Some ramblings on giftedness, whatever that means.

[sushimustwrite]

This was the result of a thread at the NaNo forums asking how non-gifted kids reacted to gifted kids, and well, I went off on a tangent a bit.My brother and I are (were, I suppose, as we're both in college) gifted, whatever that means. My brother slacks off in school and still passes his classes. He's certainly smart, but he doesn't work to

Comments

[satellitewish]

I was in gifted for years and there was clearly two groups of students...overworking pretty girls & guys (all who became business and real estate majors) and then lazy geeks (almost all guys), who in high school turned into stoners (and who all became scientists and engineers in college). Funny how easy it is to predict a person's life path just based upon how they act as a 12 year old.

I'll also say that the overachieving people were very snobby, especially towards the "normal kids," while the the loser smart people group (that I obviously was a part of) was quick to befriend every bum and burnout we could find.

So even if you would have gotten into gifted (and its ridiculous that you didn't), I don't know where you would have fit in!

Oh and for the record, gifted classes were an absolute joke, we hardly ever did anything. The vast majority of the class time was simply free time. The only reason any of us ever went was to escape from "the normals" and to get out of class.

[yayskittles]

I think that the way non-"gifted" kids react to "gifted" kids largely depends on the gifted kid's attitude. I graduated #3 in my high school class, getting 95% grades for 25% effort the whole way through, but I wasn't super arrogant about it. #1 was getting 97% grades for something like 60% effort, thought he was smarter than everyone else, and showed it. He had no friends in our class; he couldn't make them because his sneering attitude came across so clearly. He could only make friends with people in other grades because he didn't view them through the same grades-lens as he viewed us, or something.

[cleverwench]

We didn't have gifted classes, but I usually got the highest marks in the class. I listened, that's why I knew the answers. lol I hated how if I didn't get the highest mark everyone would act all shocked and make a big deal out of it.

Merry Christmas :)