How many of you were in the gifted program when you were in elementary-high

>>6906401
Ours was called STRETCH (Supplementary Teaching Resources for Educationally Talented CHildren, quite the mouthful).

I wouldn't say it was a perfect predictor of success in the future, but nobody I know who was in the program is doing stupid stuff right now. They are all at least employed, in education, or doing something else positive.

Yeah, I was in GATE. You had to be 130 iq to get in

Also, another school with an IB program. You had to be 130 iq to get in there as well.

For the record, I worked a blue collar profession (welder) after high-school and am now just going back to school at the ripe old age of 26, so your professor isn't wrong.

>>6906401
For some reason, I always felt inferior to the kids in gifted program.

>>6906401
I was easily one of the smartest kids in my school - but i only went twice or so per week. I would just catch the bus home as soon as i was dropped off.

As a result, i missed the IQ test they did, which assigned people into the gifted program. In this, they did electronics and programming stuff...

All the other smart kids used to make fun of me because i 'didnt get in'.

Because i missed out, i never experienced programming until i was in university (did a little bit during my engineering degree).

Instantly swapped degree to Computer Science.

I now own a multi-million dollar company and life is 10/10.

Fuck yeah.

I went to an affluent school in a snobby community, but my parents were poor. due to the circumstances, I was harassed by both the staff and the students. And was told repetitively I would never amount to anything. I was even harassed by the police because the teachers found ways to spin my antics to being indicators of violent behavior.

this September, I joined MIT as a undergrad.
feels good man

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>>6906401
I was in Odyssey of the Mind... Now, I'm an Honorably Discharged (army) loser with 4 kids, GREAT relationship, barely making ends meat... I think they mistook my retardation for genius back then. I'm almost 30 and i STILL haven't pulled myself the rest of the way through college. But really, money isn't everything and despite my apathy towards life, I have a FUCKING BLAST. LIVE IT. Still might do something, just haven't figured out my path that society would have me lend myself to. I would rate life a 7.8/10

I was in the GT (Gifted and Talented) classes from second grade (where it started) to fourth grade. I fucking hated 100% of it. I attended the inner city school district in Indianapolis and it just fucking sucked. Literally all it was was extra work, typically reading a books and doing packets over them. A group of kids from the class were pulled off to the side during class to read this book and work on the packet, and we had to end up doing the work that we missed some way or another. It was pretty fucking stupid, and honestly I'm not even sure why I was in it because I usually never got things done on time or at all when it came to the gifted part of my class. It didn't make any sense.
Then I went through high school pretty average. *shrugs*

I have a story to tell about this actually.
>have this mathematics teacher in 9th grade
>he was in a motorcycle accident when he was 22
>lost his memory, ability to speak, everything
>was essentially a toddler
>relearned everything, including up to a B.S. in two years
>was regarded as the best math teacher at the entire school
>one day we had a mathematics competition of sorts
>1 person from every class gets to advance to the later competition
>win class-competition, get into the later group
>this math teacher is overseeing this new group
>goes on a crazy speech that sounded something like:
>"Everyone else is sheep"
>"Don't trust the government!"
>"You are the chosen ones, you are the only ones who will actually accomplish anything in life."
>Pointing outside he continued
>"Those other students? Failures."
>"They will labor under you"
>"They are sheep."
>everyone just went kinda quiet for a while

>>6906415
>I cannot fathom why, but I always felt inferior to the kids labeled as being of far superior intelligence than mine
Use your brain, maybe you can figure out why programs like that make kids feel inferior.

>>6906401
We had gate here I was in it. I am now a 28 year old morbidly obese high school graduate who is employed as a minimum wage health care worker who bitterly hates his own existence

>>6906443
I said for some reason out of context. My teachers would tell me we're all equal.

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Yes I was in GATE from 3rd-6th.
Except at our school nothing was really done.
We'd occasionally get extra homework assignments or projects, but that was it. It was just busy work. Mind numbingly tedious work that did nothing but make me resent school.
Got to the point where I was so fed up with that shit that I just stopped doing homework.

And as a result, I never developed a work ethic.
I'm nearing the end of my first semester at university, and I still haven't developed one. Been barely putting any effort in, getting Bs.
I know I'm fucked for the rest of my studies if I don't get my shit together. Entirely my fault. Don't have severe clinical depression as an excuse anymore, like I did in high school. If it comes back, I know what to do, I know what to take, who to go to. So it's all on me now to get my shit together and succeed. Can't blame anyone but myself.

Managed to get a professor to like me though. Will be taking two more classes from him, planning on making him one of my future letter of recommendations writers for grad school.

But ya no, GATE was a complete joke at my school. Apparently at the others in my district they actually did stuff. Was always super jelly of them.

>>6906401
TAG student here.

MSc. in Nanotech and doing my PhD. in Chemical Engineering with the world leader in electron microscopy. I speak three languages and moved to Europe permanently when I was 20.

And yet here I am, rising to your bait, OP...

>>6906401
these only existed for girls here, but no girl was ever smart enough to make use of them.

they considered sending me to retard class

>>6906401
>I was talking to a professor about this and he said that a lot of the brighter students he went to university with ended up with what he calls "normal guy jobs".
How old are you?

I wish my school in the UK had a gifted program. We kind of did but all we did was meet awkwardly once every 2 months and went on a trip to Oxford and Cambridge.

>>6906414
>130 iq

did they really do that or are you trolling? if I remember correctly it was based off of STAR tests, teacher recommendations, or if your parents signed some form saying they want to test you in.

>>6906616
why?

>>6906401
I started TAG in 3rd grade in st louis area.
We met once a week. Had a home room in the morning on a certain subject and a different elective like class in the afternoon.
3rd grade it was the brain, can't remember afternoons, might be robots
4th grade it was lasers, and math puzzles?
5th grade it was Bioengineering and flight.

Things I kinda remember:
In Gym we had those puzzles like how to get a team across the room with a tire, a 2x4, and a rope.
Got to hold a human brain
Made a hologram of the arch.
Did an experiment on GE pesticide potatoes, differences in farming methods
Played some video games, SimFarm, some Super Solvers game I can't remember
Designed a pearl harbor memorial?

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>>6906401
I was. In my district that was how they decided who was put in "accelerated" math courses. I'm retarded though so they probably just let me in because I was a minority.

I was complete shit at math so I couldn't get into the programs. The worst part about it was that I never learned division until the 8th grade. After that, I slowly started to pick myself up and began to excel in my math classes.

However, my reading and writing levels were off the charts and surprised the hell out of the teachers who thought I was dumb. In the 6th grade, I tested for college level reading/writing and basically murdered all of my essays and state writing exams. My old SAT tutor was surprised that I got near perfect scores on the reading comprehension and essay parts of the test.

Now, I'm really good at math and science while my reading and writing skills never improve anymore.

>>6906401
I was in one, it was a trial program. It could of had potential in neutering students but in my opinion the teacher they chose to head it ruined it completely. Probably something suited to a male teacher but we had none.

>>6908273
>neutering
that is not what i meant if you didn't work that out already

I was in the magnet from like 3rd grade up until high school

>>6906414
Pfft the IB program is the shitiest shit. I've done it and it wasn't of much use. Stop trolling.

>>6906401

I was put in a gifted class in 3rd grade because I was reading and writing at a grade 6 level.

Can't say I remember much, but I suppose it was probably better to be put in a class with older kids to nurture my excellence above those of my age.

By high school I was still ahead of the curve in performance, but I guess pretty average with reading and writing by that point considering it should be a second nature skill by then.

Currently studying pharmacy at universoty now.

>tfw too lazy to be in a gifted class
I still knew I was above the curve.

>>6908295
yeah sure buddy
>i'm smarter than everyone I don't need to prove it though

I can fly and light blunts with my laser vision I don't need to prove it though

>>6908299
Not really, my mother got me tested as kid and I had very good learning and understanding capabilities. However my primary never had a gifted class even though I got straight 10 through out it.

