I had never thought of myself as “gifted”.  It felt strange to find myself attending a conference for highly gifted individuals.  I’ve known people who go around claiming to be smarter than everyone else, but who didn’t seem worth the oxygen they consume; those are the people I had always associated with the label “gifted.”

I had also never considered myself to be all that smart.  After all, I did not spend my childhood developing new mathematical models, composing breathtaking symphonies, or advancing medical research.  Like most other children, I loved to play, and hated school. I really hated school!  During class, I would read novels, draw, daydream, or write stories instead of taking notes. When a teacher would admonish me for my lack of attentiveness, I would simply devise more surreptitious ways to continue doing as I pleased.  I never actually studied or put much effort into my schoolwork, and I derived precious little enjoyment from it.

I could never quite figure out how to relate to my classmates either.  I wanted to make friends; but for some reason other kids consistently rejected or ignored me.  School, as far as I was concerned, was something to be endured until it was over.  Yet had you asked my teachers or parents about how school was for me, they would have said that everything was great — couldn’t be better!  The other students, while rejecting me, also envied me.  My report cards said: A+, A+, A+, A+, A+.  By all the available measures I excelled in all subjects, and I was a model student.  Most of my classmates had a very different experience of school; it was difficult for me to grasp that, yes, there were kids who were giving their absolute best effort in school and yet struggling to comprehend the material.

I suspect that most people assume that their mental landscape is essentially similar to everyone else’s, and it is only when reality smacks them in the face that they can possibly consider otherwise.  Realizing exactly how different I was from the general population has been a gradual process. My life as an adult began as a quest to find relevance and meaning in a world that seemed to have neither.  The lives of my parents or any of the other adults around me had never appealed to me.  Seeing the rest of my life as something to be endured, as they had done, salved by drugging themselves with television and church, was inconceivable to me.  I was driven by the need to understand everything, and most importantly needing to understand myself.  I exhaustively examined every aspect of my life as I became aware of it, and wondered how I fit into a universe that seemed entirely alien. [Read more…] about Claiming My Gifted Identity