Gifted Teenager

From LoveToKnow Teens

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Hey everyone, I just felt like adding something in here. It's late and I've nothing better to do than ramble :)

I started off very slowly. I could barely read by the first grade and I would have been held back at the Catholic school I went to had I stayed there. Trying to avoid having me suffer such a fate, my parents enrolled me in the second grade at the local public elementary school, at which I tested "just above average". At this point I can't really recall much about my year in second grade, but I progressed very rapidly and by third grade I was in the advanced readers group. It's nor unreasonable to doubt that by fourth grade I would have tested into a gifted program, had I stayed at that school.

But I didn't stay at that school either... my family ended up moving and I ended up spending my fourth grade year at a small rural school with about 250 students in the 1-6th grades, not enough for there to be programs for the gifted. By this point I consistently scored in the 99th percentile on standardized tests and I only scored less than that once (in the 92nd, must have had a bad day, lol). I'm now a rising senior and I'm widely considered to be the smartest person in my class (of 60) and perhaps in the school (I don't know what, if anything, they say about me in the lower classes). Last year I scored better on the SATs than anyone in the previous three junior classes.

So I now consider myself "gifted" and several of the things in this article pertain to me, specifically social alienation. I have a hard time finding common ground with other people. Fortunately I seem to be heavily introverted and this doesn't bother me too much, but humans are social creatures and I think that not having a true confidant does hurt subconsciously.

As to needing less sleep, I feel like I need more sleep than most, haha!

But the thing in this article that got me to thinking the most was the part about gifted children "putting their academic ambition on hold". In my first two years of highschool (9th and 10th grades) I performed about as well as the average student. I rarely did homework, etc. But I definitely wasn't consciously holding myself back... in fact, up until I read this article I believed I had just been lazy, but now I'm considering that maybe I subconsciously held myself back, attempting to "fit in".

I saw great changes in myself during Junior year. I strove hard and did my best and performed superbly, having the top score in all of my AP classes and scoring 5's on every one of the exams. Actually, it's very possible that I had the highest GPA in my class for that year.

It's definitely true that I'm curious... Wikipedia is my best friend and I pretty much research history and science for fun. I have a great interest in cosmology and computer science and I'm involved in a couple of advanced open-source projects involving the latter. The former is really just a hobby, one I pursue out of wonderlust.

I also read a lot of books. It's rare that I read nonfiction books though, I get most of my nonfiction knowledge from the internet. Most of what I read in books in fantasy and scifi.

On a different note, I'm very curious what other common elements gifted teenagers have. I've always thought that my past addiction to online games like Runescape and World of Warcraft had something to do with intellect. I like to think that they fed my hungry imagination. But maybe I just happened to really enjoy role playing games and it has nothing to do with intellect.

I guess that's it. Good luck to everyone.

I've had this issue for a while - I attend a small school (roughly 400 students in PreK-12). This school is in a rural area, and the intelligence of others always seems to fall way below mine. I was also an early reader, and by the 1st grade I was reading on 8th grade level. I always understood more than others, and I've always had to "dumb it down" when I talk to my friends. As I became older, I became more involved with my social life, and I've stopped doing homework. If I don't finish it in class, I don't finish it at all. However, I manage to maintain all As due to my grades on classwork and tests. I don't remember a time in my life where I studied on a test, and I'm labeled the "nerd" of my school. I've been enrolled in the gifted & talented (I showed early artistic talent as well) program in our parish since the 2nd grade, and just recently dropped out. The program here did nothing for me in terms of providing for my more advanced intelligence, and instead got me out of class to deal with a weird teacher. There are hardly any classes to cater to my advancement, and therefore I'm able to be rather lazy with my studies. I'm in the middle of my first semester in my junior year and I already have 15 hours of college credit due to dual enrollment classes and an incredibly high score on the English section of the ACT. I often feel slightly out of place here in an area of people who don't value education and intelligence as much as they should... especially with the wealth of girls here who feel the need to act like an idiot in order to attract guys. I've often been on the other side of the popular realm just because I am more "gifted" than others, and in response to their grudging attitude toward my natural abilities, I've reverted to an "I don't care, I'm so far above you" attitude, which worsens my situation. However, I have a supportive family, a bright rapidly approaching future, and an amazing boyfriend who gets it all. Being "gifted" does tend to leave you out, but I can't imagine myself being happier as one of the normal kids. Don't ever let someone put you down because you're smart! I've had that way too many times. You understand the stuff that their small minds can't quite wrap around.. and that's a good thing.