By middleschool I became an edgy faggot who thought grades are not a measure of someone capabilities and you know the drill. When I finished highschool the most repeated thing I listened was that "I was soooo inteligent but I couldn't not organize". I was just a fucking lazy faggot.

>>6908311
when I was in middle school I thought having good grades meant you were a nerd and I didn't want to be a nerd so I purposely got str8 C's so my mommy wouldn't get mad that for failing, and the kids at school wouldn't think i'm some fucking poindexter

>gifted classes
Top kek the standards for gifted classes are lower than what existed prior to NCLB. Congrats, you're in a gifted class that is teaching material to kids that was considered nigger tier in the 80s and 90s.

Yep, I was in the gifted program in middle school, took 1 day a week out of normal classes to go to a gifted class, I had a great teacher, we would do a bunch of really fun activities and stuff and they had these math books that were creative challenging problem solving activities instead of the fucking garbage that is public school math education that were fucking awesome.

>>6908280
Sounds like you either went to a shitty school or didn't try very hard. I did IB and entered college with 45 credits, got out of all but 2 of the required gen ed bullshit, also got out of calc 1 and 2 though I did AP as well. And more importantly than that I got a pretty acceptable entry level knowledge of physics, chemistry, history and english despite never taking a class in any of those in college, not any more than maybe an intro level class worth of knowledge but still way way more than the average uneducated pleb has any idea, I was able to do friends' chem 2 homework pretty easily later on. Oh, and I'm pretty much fluent in Spanish even though I haven't really used it since high school.

This was all at the cost of being a total nerd with no social life in high school and spending a lot of my free time doing homework, but, honestly, I was an antisocial nerd anyway and that much more time playing WoW and smoking weed wouldn't have made my life any better.

>>6908316
With this much skill in the realm of logic it seems safe to assume that you didn't make it into the gifted classes at your school? :^)

>did IB
>literally just regular classes but with less depth and more SJW shit

>>6906513
lol i could speak three languages when i was 5years old.. now i speak 5 languages pretty much fluently

>>6908322
>And more importantly than that I got a pretty acceptable entry level knowledge of physics, chemistry,
O you mean the pop-sci definition with some bullshit easy as fuck equation? Or is it the fact the iternals ToK and EE are graded by retarded people with a marking scheme that is idiot proof?

It is an overated system because the UN has adopted it and put their shit propaganda in it. The IB is basically we print a program, you follow program exactly as we want and you get a diploma that may or may not help you in the future. In my case it did not do jack shit.

And if you think doing the IB is for only le nurds, I had a mixed program that had different topics to cover. However, my principal told me the the IB is taking a coin flip but it is a good experience overall.

>>6908326
>gifted classes
Sorry, I wasn't "gifted" enough to be in a special ed class :^)

I was accepted into the IB program, but had to switch schools and they didn't offer IB. I had very shit grades and my guidance counselor recommended against it because he thought I was a dumb CPer.

Elitism is great.

Yeah. I took an exam when I was 11 years old (it was basically an IQ test, a maths test and an english/reading test) and I scored in the top ~10% out of all the people who took the test, so I was admitted to a "gifted" high school.

It pretty much backfired. It was too much pressure, there was too much expected of me, and around the age of 15 I began to question the whole point of getting good grades, since I had no direction in life, I was just getting good grades for the sake of pleasing other people. I was also just sick of being forced to go to school every day. A similar thing happened to a lot of my friends from that school.

After that, I stopped caring and ended up really falling behind in my classes and eventually almost dropped out. I ended up doing well enough to get into a pretty good university, but that was almost completely due to luck because I was good at bullshitting through assignments and tests.

It was only after I had left school, when I took a year off before I went to university, that I began to really want to learn again. I ended up teaching myself a lot of physics and mathematics and then ended up double majoring in physics and mathematics.

TL;DR: Teenagers mostly just want to fuck eachother and party, if you expect too much from them academically you run the risk of burning them out. On the other hand, when nothing is expected of them, that's when they might do their best work.

>>6908347
>O you mean the pop-sci definition with some bullshit easy as fuck equation?
Are you fucking retarded?

I did HL chem, which covers the subject matter in general chem 1, 2, plus some random bullshit from more advanced classes. I did HL physics and learned a ton about electromagnetism and a little bit about particle physics and some other shit and actually learned the basics of special relativity. Call it pop sci bullshit because it's not the same as a fucking bachelor's degree, what the fuck ever, that doesn't make it less real and yeah obviously it's completely useless to me I still really enjoy learning shit about science, I don't know what the fuck you're doing here if you don't. I appreciated actually going through world history from beginning to end at a slightly less retarded level than the "MURRICA #1 FUCK YEAH also white people are evil" bullshit they teach in public school and I enjoyed being exposed to literature that wasn't stupid or for fucking children as well, but I don't expect anyone on /sci/ to understand that.

And I literally was able to do my roommate's chem 1 and chem 2 homework last year, 4 years after finishing IB in exchange for weed based just off what I learned there, if you didn't learn anything it's because you're stupid or you didn't try.

>Or is it the fact the iternals ToK and EE are graded by retarded people with a marking scheme that is idiot proof?
Both of those things really fail but I had a god tier ToK teacher and it was probably the best class I've ever taken. He got fired a couple years later because he was actually teaching the subject instead of the material and everyone kept failing the IB scores.

>It is an overated system because the UN has adopted it and put their shit propaganda in it.
I do agree that the level of leftist garbage they shoved in it was absolutely sickening but the thing is if you're actually learning what they're trying to teach, you'll learn enough to figure out that it's bullshit.

>>6906401
we had a fully blown separate stream with its own schools, busing, etc
the vast majority of my classmates are successful professionals or are pursuing PhDs

>>6906401
Normals are in knowledge production positions of authority as much as gifted types.

They won't hire you if they think you will outshine them.

>>6908366
The level of comprehension you are required in those topics are pop-sci and the other things I had already learnt thanks to my IGCSE course. The math requirement for the HL physics is a Joke. Most of the problem is figuring out what the hell to do as they are horribly explained to you. And take a good physics course and you will throw everything the IB told out of the window.

HL chemistry had the narrowest view on topics that shouldn't be there at all. And it had even more related topics with the IGCSE i also took. And i don't know what kind of literature you were acustomed but I was in diferent types of systems and all of them had a range of books that were all, in their own right way, clasics. And I think you just got fed up by the great gatsby or any book with similar themes and spouted it was somehow muurica propaganda.

My english translated books from the IB were fucking Persepolis and a Dolls House. Thank god they lets us read the heart of darkness before they say it is "racist bigotry".

I also took maths HL and I was pleased with some results but very disapointed as many told me it was suicide and it was just too difficult and the things are just too weird. But the only thing that is hard it that the exam marks computational skills instead of analysis and problem solving. And they took linear algebra for fucks sake to redo the wheel with basic geometry and trig.

Yet another Gifted kid here. I went to parochial schools, so there wasn't a separate program.

I recently got a degree, finally, after bouncing around to various schools, now I am working on a second Bachelors in Applied Mathematics before I start looking into grad school. I wanted a bit more breadth, to complete a full Liberal Arts education in the Medieval sense.

I can only pull this off because I am getting help from my family. If my parents' weren't wealthy enough to help me out, I would probably be in jail or selling drugs.

I was in the accelerated program until I entered high school because my counselor saw my grades started slipping. They continued to slip and I graduated with a 2.8 GPA and a 32 ACT.

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>>6906401
Had a system like this my school, UK here

They would get extra help etc and all sorts. They're all retarded now and some study Art in College

I would have loved to be in the group but i wouldn't have been.. because everyone in there was retarded ...

My school had something called ACES.
They basically made it for me, because I tested a 164 on my IQ test, and it was a small charter school.

