For the past week, I’ve been mulling this over.

“Only a few [gifted children] rose to fame and fortune, and no matter how glittering their early prospects, they had to work extremely hard most of their lives to get there. There is a big difference between a gifted child and a gifted adult. A child is seen as gifted because they are ahead of their age peers, especially at school, while a “gifted” adult has to be seen to make a difference to the world.”
(New Scientist: The gifted child’s curse – 11 October 2010)

Very, very interesting.  I’ve heard that, when raising children, it’s better to tell them “you worked really hard on that!  Good job!” rather than telling them “you’re so smart!”.  This way, the child learns that their hard work pays off and doesn’t believe their successes are due to innate ability.

Side note – I was on the “gifted on top of gifted” super accelerated academic track, and all it did was instill in me an intense fear of failure.  I would avoid activities that I wasn’t instantly good at, since not being good at something served as proof that I perhaps wasn’t as “gifted” as people told me I was.  Apparently, this is common: http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

Good thing my parents always said “You can do better”?

(via latecapitalism)

God, this is so so true. It was easily a decade wasted, for me, between coasting through school and college and realizing the rest of the world didn’t work the same way, and that intelligence wasn’t enough. If there’s one thing I wish I learned earlier, it was this.

(via rickwebb)

“Last edited by rebecca on October 20, 2010 at 1:15 am”

I did mull it over for a week. Then two. Then a few more. And then it was the next year and I had completely forgotten about this god-forsaken blog. The post didn’t come easily once I pasted something that someone else wrote, so I just didn’t finish. But it’s still on my mind. This is exactly what I’m talking about.

Somebody once convinced me (okay, a lot of people convinced me on multiple occasions) that I was really smart. The underlying message to me was that “smart” is inherent in a person. Either you’re smart and you’re set and you’ll never need to work hard for anything, or you’re not and you’ll have to work hard and settle for being less awesome than that fortunate top quarter of the top one percent who went to summer camp at Duke to take classes with other precocious (but cool!) kids. Henceforth leading me to associate working hard with being stupid.

You’ve set me up for failure or an uphill battle convincing myself to exert effort, challenge-free academic life. Cheers.