memes

Yeah sure I was a gifted kid but now I'm just a worthless pile of trash who is a constant detriment to everyone around him and who should probably die

Some jocks simply never had the makings of a varsity athlete

I was overpraised when I was young then accused of purposefully sabotaging myself as I got into my teenage years, and people still think that (and worse) into my adulthood. To this day I have a bit of an insecure desire to be the smartest person in the room, I'll run myself into the ground getting to that point too and pretend that I've not.

I never did my homework, never studied, missed class pretty often too because I faked being sick to get away from bullies. got all As and Bs, did great on my standardized tests. I was the coolest shit ever. Got put into Talented And Gifted classes. Got a lot of "proud of yous" from family members.

Got my first C in 7th grade, did worse in 8th grade, pretty much had straight Ds all through high school.

I never had to study, so I never learned how to study. I asked a lot of questions in class when I was younger but when I got into middleschool and highschool teachers were less receptive of me asking a question they just got done explaining. Had a few teachers who berated me for doing poorly, a few who accused me of "just trying to coast through life". This alongside a not super great homelife led to me missing even more school than I had before. I don't really know how I was allowed to graduate tbh. I easily missed 2/5 of the school year every year of highschool.

When I was 18 my whole family kind of did this intervention style thing where with no mincing of words I was told to "pull my head out of my ass" by all the people who I thought had been in my corner and who I thought supported me. Still haven't figured out what exactly people wanted from me. Still bar none the most hurtful experience of my life and that's saying something considering my father tried to shoot me. (one of those situations where a person has set the bar so low its just expected behavior, I'm sure someone here will understand)

Into adulthood I struggle with work too. It doesn't feel like anything changed from highschool it just got worse. It's particularly upsetting. Maybe it isn't conveyed over text very well but typing this up made me cry. It's my life ya know? And I've seen it circle the toilet bowl for a really long time. Do I have a disability? Idk. I'm probably pretty fucking traumatized though considering I felt the need to share all this on a meme post.

TLDR Once a Loser Always A Loser

I'm on the gifted kid to burnt out adult pipeline and it's not a shoulda-coulda-woulda thing. It's me coming to terms with likely having undiagnosed ADHD or some mild ASD, but since I was good in school and my family is poor, there was no investigation done. For a long time, I didn't even know how to have opinions. Someone would ask me if I liked the color of something, for example, and I would lock up because there wasn't a quantifiable answer I could solve for.

I never really bought into the "kid genius" type thing for myself. I just did what I was told above expectations with no pushback. The worst thing I did was be completely naive and actually believe all the maxims that were told to me. Hard work, study lots, don't go out/drink/drugs, etc. I did all that and nothing stopped the economy from exploding when I graduated. There were no new hire opportunities and by the time they started coming back, I was too removed from the system to take advantage of them.

Is the takeaway here that people whose academic talent as children allowed them to be functional enough to go without mental health treatment that probably would've helped prevent them from being unable to manage when all the structure and scaffolding support that previously seemed invisible is abruptly removed in adulthood is analogous to a reasonably good high school football player whose career ended due to an injury that likely occurred because children are being pushed to play on a similar level to adults whose lives are effectively over at 35 due to the compounding effects of successive brain injuries?

Am I missing the forest for the trees or are these two distinct symptoms of the same failing system?

The point of "gifted child to adult burnout pipeline" was never to say "i had so much potential", it was "people placed absurd and crushing expectations on me because they did not get that i wasn't 'gifted', i just had normal hyperfixations". This is completely missing the point of the meme, neurotypical ass bs.

this is a good point however i am forced to disregard it due to the most important vow ive made to myself, which is to never respect anyone who uses the word “sportsball”

We never pulled the "could've gone pro" stuff but we were in an athletic program that put way too much pressure on us. And we were also a "former gifted student" who was just unmedicated AuDHD with special interests that aligned well with certain school subjects. It's really sad thinking about it, we used to love learning because we did it for fun. We used to love sport and being active for the same reason. We're still trying to rediscover that joy to this day. We had nightmares about showing up to a fitness test "too fat" for the better part of a decade after we stopped competing. We are still averse to reading for or learning if there's even the slightest bit of pressure attached to it. We want to go back and undo these things so badly

sadly, crippling mental illness is also extremely prevalent among aspiring athletes, with the people suffering from it being confronted with just as much, if not more, stigma and discrimination.

honestly the whole thing around gifted children in america is so weird to me

it's a mixture of parents desperate to see their children making it under neoliberalism (especially through gifted programs) and psychologists having a really hard time setting boundaries between the ordinary and the exceptional (while being financially incentivized to make those boundaries even murkier)

that said, there's always time. just because the person went through the gifted child into underachieving adult pipeline doesn't mean they have to stop there

I’ve pretty consistently had realistic career expectations for myself. It’s not my fault nobody listened

the ways we're let down by the capitalist education system aren't our fault.

injuries are accidents, a student crashing out is a systemic failure.

It was fun when I first read about Indigo Children, the trend right before Gifted Children to explain the same undiagnosed neurological disorders. If I had been born a decade earlier my mother would have thought I was a Warhammer 40k psyker instead of just a kid who was good at reading. The toxic positivity that instilled could have been so much weirder.

I was called useless all my life and half my drive is trying to prove those people wrong. Also not a healthy mindset but i have a love hate relationship with it. It also makes me utterly insufferable to a lot of people because i am extremely competitive

Jokes on you, I never thought I was smart or had potential

I always thought everyone else was just horribly misinformed

Yeah, it was one of the less fun things to realize about myself.

Except that nerd could have actually done something useful for society