There was supposed to be a gifted and talented scheme and I was on it, but nothing ever came of it and nobody on the list ever heard about it. Perhaps there was not enough funding or perhaps they only cared about teaching for exam results. It seems to be taken more seriously in the US than here in the UK.

I was put in an advanced math group in elementary school and we'd go to annual math competitions.

I don't remember ever learning anything there. We just did stuff just slightly above the rest of the class's level. And then we went on to a bunch of busy work where we would build replicas of structures out of cardboard and stuff.

>>6906401
My case was actually the other end of the spectrum. I remember that as a kid I was given extra attention for being considered stupider than everyone else in the class. I was given these forms that at the end of the week, my teacher was supposed to fill out and send to my parents. I also remember being extremely jealous of some of my friends who were placed in the gifted program. Right now I'm definitely way better off than them, but it took me a while to catch up.

>>6909121
>but but muh iq as a deterministic metric of success

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I was in a gifted program.

Summer after 3rd grade they give me an IQ test with the school psychologist and I score high enough that they put me into the smart kid classes. This involved switching schools within the same school district. I was in classes with the same 50 or so kids for the rest of my k-12 education, only mixing with other kids for lunch, gym and later on in highschool mixing with the kids a grade above who were in honors classes.

Socially it was a complete disaster. Taking a group of children and labeling them different is like lesson 1 textbook "don't fucking do this" psychology. Yet the school shrinks thought it would be a fun little experiment. Basically, we were teased and bullied by the other kids whenever we mixed. This fucked me up well into my college years.

Academically the program also failed me. I was essentially the dumb/lazy kid in the smart classes. So there was this weird conflict in my mind where I was dumb compared to the smart kids, yet I was in the smart kid classes.

Needless to say, I fucked my life up pretty good. Spent all of college improving myself socially and hanging out with friends/girlfriends. Failed to get a job out of college and basically spiraled out of control to the point where I was paying my rent for a year by selling drugs. I'm almost 30 now and have dug myself out of the hole by some miracle and now am a web code monkey. A handful of the kids in the gifted program died from drug overdoses, suicide etc. One kid got shot in the face after getting in a fight at a party. Basically only 5% of the kids really went on to do anything above average. Probably the same % as would have if there was no gifted program at all.

Also the school district stopped the program a few years after my class & chose a more sane model than segregating kids. If you ever have kids and want to put them into one of these programs, just don't. If you care then just teach them math during dinner or something.

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I was placed in my school's newly-formed gifted program in 4th grade based on an IQ test ordered by my 4th grade homeroom teacher. It's actually surprising that such a program existed at all, given that I went to school in the rural South.

Anyway, in 4th-5th grade the gifted program mostly consisted of a very disorganized discussion session roughly twice a week where the lady in charge of the program would talk to us about various more "advanced" topics. On off-days we would play Frogger on an ancient computer for an hour. We also competed in a statewide Scholar's Bowl.

The middle school iteration of the gifted program was much different: we took a ton of field trips to see various plays and operas, we learned basic conversational Russian, we read various "classics" like 1984 or War and Peace, and we put on a few plays/events for the plebs composing the rest of the student body.

Unfortunately the high school I attended had a principal that completely refused to have any sort of gifted program as he felt that it was "unfair" to dumbfucks, and so I had to supplement my own education in other ways.

Of all of the people I knew in the gifted program, basically all of them became total plebs except myself and my best friend. This was likely due to the fact that many of those in the program weren't really gifted, and were only in the program due to the lobbying of their parents (in particular, an IQ test and perfect state assessment test scores were originally the only way into the program but some parents threw a bitchfit and they started letting in people based on their grades in classes).

>>6908378
>we had a fully blown separate stream with its own schools, busing, etc
>the vast majority of my classmates are successful professionals or are pursuing PhDs

If you're going to have a program for gifted kids, this is the only way to do it. It isn't accelerated classes that fuck up kids, or telling them they are smart. It is segregating them and labeling them as different than their peers.

>>6906401
I was, didnt see any black people there though

>>6906621
>trip to Oxford and Cambridge
I was asked if I was interested in entering the gifted program but I refused. All they did was act superior, solved some easy as fuck equations and then played narcissistic Perelmans, did some shitty play with no aesthetic, gave normalfag talks no one could stand, and lead some shit nobody gave a shit about. A few in the program were pretty cool. The rest, circlejerking fags that are your typical /sci/fag that posts on IQ threads and gives himself blowjobs whenever he remembers his IQ is above average.

If we could go to Oxford or Cambridge from now and then, I would've entered. Oxbridge is a really beautiful place. One of the best places academically. Especially Cambridge for me as I'm a /STEM/fag and I went there.

>>6906401
My shitty elementary school didn't have a good program but they had the resources so they created some program for my friends and me. They taught algebra and researching skills. I remember we learned the Pythagorean theorem and I had to do this extensive research project in 2nd grade, I remember we had to get interviews with people and look in encyclopedias and stuff.
We had like 4 teachers in 3 years, but it was still easy stuff.

Now I work menial jobs all around the world, since I never went to uni. Did really well in high school though, took PSEO classes and CIS Spanish and Physics. Your professor was absolutely correct.

>>6909154
Seconding this. All these /IQ/fags that were bullied as kids because they were special and absolutely not autistic nor social outcasts that would come together and circlejerk about how smart they were and how they were labelled as special just gets over my nerves. The program in itself is a major fuck up.

I was asked if I wanted to be in the program and I refused. I spent my childhood and teen years with cool-tier normalfags. I got straight A*s on my mathematics and physics exams and shit alongside one other kid that exceeded in physics and when the physics teacher announced that we will be getting extra and special worksheets and homework, all I could think about was "fuck" and "play this nice" so that I don't make my friends and classmates feel inferior to me. I've always hated to feel inferior as well as feeling superior, so I said something like "C'mooon" when I heard that with a laugh and looked at a couple of my friends as if I hated the extra 'harder' material and they pointed at me and laughed. At that moment, I felt good. Afterwards, the teacher said that we'll also be getting an extra couple of marks for that and I pointed and them and laughed. At that moment, I felt good and safe again.

Seriously, all these fags thinking that being in a gifted program is a good thing just makes me laugh. I was friends with everyone in the school. From the principal to the teachers to the students, almost everyone knew me and acted friendly with me. I almost never got in a fight in my whole high school period. And even though I read Uni-level material in the school and at home, even though I stopped fights and bullies, even though I was killing my tests, even though I was an acne-infested, fat, neckbeard permavirgin, I wasn't bullied and I was treated in a more friendly and in a better way than the rest.

tl;dr - OP = faggot

>>6909255
Also, if your excuse is that you merely wanted to learn, read fucking books. Download some shit illegally and print them in the local library or some shit. If you wanted to discuss and debate topics, Leddit is a good neckbeard and normalfag tier shit, *Chin is a good autistic shit, and normal forums are the best. If you wanted some other bullshit, you could persuade it by yourself.

There's literally no excuse to go to a gifted program except the possibility of better teachers and educators being there. But, if the gifted program is in the same school, you could probably reach them even if you didn't enter it, that is if there were any better educators and teachers there.

>>6906418
Did you get accepted out of highschool?

Yeah, I was in advanced math and english in primary school, where there was just me and 2 other girls in the whole class (still had home room and regular arts, sports etc).
I sorta enjoyed that, but at secondary school the dean and my mom wanted me to go into the advanced math, science, english classes. I didn't want to, all my friends were in the regular classes and no-one listened to me, instead just telling me how special and smart I was and how it was good for me.

I tried at first but I absolutely hated it. The classes were pretty small and all had the same kids. They were all rich and it felt like they looked down on me, the teachers weren't friendly. didn't bother listening or doing my homework. It was fucking miserable, and then they put me in them again in the next year even when I failed every first year thing. Finally I was placed back into normal classes and was much happier, although I was a bit behind having not learned anything for the last two years. Math, with my friends and a good teacher I caught up and they put me BACK in the advanced classes the next year even though I protested, even though I told them I would not put in any effort.
Just spent every lunch time in detention for not doing my homework, failed every exam, fought with the other kids in the class.