I stumbled upon this page quite accidentally - I was originally looking for information about how much sleep a gifted teen needs. I've already done more than enough research about giftedness, including through my college's online scholarly journal databases. However, Kahdeadrah's comment made me want to add something. I went through a similar situation, though mine was mostly about boredom. I learned to read when I was 4, after cornering my mom into teaching me (I memorized a short book while she read it and blackmailed her, saying that I'd keep doing it until she taught me how to read. I had erroneously thought that doing so would be easier than teaching myself). By the time I was in grade one, I was reading books for middle-schoolers. My point here is that I had to sit through hours of everyone around me arduously making their way through easy texts. Things didn't improve later on. When the teachers noticed, they made me teach the other children. By the time I was in grade three, I was so bored that I arranged a meeting between my mom, my teacher and the principal - and told them that I wanted to be put in grade four. The principal was a substitute (the regular one was in the hospital for some reason, for a few months) and he took it as a joke; he said that if I had top marks in grade four, the next year I'd be in grade five. So I did it. That's when the 'social outcasting' began. The kids didn't like it, especially not when I had to explain fractions to them. By the end of grade six, my mom had sent me to a psychologist because she thought I was going through a depression. I faked my way through it, such that the psychologist reported that I was fine. The truth was far from that. When I entered middle school, I expected a challenge. I was right - I had to learn English. I had been in a French school up until then, and only knew the basics. Things started to go downhill in grade 8. At age twelve, I was sick and tired of being 'gifted'. My marks went down to an 89% overall average - by usual standards, that was like failing. I started observing the social interactions of others, and learned from it. I fashioned myself after what I believed to be a more normal person, and they all bought it. When I look back, I'm disgusted by the way I behaved. I, who had been playing violin since the age of six, taking theatre classes and rock-climbing lessons, stopped all extracurriculars. Of all things, I created a happy, bubbly and innocent mask for myself. I still keep it up when I'm faced with those who knew me back then. I snapped awake in grade 10. The mask stayed on, but by the end of grade 11, I'll say that, despite my less than appropriate marks for a few years, I graduated with the third highest complete overall average, which grouped our marks starting from grade 7. I was also the only one in the top 3 who was in the TaG program. I was enthusiastic about college. By then, I was 16. I was old enough that it wasn't obvious that I was younger, and most people there didn't know me. I once again expected a challenge, and I could finally let go of the facade. Things didn't go the way I wanted them to, unfortunately. The challenge never came, and I didn't understand why. That's when I went on a hunt for the old IQ test reports from when I skipped grade four. Needless to say, it explained everything. That's when I searched for information about gifted children and teenagers. I found out that I was actually normal within the 'gifted' category - down to the androgynous personality. However, I felt alienated and saw no end to the boredom. I got myself out of my zombie-like state, luckily. Now, I've completely dropped the facade, my grades are back to what they should be (my lowest this semester is a 97%... due to inattention), and I've stopped caring whatever people say or think about me because of my weird quirks. To everyone who posted, don't give up. Write the book and get it published. Apply for a bursary or a scholarship to get into a boarding school. Don't feel guilty if you manipulate people when you're only protecting your own sanity, and don't feel guilty about getting high marks without studying when the person next to you failed. You are who and what you are. Don't limit yourself to the goals that the school gives you. Go after your own goals and your dreams, and make them come true. Last but not least, don't ever let yourself sink into the despair that comes from feeling alone. You aren't. People like you are rare statistically, but there are others, even if you don't see them. If you want more information about being gifted, I recommend searching in the wilsonweb and ebsco databases once you've exhausted the supply of information that google can give you. The articles on there are peer-reviewed and published for the academic community.

Never give up!

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