"Oh boy, I love being able to get decent grades in highschool without the need for studying. I hope university is also a breeze. I would hate to be caught in a situation where I don't have the developed skills to succeed"
Still got my diploma but holy shit was building focus and studying skills stressful in uni. If anyone in highschool is reading this, learn to properly study and research, it will be a lot better than trying to make up for it in post secondary
"Oh, the grade is based entirely on the midterm and final? See y'all in four months!"
When I barely pass and torpedo my GPA: :surprised-pika:
As a highschool dropout and university student, I'm a big proponent of building your studying skills in community college while working, so your have to learn to efficiently gut papers on your lunch break.
It was effective but incredibly unpleasant.
Well I've got a summer ahead of me, what can I do to improve my research and studying skills? I'll be going into humanities if that's relevant
I'm far from an expert on humanities but my advice would be to work on diligence and self discipline of studying in and of itself. Work on studying an topic or doing questions for extended periods of time.
For me I was too easily distracted and too accepting of my own procrastination. If you get in the groove of studying that should make actual school work less daunting and less prone to procrastination.
As for focus, try to work on studying with allowing yourself to get distracted by phones/internet/ect. This was a big thing for me, I couldn't go more than a 10 minutes or so without checking something on my phone/Reddit. I ended up having to put my phone in my dresser on the other side of the room and block Reddit on my computer. This gets easier the more you get used to focusing, difficult at first, but if you keep it up then it will become second nature.
Hope all this helps and good luck in your classes!
Thanks, this is good advice! I used a "forest" app while I was doing my exams that grows little virtual trees while your phones isn't on, and it helped.
Maybe helpful if you're going into something like history, but practicing summarizing articles and drawing out important points and quotes will help with the big research essays and the essay questions on exams/midterms
Thanks! History is one of my options, and I read a decent amount but summarising isn't a skill I have, I'll have to work on that.
Yep
Left adrift and rudderless in the world, I came to the same conclusion
For extra fun as a gifted child you can develop a complex and place literally all of your self-worth on your perceived intellect which will then immediately crumble once you discover it's actually unremarkably average.
spoiler
:doomjak:
We all know about gifted kid burnout. But I suspect it's a triplex of gifted kid -> burnout -> radicalization
I got recommended for one of these programs when i was a kid, but it was only because i'm a quick learner and take in information easily. Problem is, i'm riddled with adhd and can't for the life of me remember information about things i don't care about. Not a great combo.
I have no sympathy for the gifteds, they should all read theory
Have a little sympathy, they're rarely better off, and are usually alienated as fuck.
It's just a way of sorting wheat and chaff. Being "gifted" literally means you passed an IQ test. Its a program to pluck up some chosen few and give them access to resources that other kids also need. Gifted kids should unironically read theory, it will help them understand the world in a more advanced, scientific way. It will help them understand themselves and their place in American society. If this sounds sympathetic, its cuz I kinda am, but I also believe in tough love for kids who had gifted learning classes, cuz they sorta get special treatment during their childhoods
You definitely get a lot of neurodivergent kids in those classes, but they dont teach you about neurodivergency. Its a class about IQ and fast tracking you to college
This exactly, and your other comment as well. They really do need to read theory. I think something that happens is that kids that get labeled as gifted often have any underlying neurodivergence swept under the rug in the name of the meritocratic myth: if my kid is the pinnacle then they can't be "sick" too. It's an awful way to try and comprehend neurodivergence but I think it's prevalent. Giftedness often means "whatever amalgamation of effects that causes a five year old to perform exceedingly well on a measure of cultural fit and knowledge + pattern matching." Even the fast tracking to college is expressed as a commodification and dehumanization of the kid in question. It rarely yields any real help to them, beyond increasing social isolation.
yeah, same, except for us an IQ test was part of it. Getting to leave class and play games once a week was the special resources you got. Your class got more enrichment than the other kids, which they could have probably also used
From my observations as someone who was labeled gifted and attended a regular public school that happened to have a shit ton of gifted kids (like 50% of the class or something at one point), pretty much anyone who is social-economically privileged enough to be able to do extra curricular learning can pick up the skills needed to do well on the standardized tests that determine whether or not one is "gifted". The gifted students that attended that school were almost all upper-middle class and had educated parents (many of whom were engineers working in the nearby tech hub) who encouraged learning outside of school. Fucking sucks that extra resources are given to these people (special programs, scholarships etc.) who mostly don't actually need it. The concept of giftedness should be thrown out and the education system needs to be overhauled. Who the hell came up with such a stupid idea?
huh is that a thing in the States? At least in my particular case, pretty much anyone that got above X score on a standardized test qualified (majority of the gifted kids in that school happened to be asian). Like I know people who even gamed the system by retaking the test at a later age just to get into one of the programs.
Here in Klanada I remember being the only black person in the gifted program, although there was only three black families that sent kids to my school in the entire time I was there, and the gifted program had disproportionate (~1/3 in a city with a ~3% population according to census) east asian representation.
hmm, my gifted program was only like 7 people. Maybe yours was just higher placement classes? (Which 100% are segregated in many places)
I like to joke that I had my mid-life crisis in the 8th grade when I came to this conclusion after being the class valedictorian but being miserable and friendless
Surely, this wasn't what life was supposed to be about
So I started getting into philosophy and theatre, but what really helped was the fact that my high school was spectacularly gay
Really helped me to figure out who I was and what I actually wanted out of life