Now, it seems silly to sabotage myself because I didn't get what I wanted, but honestly those advanced classes were the most miserable time of my childhood.

>>6909284
That is downright child abuse and illegal. How the fuck could they get away with that?

>>6909286
I wouldn't so much call it child abuse.
It's up to the parents and the school to decide which stream to put kids in. Students don't have any say. I can't think of any schools where students do.

The detention was par for course for not handing in homework/disrupting classes etc.

>>6908276
it's OK anon, it made sense why the program just didn't work out in the end.

>>6909289
If you don't want to be in the gifted program, you have the right not to be in the gifted program.

Forcing a child to do something despite his will knowing it makes him miserable is child abuse.

Not giving a child the right to chose what he wants to do and strapping him of any opinion of his future that he has is illegal.

i was in GATE as a kid. I placed high on many tests despite ignoring most of the homework and apparently i did really well on the entry test. Its nothing special but i do remember we had a lot of pizza parties and crap like that. and grades 3-5 had some sort of pet.

I work at a cafe that serves food now. trying to break my way into the computer field

>>6909341
The guy is right you know. Although it can be considered a form of child abuse, it's hardly illegal. Until your independence at the ripe age of eighteen it's up to the teachers and the parents to decide what to do with you and how much they're going to listen to you. Protest tends to be thought of as the child being a troublemaker or, more recently, having a mental disorder and having to do mandatory therapy sessions.

At least there aren't any massive amounts of drug prescriptions here. I've heard too many horror stories from Americans about the situation there.

Former gifted student. Our program amounted to pulling us out of normal classes for an hour a week to work on special projects. There was no outside work and what we did never really felt challenging or mentally stimulating. Our program only lasted through middle school.

I went to a below average school, so I can't say that those in gifted performed better or worse than those not in the gifted program. There's a valley curse in the area. From my graduating class, I'm a PhD candidate, while the other guy in the gifted program works in a restaurant.

>>6909368
America's really don goofed now.
The educational and legal system are both falling apart horridly and horribly.

>>6906417
How were you so smart without actually having any necessary information instilled in you?Clearly you must be making your claims based off of some measurable thing, like test scores.

Unless you aren't.


That is unless

>>6906421
I like you

>>6906431
That is incredible

In Southern California, I was put into the GATE program before being kicked out from not doing any homework lol

>>6906401
SoCal GATE here.

5th grade:
>Teacher would basically lecture
>Rest of the afternoon to work on packets or read textbooks.
>Motivation and work ethic reached an all time high.

Middle School:
>Counselor puts me into honors, which is filled with GATE students.
>Teachers were horrible.
>Easy classes and work, no pressure.
>Work ethic and motivation are extinguished.

High School:
>Join STEM Magnet school
>Motivation and work ethic temporarily rekindled.
>Teachers were better
>Tons of cheaters; no punishments for those caught
>Huge egos
>AP classes handed out A's at the end of the semester to pad grades.
>No pressure: easy classes and work
>Motivation and work ethic are gone for good.
>Became cynical douche and spent all my time on /a/

Everyone from these programs ended up completely unprepared for college STEM classes, even with 4.0+ GPA. They're Sociology and Chicano studies majors now.

As for me, I have newfound motivation and work ethic thanks to great math professors.

>>6909577
>unprepared
Why?

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>>6909121

Me too anon. My school really had it out for me and thought I was retarded. Had to really fight a lot of the bullshit they tried to put me through. Most of my friends were in gifted/AP throughout school. I was kind of jealous, but they pretty much all burned out early and I graduated summa cum laude and have a good, high paying job.

I guess I was a little slow to start, but I think everything worked out pretty well.

I got offered to join the gifted class but decided against it, I didn't want to spend less time with my friends.

I ended up goofing off through the rest of school.

>>6909169
We had our own school within a larger, regular school. So we were in fact segregated and were basically told that we were smarter than everyone else.
The reason people in my program tend to succeed is probably
a) Canadian, so easy mode
b) Selective screening... I remember it was 2 full days of tests plus interviews
c) started early, in the second grade
d) parents were already high socioeconomic status or extreme striver immigrants

Really the program itself was BS, from what I understand of IB that seems much more rigorous and well thought out.

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>>6906401

>brothers and a couple of friends all got into GATE (gifted and talented education) in elementary school
>cool afterschool programs build electronics go on trips do all sorts of cool sciency shit
>finally standardized testing says Im eligible in like 7th grade
>mfw I fail placement test
>fast forward about 10 years
>both brothers barely graduated high school, both were/are colossal fuck ups
>most friends I know work that did it work shit jobs (peace corp lol) or other office jobs
>I graduate college 3.9GPA
>take a few years off
>currently destroying med school

All about that internal drive

I was always invited to go to the GATE things in elementary but never went

i was in the gifted program, and scored the best out of everyone who got in, they told me. i also scored best on our math exams, and got to go to the county math competition and won 3 years in a row. it was actually kinda cool, we never had actual real homework and mostly did like engineering type projects and played brainteaser games and all that.
working on master's in math now. probably going to do a phd too. could just have easily been a truck driver or electrician or something and i wouldn't even mind that much. intelligence isn't everything; i'm reasonably lazy, apathetic and mentally ill.

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i was in the gifted program, and scored the best out of everyone who got in, they told me. i also scored best on our math exams, and got to go to the county math competition and won 3 years in a row. it was actually kinda cool, we never had actual real homework and mostly did like engineering type projects and played brainteaser games and all that.
working on master's in math now. probably going to do a phd too. could just have easily been a truck driver or electrician or something and i wouldn't even mind that much. intelligence isn't everything; i'm reasonably lazy, apathetic and mentally ill.
picture is how i feel about my life.

>>6909752
well, I'm not from America, in my country, there were special schools and programs for gifted children. Even special university program. Problem is that people are burnt-out. This department was the only one that need special psychiatric help program. Most of us just pretend to be ok, there were suicides and so on.

my school teachers didn't allow me to take the IQ test they gave to the "gifted students" aka students with high grades, the highest student got 121, later i begged my parents to let me take the test on my own - which is expensive as fuck here- and i scored 143, i went to the teacher who was in charge of the tests, showed him the score and lectured him how education has nothing to do with IQ, i said and i quote "the only reason i score low in your exams is because i have better things to do than studying for it", i quit that school the same year.

I got put in a program called JAWS in 5th grade, before that a bunch of my teachers recomended me to the program and then they made me take a few tests in reading, math, science, and art. then about a week after the tests they said that every friday i would be going to another school for schooling. so the first time i went it was on a bus with a bunch of kids from other schools in the area and we went way out in the woods to some other school looking building with a playground out front, the things i remember most about it was we got 2 lunch breaks (we could snack and play on the playground) and we did a bunch of fun stuff like setting up experiments to answer silly questions that there were already answers to eg. we set up a plant and over the period of a few weeks we observed and recorded how damaging the plant caused it to react to the stimuli and devote more resources to the damaged area. also we did a lot of drawing and "talks" where we would just talk about stuff we were curious about and the teachers there would be very honest and blunt with the answers while still making sure we understood all of the implications.

>>6909752
>could just have easily been a truck driver or electrician or something and i wouldn't even mind that much
Yes, yes you would have.
You think you get to sleep much when you're driving a truck? Fuck no, you have to get that cargo to the destination on time or some other fucker will replace and you'll be out of a job.

You think you would be alright with being an electrician? Commercial work maybe, but you'd make fuck all and would always be scrounging for cash, sometimes having to choose between eating or paying rent. Industrial work? Good luck dealing with people that are one step above gang members and criminals(some even are) all day every day. Do you think you would enjoy someone like that telling you what to do all the time? Them screaming at you for fucking one thing up because you don't have the experience to know what you're doing, and them constantly belittling you and calling you a retard, always subtly threatening violence?

