new psychiatrist and I would like for him to explore me being a High-functioning autistic person without me wanting to sound like I'm self-diagnosing, any tips?

20 years old, succeeded in school but grades are so terrible i dont even know if i can get to a college, I really feel like a failure and i dont know what i can do, do i take courses to try and get work? Is there some sort of program i can do?(I was in igcse, ngl i got fucked, i dont know if i am even going to succeed the last subject i need)

So I was the smart kid, like a lot of us here.

I was always put on a pedestal, everyone expected so much from me all the time and looked at me different when my performance never met that incredibly high standard.

No-one ever told me getting all the answers right on a quiz at 6 years old could do this to you.

Then people use your intelligence to define your whole personality, calling you a know-it-all or nerd, always turning to you to explain the most absurd and impossible things and making fun of you when you can't.

They say it over and over, so you accept it as your personality, and then when you act full of yourself and become what they assumed, they hate you for it.

They even rally against you to knock you off the pedestal they put you on.

Years later, you look in the mirror and want to smash it. You never feel good enough for yourself. Nothing is perfect enough. And no-one lets you forget when you weren't perfect enough for them.

I am doing much better now, but I am saying all of this really fucks you up and for years, you start being depressed because you hate yourself and have an identity crisis because you feel you don't know who you are beyond the smart kid.

I am so happy I am finally out of that academic environment and things have gotten better for me personally. But the scars are still there. They're just not as evident as they once were.

And unfortunately, I don't think I can ever fully heal. Because at a time when I was suppsoed to be happy and carefree, everyone took it away from me.

That's my experience and thanks for reading until the end if you did! 😊 Just want someone who understands.

So um a teacher (who taught me for 3 years btw non consecutively) was basically out for my blood she once insulted me in front of the whole grade saying I was stupid and wasting her time when I just wanted to apologize for something I've done (another teacher was with me but she didnt bother to say anything) I cried for a day after that and skipped my extra curricular. and before that she changed the seating and I was in the front row. the other class teacher (half-joking) said now he could chat about ww2 with me. she said oh really? her history seems terrible to me though (excuse me you dont even teach me history) anyways I was really insulted by that for some reason because history is kinda part of my identity and I cried in the bathroom and didnt go home until after 7. my mom told her to lay off twice but she only pretends to for about a week before starting again. it feels in every grade level I enter there's a teacher who specifically hates me.

17F: Hey everyone. I'm a senior in NYC looking to form a small study group. I want to learn advanced math like Linear Algerba, Calculus, Abstract Algebra, and other concepts using the Harkness method(typically required 5-12 people, involving mapping out proofs, teaching eachother, small debates but absolutely no lectures). This is strictly for neurodivergent high school seniors in the NYC area and must have general knowlege in Algebra 1, Algbera 2, Trigenometry, and Geometry. Plan is to have a discord and later at a NYC Public Library. DM or comment if your interested.

I am a former GATE kid from Oregon who became a hypnotist. With so much of the program fuzzy in our memories, would anyone be interested in any memory recall about what happened during the time while under hypnosis? I hope this does not count as self-promotion. Maybe someone has done this, I'm not sure. As far as I know I'm the only hypnotist that came from the gate program. If there are more, please say so in the comments. I would love to talk to more GATE kids that became hypnotists. Not looking to charge for this, but do want to add this information gathered into the collective. I can also do an AMA if anyone is interested.

I keep seeing posts about parents getting their kids labelled “gifted” by schools or organisations. Or asking how to make their children gifted, or even recalling themselves as gifted in childhood.

This study is a pretty good reality check: "**Early giftedness rarely lasts into adulthood**"

Trying to get into a few schools that are borderline impossible for me. My marks barely qualify, allowing there to be a sliver of a chance for me to do it. I'll have to work like a fucking dog. I want it so bad. I'm going to cut off communication from others because it hurts too much. I'm doing this thing alone. All odds are against me. I used to be someone people had high hopes for until life and my disorder got the better of me. I know I'm smart enough to do it. I just don't know if I'm tough enough though. I'm going to try still. If there's anyone who has succeeded in something like this, I'd love to hear from you.

So many posts, here and otherwise, are people lamenting that they didn't meet their potential, or what they felt the world expected of them as a "gifted kid".

This can either come as a jab or a relief, but chances are you reached your potential whether you like it or not.

What I have seen anecdotally is that children - mostly in the US - are identified for gifted programs, assume the gifted label, have an average life, and mourn what could/should have been.

Most of the time, schools and districts had established programs that drew extra funding. Teachers selected kids that seemed to behave or do well, or who they wanted out of their class, to go into the programs. There may have been an aptitude test, but most were based on observation and nomination.

This has very little to do with giftedness. You were probably misidentified for nefarious purposes then lived up to your actual potential. If you're carrying around guilt or remorse for a life not lived, you shouldn't. You're the only one putting that burden on your shoulders.

Actually gifted people know there is no 'formerly gifted', and there is no 'I was gifted as a child'. There's also no shame in being average, and it's not your fault that you were mislabelled. Let go of the chip on your shoulder and you'll see how much it was weighing unnecessarily on your self worth.

I was gifted until very recently. I'm not used to the "You're a failure" treatment and I'm trying to make it easier to digest. I got diagnosed with severe OCD too so it's making the process worse. I'd like to have my own journey away from prying eyes and judgements. Any insights that made you feel better about who you were supposed to be and where you are now? Any exercises to make yourself feel productive when you're depressed and able to accomplish 10% of what you're capable of? Self affirmations? Self care habits? I'd love to learn something from people who can handle this better than me.

Thinking back to that period in the mid-20th century, a degree of intelligence and eloquence in the public sphere were valued in a way that I don't think it is anymore. So I reckon it's very difficult to judge someone highly gifted in the current day as not being social when talking to average people. If someone spoke the same way a Richard Feynman did today on national television, it would probably not be well-received.

I think we have a tendency to outright dismiss painful truths, and anti-intellectualism and siloing of society with echo chambers has fundamentally changed this past dynamic. The general public doesn't seem to be exposed to that kind of intellectualism anymore, because it doesn't enter their purview.

We have a greater amount of access to such information but it is more stratified. I find some of the guests on the Lex Fridman podcast to have a somewhat similar kind of eloquence that a Feynman would have, but it is not something that is as well-received by the general public anymore. So, I very much think that extroverted, highly gifted people exist along a similar vein, but much of the frustration stems from internalized anti-intellectualism.

Thoughts?