No fuck off, just get some therapy faggot, I'm sure you're cushy fucking university provides some.

>>6909831
i worked at a cast concrete plant all summer and i was completely okay with it

>>6909831
dude industrial electricians make six figures starting

I was but I just fucked around until they dropped me. I didn't get it at the time.

>>6909833
I dunno if you're shitposting or not, but in my city it's relatively easy to make six figures if you're a qualified welder, heavy duty mechanic, steamfitter, machinist, etc

Until oil goes under $70/barrel, then you're fucked.

>>6909843
tradesman gotta move where the work goes sometimes.

>>6909843
I wasn't joking and yeah all the newfies in alberta are going back on poge

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>>6906401
I was in the gifted program from 4th to 8th grade. I had to switch schools and everything because I was bored of the easy course work.

All of the kids were a little bit quirky (aspie-ish) but we all were really close. Bullying can get tough during that age so it was nice to have a solid group like that. We took every class of the day together and rarely interacted with the other kids on campus.

The problem with this is that by the time I got to high school and wanted to start doing high schooler stuff (talking to girls, going to parties, etc.), I didn't really know anybody outside of that small group. While everyone else had a large social circle, I was just left behind. I eventually did pretty well in the last two years, but I still feel like I missed out on a lot.

The good thing is, though, that I was able to really expand as a student. By the time I finished my junior year in high school I was already done with differential equations and had 4-5's on a few APs. Some people from the program strayed off the course, but I know of multiple students from the program who scored 2400s on the SAT's. Now I'm studying computer science and math and I'd like to think that the gifted program helped me get here.

The social scene for college basically resets once you get to college anyway (as long as you go out of state).

Most low paying normal guy jobs are offered to high achievers in universities who haven't had any previous jobs.
They're basically tricked into thinking they got a dealio

>>6906401
I was in a gifted program.

Turns out I wasn't actually gifted. Just average. My whole school district was into that positive reinforcement nobody's a failure shit. If you wanted to be considered gifted all you really had to do was at least some of the work and pull at least Bs which wasn't hard to do.

My school district had low standards and it left me really fucked up when I went to college.

>>6906401
I was certified gifted back in 3rd grade. However, I changed schools to a smaller one that didn't have a program and it kind of got swept under the rug. Got re-certified as gifted Sophomore year to dual-enroll.

I know a couple of people who were also that way, and they've all done well.

>>6906401
Where are you from OP (if you're still here)?

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I was in it and seems like most we benefit was going to Camp for like a week.
>mfw I found out the rest of the school raised money for us to go.

>>6909912
why nigga?

I used to be the most intelligent kid in my school. I was in the gifted education program, I had straight 100s, I was the model student. All of my report cards came with "William will be able to accomplish whatever he wants when he grows older" and "I'm glad to see him now, so I can say 'I knew that kid' when he's an adult."
But now? I'm a senior in High School, and this entire 4-year period has been incredibly awful. I got caught up in social stuff, I really got in to prioritizing recreation over work, etc. A guess/estimate would put my GPA through this period of time at a solid 2.7. I know I've fucked up, and there's no going back.
Because of this, I'm not going to be able to get into the fields that I love — astronomy, physics, programming. I enjoy all of these things, and do tons of research on them outside of school, but my grades don't match up. I won't be making it into a college, I won't make it to a job involving those subjects, etc. I'm most likely going to live out the rest of my life paycheck-to-paycheck because I fucked up now.
So underage anons of /sci/ — I know that you're browsing here — don't make the mistake I did. Whatever homework you're putting off to browse this thread and feel good about the fact that you're in the gifted program, drop this and do that. Don't be like me. Don't fuck it all up.

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>>6909977
m8 what are you even on about

Your intentions to help others are noble. However, your situation is not that dire. Are you murrican? Community college into a state school is always possible, though if you have a list of extracurricular accomplishments and a good reading/math SAT score you may not even need that. Seek out decent colleges that use a holistic approach to admissions.

I was in kindergarten.They took me into a small classroom with 3 other kids. Handed us each a piece of paper with a clipart birds nest on it. Gave us a pencil and told us to draw what we saw in the nest. I drew eggs. Just eggs with some cracks in them, because after all that's what nests contain. I was in the "Gifted and Talented." program all the way until 10th grade and I still get shitty invitations in the mail from them to attend camps even though I've dropped out. It's really beyond me why I was put into the program and was considered to be so gifted and my older brother was much brighter than me and was overlooked. As for the kids who saw different things in the nest, they might be in normal job too. Who knows.

>>6909982
I vaguely remember something like that in 1st grade. We were all lined up and had to go to the counselor's office for some test.

I remember there were some colored plastic bears lined up on the table and they asked you to play with them or do some task with them.

I remember my friend kinda "failed" this test and had to go to special ed until the 4th grade but he was near the top of his class every year until the end of HS and he goes to UC davis now.

(I don't feel like this is really new thread worthy)
On the other side of this spectrum, were any of you labelled as a "problem kid" or "special" when you were in school? How has your life been after it?

I was put into a "resource room" (read: tard pen) in middle school, since I struggled in math. I kind of lost motivation in school since I had serious chronic depression when I was younger, so I went from having just my math class there to having all my classes there. I got into a lot of fights with the other tards, since there was such dissonance between me and them, which just made me look more special, so I ended up going to a special school for special kids (read: tard ranch).

>Went to university, took calculus and got interested in proof.
>Declared math minor
>Took abstract algebra, fell in love with certain theorems and proof.
>switch major
>Dem representations
>Dat invariance theory
>Now Ph.D. candidate for pure mathematics in #9 program in U.S.A.

>>6906401

Yeah, I know what you mean, man. I think attitude is a much stronger indicator of success than whatever it is that gets you into those programs.

I was in an enrichment system in elementary school that was basically just a club for tiny smart kids. My friends from it are still smart, but they're mostly in business and other normal jobs, like you said. I'm doing chemical engineering, but my commonality with other engineers or scientists is mostly passion, not early intelligence.

>>6906401
GATE was bullshit. It was the same classes with extra coursework. Not deeper or different work, just more.

>>6909977
>Salute to you, William, sir. I will.

>>6906401
Never was. All the testing for it was done at the elementary school level and the elementary school version of the gifted program was retarded. The way it worked was that they pulled you out of class to go to a gifted session that lasted for part of the day. During that time you'd do "creative" projects, and then they'd drop you back off in class and then you'd have like 2-3x as much homework as everyone else because of all the make-up work you'd have to do for the class time you missed.

Anyway, the reason this is relevant is that unbeknownst to me my ITBS and IQ scores practically made me a shoe-in for gifted, but in order to get in you still had to take a few other entrance tests. I was a lazy kid who despised busy work and art, and the last thing I wanted in my life was MORE homework in exchange for what amounted to artistic busy work. So when they made me take those entrance tests I made a game of writing down the dumbest answers I could think of. That actually ended up being too obvious, so the school made me take the tests again, so on the second take I made sure to select some right answers here and there. After that they didn't test me again.

I don't feel like I missed out on anything. My high school's gifted classes were a joke. No better than the "advanced" class offerings which were also a joke. The only truly advanced material was in the AP classes. As for the few people I know from HS who were in gifted, one is in pharm school (might have finished now actually), one was going to some bottom tier law school last I heard, another went to UGA's chem PhD program, one's an artist (lifelong passion, not surprised), and one is going to a bottom tier MD school. My sister was also in gifted and just started her first year in an English master's program.

As for myself, I was doing well, but I decided to change careers recently which is either going to go down as the best decision I ever made or the worst.

>>6911381
Best, if you try hard :)

topkek everyone showing off gifted program

youre a genius if u think for yourself

enrolling in a gifted program doesnt make u smarter

I was in special ed all the way up to the end of high school.
You don't develop normal social skills and study habits when your class mates are literal retards. I wonder what percentage of special Ed students make it to STEM.

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>>6911471
Forgot pic.

I was in a gifted program in elementary school and it was by far one of the most important educational experiences I've had in my life.

The program was part of the public school education system I was a part of, though my school was by far the worst in the system. Only 1 of the other students in my school were selected for the program in my grade. I learned more from the gifted program than I had from my core education even though we only met one day a week. This program got me very interested in science, and I saw learning about science and solving problems as fun and interesting activities.

After elementary school I stayed in the poor schools relegated by my family's zip code. Eventually, after a lot of problems at home and going homeless for a bit, I dropped out of HS at 10th grade.

After turning 18 I moved in with my older brother, who wanted to help me get away from my parents, in the local major city and started working. Eventually, I got a GED and started up community college.

Right after getting an AS in Science I earned a place in an NSF REU program and took my first steps in a research institution. I was completely in love with everything. It was like a dream - doing research and living in a nice city and having more than enough money week-to-week. I also found a field of research I have been pursuing ever since from invited talks to the university. I'd rediscovered all of the happiness I had from that gifted program during this REU and it started a major metamorphosis in me towards becoming a scientist.

Since then, I've been pursuing research in the aforementioned field, and about to submit my first publication as first author, and will be pursuing my PhD come next fall.

I can't imagine any of this happening without the gifted program I was in when I was a kid.

>>6911514
Wait, this is 4chan. I'm not supposed to read nice things here.

>>6911381
>bottom tier MD school
What does that even mean? If you get into any US medical school you're fine as far as residency placement goes.

my school didn't have a "gifted" program, but there were different tracks for basic classes (math, science, english) and I got placed into their respective advanced classes. but, there really weren't any decent teachers that could motivate me so I was just an antagonistic asshole to the teachers and the other students in those classes who I perceived not to be particularly intelligent, but overachievers with helicopter parents.

i ended up hanging out with the poorer, "troubled" kids and came to the conclusion that almost everyone in the advanced courses were only there because of encouragement from their parents and teachers combined with wealth. a lot of the troubled, "dumb" kids I hung out with were much smarter than they, but were given literally no encouragement from school staff or their parents

>>6911531

shit I fucked up

>>6906401
I was in the opposite of a giften program. In grade 7-9 we had a program where our classes would plan our own studies throughout the weeks, with only a few fixed lessons. 1 week in and noone ever planned anything special.

In grade 10-12 I picked the "construction program" and finished as a painter.
Oh boy. The rest of my class were not very bright. They all hated school and studying. The teachers had to beg the students to do just do .. something.. so that they could be passed in the compulsory courses.
I worked as a painter for 3 years before a friend convinced me to apply for university.

That was 10 years ago and I recently published my dissertation and I'm now a postdoc at the same university (coding FEM-software for computational mechanics).
I can't imagine anything like GATE being a good idea.

>>6906401
Qualified for it but I didn't care enough about school work in order to get the grades required to be placed in the program. Oh well

>>6909977
lolwut dude your life isn't over after you fuck up in high school. In fact, fucking up in high school is more ideal than fucking up during college or beyond. Like what the other poster said, you can go to community college and transfer to a decent university ave still do fine.

I was also in GATE. We just did puzzles and played with neat toys. Pretty good deal. Then I dropped out of high school at 15 because I fucking hated going to class.

If you are truly gifted, then you would doubt the sincerity or even the actual value of the 'gift-giver'. Supposing you are a savant, and they lay out for your a course for the gifted. You are still trapped like a bird in a cage, for your curriculum is not doubt being guided by the 'non-gifted'.

If you're a real sharp kid, you drop out of school. You realize that you do not need it. Why learn in the confines of a structure written by the non-gifted? Does this not hold the gifted child back?

There wasn't a gifted program until I was in my final year, so I didn't get much out of it except some paper saying I was in the top 2% IQ range and I was stuck with the mediocre marks on all my subjects because there was a lot of work for two-years-easy material and I was lazy.
Fuck shitty education systems, fuck me.

>>6909977
Nigga it's not over yet. Do what my parents did when you can't get into a good college. Go to a community college then transfer to a university you would like to join. Plus don't fucking sweat High School shit, I'm only freshman undergrad and that already feels pretty far behind.

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>always smartest kid in class growing up
>everything is a breeze, never have to work, always do better than everyone
>have to attend classes a grade up for English/Math during elementary school
>feel a weird divide leaving my homeroom to be with older kids
>skip 5th grade
>get in "Academy classes" in middle school, be in best one
>school begins to feel like busy work
>wonder why I am doing any of this shit
>stop doing assignments but still pass every test and thus the grade
>slowly plummet into lower tier classes over middle school career
>barely eligible to get into high school
>get into specialized highschool based off of entrance exams
>attend arguably the best school in NY (Stuyvesant)
>lack of stimulation and accrued indifference and alienation...drop out
>currently attend shitty community college
>realize I would now struggle with Math based courses from total lack of familiarity
>have nothing but A and F grades depending on if I managed to bother with class at all
>have no future
>have no ambition

Feels meh.

My 2 cents I guess. I guess I was always considered "smarter" in elementary school to some degree but didn't quite make it into the advanced classes for the smartest kids. Then owing to problems in my class in 5th grade I switched from a public school to a private "gifted" school for half a year after I tested in. It was both the most fun and challenging time I had in elementary, maybe most of my primary school career. I was always dealing with constant homework and a strict teacher, but we got to do fun shit like staying overnight at a hotel for a field trip and reading Lord of the Rings and getting in-depth about it. Everything we did was to such a high degree I don't know how I did it as a 5th grader. Looking back the work intensity was probably higher than what I was doing for most of High-School. Also, similar to other posts itt many of my classmates in the private school were rather social inept or had inflated egos. Wasn't the case for everyone but it was definitely noticeable. May or may not have affected how social I was for a while. The second time I encountered anything "gifted" was in High School were there was a sophomore-junior program that I was accepted into after testing. This was probably my most favorite class in High School. The class had two kickass teachers who lead a very free form class. Topics varied by the week and we were actively encouraged to bring in news articles that we found interesting. We analyzed the week's subject in-depth, and the teachers wouldn't mind the topic of conversation shifting to something more interesting. In short, we were encouraged to think outside the box in a meaningful way. The best part was our final project at the end of Junior year. You were basically told to present on literally anything you wanted as long as you ran it by the teachers. No timetable except a due date, this was a test to see what you could really do with minimal limits. And we ran with it. 1/2

>>6912146

cheer up bro. I was in the same situation, dropped out of stanford after doing well in high school and getting top percent SAT scores.

I finally made it out of CC after 12 semesters in 5 years. I made up every F with an A and am transferring to a 4 year uni.

It's not the end of the world. You'll make it bro.

>>6906401
Yep. My sister too was selected, but she failed their tests on purpose (because she didn't want to emulate me, I guess).

Also, where are the white guys in your image?

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>>6912172
I don't feel particularly sad...just sort of empty. My school has a very limited amount of F-replacements too, so I am not allowed such aspirations, even if I could entertain them.

>>6912170
continue? I'm interested in how this project went. I am ready for it to be a disaster but I suspect you're going to pleasantly surprise us?

I feel like posting an image.

>>6912170
So one girl decides she wants to learn about bee-keeping. She doesn't just visit bee-keepers and read about bees, she went and fucking bought a beehive from fuck knows where and puts one in her backyard and self-teaches herself to beekeep. And it fucking works. She showed us videos of her tending to the hive and after the school year was over invited us all to her house to see it for ourselves. Last I heard she might have bight bought another hive to go with it. One guy did a project on 3D printing and robotics and managed to get access to a 3D printer and make little functioning robots that he could program. Someone dissected a piglet for some reason, one guy did something with radios, another about hobos, all sorts of shit. And it was beautiful. I chose to learn more about my family's history relating to world war 2 since I had family who were involved in both the Pacific and European theaters. I did video interviews with my grandparents and dug around my family's past. I heard for the first time my grandfather speaking about how his town was bombed to hell, how my great-grandfather was shot down not once but twice, and that there was a book written about the flight crew he was in. I recorded data and photos I'd never heard about before, and even acquired my great-grandfather's old camera and map from the war. The point of all this was that the gifted class I was a part of strove to really make us find that drive inside us and show what we could do when we had drive and motivation. I wish there were more classes like it, and was rather stunned when at the end of the year our teachers informed us that the district was canceling the class format to a more curriculum-based one. Both the teachers I had refused to teach this new course and so ended that style of gifted class at my school. I still count myself lucky that I was part of the last class to do it that freestyle way.

>>6912197
Gotta pass those tests to get into those schools to get those degrees to get those jobs to keep everything the way it is but slightly depreciated...

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I was technically admitted to a gifted program but my mother is a working class christfag (Catholic as fuck, son) and thus I attended a Catholic school with no gifted programs.

And you know what? I'm grateful for it. Obviously there should be outreach opportunities for gifted kids - just like there should be programs for disabled kids or kids with other talents - but this idea that gifted kids should be cloistered away is absolutely absurd. Intellectual gifts should be shared with everyone.

(BTW, I was a hardcore christfag through the vast majority of my life, and only became an atheist recently. Christfaggot made me a kinder person though. Still, super happy I don't have to fast.)

On a side note, I found that a lot of kids from gifted programs (my friends I met at conferences from public schools) had a serious persecution complex. They would complain to me about how 'anti intellectual' society was and blah blah blah and then get sent on these prestigious week-long field trips while the "normal" kids had homework. I think it made some of my friends very spoilt and malicious. My gifted friends from Catholic school who were forced to study with "normies" are all kind and affected by the principles of Catholic social justice. On the other hand, my gifted program friends occasionally advocate for things like eugenics and exterminating "normies".

TLDR: No, OP. I was offered but didn't go through with it. Glad. Think it makes you a dick.

I feel terribly bad for the kids who weren't fortunate enough to make it to these programs because their parents were horrible and public schools never helped them.

They do get better as the years go by, however.

>>6906401
My friends used to be in GATE. Now they're NEETs.

Basically everybody in the local school system wanted me in high school when I was 8, and the university offers started coming when I was 11 or 12... I was just working on my own in class and getting A's on all the grade 12 material at that point. But my parents refused to even put me ahead a grade. Maybe the best thing they ever did for me. They did let me go to the high school for biology labs one year, though, because fuck yeah dissections, and I got along really well with a couple of the grade 12 kids there.

The only advancement I had was that my high school had a program where they merged grades 9/10 science and 9/10 social studies. I took those classes so that I could have spare blocks when I hit grade 11 and 12. But that was okay because a lot of my friends were in them, too.

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>>6906401
>I was talking to a professor about this and he said that a lot of the brighter students he went to university with ended up with what he calls "normal guy jobs".

There's a perfectly good explanation for why this happens

Before college it is easy to get through classes by memorizing rules and not questioning how or why things work the way they do for any topic you're being tested on. This includes math, science, history, whatever. Students that can easily get through a study session without being distracted by details that won't help them get a better grade are more efficient with their study time and, furthermore, are never mentally burdened with curiosity that isn't explicitly answered by the textbook. The result is that early on in the educational system when topics are limited to the basics, curiosity is not only not rewarded, but puts students at a disadvantage as they waste valuable study time wondering about why things don't make sense (limiting complex topics to the basics necessitates leaving out important details whose absence becomes apparent when a student looks closely) when they could very easily just accept what is in black and white, get a good grade on the test and move on. The curious person is left frustrated, unfulfilled and feeling inferior to those who had "no problem" getting a good grade.

But there's a catch. Getting in the habit of not following your questions to achieve a deep understanding of topics ultimately leads to an inability to follow complex topics in college math/science, and the students that were rewarded for their lack of curiosity in high-school start to be punished, and those who were punished are now rewarded.

Personally, I think this is a pretty great morsel of irony that life has given us. But still, it's a failure of the educational system that needs to be fixed.

>>6914481
thank you very much for this post. I legitimately feel that I fall into the overly curious category, perhaps because of ADD. Even when focused on the overall material my attention is disparate within that topic and I'll start questioning everything from the sentence structure of the explanation to the drawings etc and try and always assimilate a big picture. I even tell myself it will be easier if I just get the point, put my head down and move forward but that dulls my passion rather than inciting it. On da flip side, going at a slow pace because of this stresses me out because I don't do as well even though I understand that I could...

What do I do /sci/ ?

So far all I have is just spend more time on everything

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Applied for some gifted program in elementary school, to which there was never a reply (which was weird because they replied for literally everyone else who took it)

Was in some other gifted program in middle school based on test scores I think. Pretty much all we did was philosophize shit and play games. Was okay.

Coulda gone to IB in high school but I just went to some A school instead because I didn't like how hard the workload sounded

>>6914489
>So far all I have is just spend more time on everything

Guy you replied to here. I'm a graduate student in science and in my experience your curiosity pays off in college. Don't worry about what other people are doing, keep doing it and it will pay off, professors will notice that you are exploring beyond the text, and you'll always be able to converse about such topics better than the 'non-curious' students. I won't say that people with the 'non-curious' study habits never graduate, but they are typically lost when it comes to applying things to the real world.

It takes longer to study but it's the best way. You learn more, it's that simple. Keep doing it. I once posted in another thread about taking tests that I noticed when I'm about to take a test in quantum mechanics it's the students who are worried and flustered who do well, the ones with straight faces are about to drop bombs. They're worried because they're always searching deeper for answers, and never have answers to all their questions.

>>6906447
Your teachers were cultural marxists whose sole purpose was to indoctrinate you with multiculturalist ideologies.

Was declared 'gifted' by my school in elementary, then did extra work for fun in junior high, then went on to do IB in high school.Got 6s and 7s in IB (out of 7).

Went on to physics at uni, and did fairly well aside from regularly getting my ass kicked by calculus and linear algebra. I was never that good at learning how to math, but once I learned something the concept stuck with me entirely.

After that I decided to go into a trade and get a job as a normie. I saw the tip of the iceberg that is academia and graduate work, and nope'd the fuck out hard. The study habits and a lot of the kinematics/mechanics work in my degree helped out with my trade, but aside from a CV-padder it didn't do much. At this point I'm just a normie that knows calculus, error propagation, and can express free-body diagrams in differential equations. I'm fine with that. A lot of my friends went into business or programming work after their degrees. It's a rare person that actually finds it fun to be in academia, especially if they're 'gifted' and spent their entire time around joyless nerds.

>>6914510
>didn't like how hard the workload sounded
Workload in IB is pretty much nil compared to first-year university.

>>6914548
What trade?

My school was too small to have a gifted program (my final year class size was under 20 people) but I got given harder work and did some classes with the year above me.

They also asked my parents if they considered sending me and my brother to a selective school but they declined because the nearest one was 5 hours away by car and cost a shitload of money.

I remember being in a gifted program called GT (Gifted and Talented) and all they would give me was extra assignments that really had nothing to do with what I was being taught. I got perfect scores on the TAKS math section, but now that I look back on that test I wonder iPhone I managed to pass it in the first place. As I progressed through the school years, it seemed like my spark for learning was fading away. This was made apparent to me when I had trouble with math in 6th grade. I remember thinking about how miserable school was and how I would constantly cheat just to pass the grade. Then in high school the spark would come and go, but would never stay for long. I entered college and found that my professors actually gave a shit about me. They cared about their students education and not just because it gives them a paycheck. It was then that I found that spark that was seemed to have been lost.

>>6912177
3 Blacks, 2 Whites, 1 Asian, 1 Caucasian(?)

>>6912197
Now that's a gifted program. They throw you in the pit and merely tell you that you have to get out of it. Either way you do it, as long as you do it, you pass. If only other gifted programs were remotely similar to these.

Captcha (Because reasons): Amanda

>>6912239
Seconding this. Not a rule, but it applies almost always. Being an autodidact while still being friends and socializing with 'normies' is fun as fuck and doesn't turn you into some alien autist with an acne-infested face and a massive ego.

>>6914481
Seconding this. I was put down one year when I travelled into another country (Studied half of the year in X country, came in to continue in Y country but they refused and had to wait half a year to repeat the year I had done half of). When I got into the school, I was forced to study some basic shit I understood and would sometimes solve higher-level material. Most of the time, however, I'd think about the function and the structure of the material and topic in itself. This curiosity continued with up until Uni and still is with me.

I liked mathematics since I finished Kindergarten and was considered 'gifted' in it all the way through school. I also liked Science (Before they divided it into Physics, Chemistry and Biology in the IGCSE level. When I hit the IGCSE, I only liked Physics and Chemistry so much and didn't care much about Biology, but was still easily one of the best students in it and the sciences as a whole), ICT, Economy/Business and History (Before they forced some bullshit on us. I liked WW I&II history alongside Greek history and was really into it. Was hoping they taught something like that instead of absolute bullshit no once cares about).

I was curious about all of these subjects and was really surprised how this curiosity was not cherished at all except by this one Physics teacher that taught higher grades at the time and this one Chemistry teacher that taught us and took some time to talk to me about AS and A2 level chemistry when I asked her to at the first year of the IGCSE. The worst, though, was my Mathematics teacher in the first year of the IGCSE program and my Physics teacher for the first two years of the program. They would literally shit on me for solving a few lessons upfront and they'd even deduct marks for the shit.

>>6914799
I remember this instance when I asked my mathematics teacher about a non-linear algebraic series and how I could express it in a function like we used to express linear algebraic series (Mx+C). He just screamed at me, told me to sit down and never 'talk shit' again. Even before, he noticed that I solved some lessons upfront and cried at me telling me to never do what he didn't ask me to do. In that year, I realized how much of a dick I was to my Mathematics teacher just a year before that. The dude taught Uni students before he came to us and he even explained imaginary numbers to me when I asked him about the root of -5 when we first took roots.

As for the Physics teacher, he wasn't as bad, but he still sucked dicks. He basically had the same reaction when I solved some shit upfront, but didn't scream and go all melodramatic.

Even students didn't cherish curiosity. I would sometimes go up to my teacher and ask her about some shit and I'd just get a group of kids yelling (They were serious about it, but they presented it in a joking manner. I replied jokingly just so they stop and continued most of the time) at me and telling me to stop butting myself into some bullshit I don't have to learn.

The only was I could fulfil my curiosity back then was by reading forwards, thinking about mathematical functions in boring maths or otherwise periods (Sometimes I'd be playing football/soccer and just thinking about some infinite series and their functions. Didn't understand much shit, but it was fun). I'd go on the internet, Google some shit, and apply it to learn more about it sometimes as well.

I really am disappointed at how little curiosity is cherished and adored nowadays. It's mostly reacted towards negatively by low-level teachers (Ones that don't understand or know what you're asking them about. Believe me, these exist) in pre-A level or equivalent or teachers that don't want more pain in their ass.

tl;dr - I suck cocks back in highschool.

>>6909491
Yeah, he was eventually fired when it was found out that he wasn't actually a licensed teacher, but he was still the best teacher there.

>>6914802
I read about this a lot, but I've never experienced it myself. My curiosity was always rewarded and encouraged. I had maybe one or two math teachers that were just utter shit, but they were hated by the rest of the faculty.

>>6914866
My maths teacher was liked by both students and teachers, as he was nice to the 'other' kids. He, however, only taught youngsters in a simplistic fashion, and the facility liked him for that as well.

Also, you are lucky to have such experience as a child. I, still, am happy for what I got from that. Without that I wouldn't have learnt so much accidentally and wouldn't have gotten as self-sufficient with learning as well.

I was in an accelerated math course from 6th into 12th grade. Nothing in elementary since I moved around I guess.

>>6914802
My case was very much the exact same. I paid pretty much zero attention in elementary school because of how boring and simplified the information which was being taught was and only got into STEM subjects a lot later in life, the information you get there can be learned in like a week if you're actually interested and it's pretty much all stupid simplifications and tricks to memorize it, which take out anything interesting in it and don't really adhere to any scientific logic.

I ended up getting into mathematics and science later but I think there really should be something in place to engage people like us, most of the time I was just told ''go to a university'' when asking higher-level question, of course it's not the teacher's duty or anything to give me the information which has nothing really to do with the class or course but when an educational system only rewards those willing to memorize everything and not actually think about what they're reading, it's not a good system in my opinion.

It also breeds people like the so called fake professionals, people who got through school only by memorizing all of the content of the books they were told to read, while not actually being interested in the subject and forgetting the whole subject quickly, people you can't have a real discussion about the topic with.

>>6914945
I sucked very badly at memorization. It was the reason I hated a lot of Biology before we got introduced to Biochemistry somewhere in the IGCSE level. My classmates depended heavily on memorization and they got really shocked when I told them that I never memorized the multiplication table nor the square up till the fifth, but rather that I just worked it out in my head really quickly using some dumbfound tricks (e.g. 9*n = (10*n)-n, 5*n=(10*n)/2) that helped me.

Sometimes, I'd try to answer something on the board using a different way, something absolutely retarded and simple, and suddenly I'd get the teacher rubbing the answer from the board and kids yelling at me telling me it's wrong and shit. Here's this one situation where we had to find the M and C of a linear algebraic function (Mx+C) starting with number N. What I did was I subtracted the difference D from N, and found out C, and then put D as M so it became Mn+C=Dx+(N-D). That was, somehow, condemned as wrong because I, apparently, didn't use some stupid formula I didn't even take care to remember (It was N+(x-1)D).

Or even this instance where we were asked to find the percentage P of some number N. What I did was that I divided P by 100 in my brain and then told the teacher to multiply P/100 by N. I was told to sit down and make my answers 'simpler', and this was in the 8th fucking grade. That was the first year of the IGCSE level in my school. If people couldn't 'keep up' with that, which I believe they could've, then that means they're really don fucking goof'd.

It's just really hard to live in a world where all you have to do is plug in the numbers into the formula and pass to go become an engineer or some shit.

"Gifted" programs aren't really a thing in my country, but I was smarter than most kids. In the 1st grade. I knew how to (badly) read and write, and I figured out how division is done by kid of correlating it and multiplication with addition and substraction. I also liked doing those weird assignments in math textbooks where you had to do several operations arranged in a "spiderweb" of sorts. I was a bookworm kid, reading books or playing videogames all the time.

But in school, I got pummeled by long, mind numbing number crunching and writing drill from a kind of smart kid to basically catatonic zombie doing only the bare minimum to pass. I remember that I absolutely couldn't stand having to do elementary calculations by hand when there clearly were perfectly good calculators availble do solve the problems faster and more accurate. I hated having to memorize shit and then crank it out on paper, again and again and again, when it could all be found in a book right next to me. All this droning, memorizaton, and drudgery for the sake of drudgery were just against my nature. Needless to say, I didn't do too good in life. I sort of figured all this out in college, and now I'm trying to cobble together something of a life by studying computer science and trying to get into programming. First semester of master's now, but still no job in sight, and the future look bleak.

>>6911471
Was special ed throughout grade school, now EE with top security clearances. Coworkers think im meticulous with my work and brilliant. They don't realize im just slow... lol. Its all about perceptions.