<story><title>Exceptionally gifted children: long-term outcomes of acceleration (2006) [pdf]</title><url>http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>madaxe_again</author><text>I’m 36, had a recorded IQ at school in the 180s, and was refused acceleration until I “socially adapted” to my classmates, which was challenging, as their interests (eg. football, wrestling, lads mags, pop music, sport, sport, sport) barely intersected with mine (eg. sciences, philosophy, coding, art, jazz &amp;amp; classical music). I was accelerated, eventually, but only by one year - at my prep school, I had been two years ahead, but I spent a regrettable year in the American “educational” system which meant I entered secondary school with my age cohort, as a commoner rather than a scholar, as scholarship exams were not available for overseas entrants at the time.&lt;p&gt;This was at boarding school. I was in detention incessantly, as I was bored out of my wits, and would do stuff like wandering out of an exam after 15 minutes, as I was done and damned if I was going to spend another three hours twiddling my thumbs, and I would disagree with teachers when they were flat-out wrong - that &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; pissed people off - I wasn’t such a blowhard as to vocally disagree over debatable or tenuous points, just factual error.&lt;p&gt;I would fake illnesses so I would end up in the sanatorium, where I would have time to read, and the opportunity to hang out with the several other bright kids from other houses who had established the same methodology for respite. Fond memories of hanging out in our dressing gowns, playing chess and having actual conversations with people I could relate to. Sadly, of the four of us, one is dead, one is in an institution, one is me, and the other survivor fled for the hills and writes children’s science books.&lt;p&gt;School was an education in contempt. I remain convinced that the majority of people are idiots, with the equivalent of a flickering strip lamp for a mind, and nothing I see in the world around me dispels that thought. I am somewhat socially isolated - I have precious few friends near my age, instead most of them being three or four decades my senior - as, in similar fashion to my experiences at school, I have little in common with my supposed peers - they have not started businesses, or travelled extensively (package holidays to Marbella do not count as travel - hiking to Turkmenistan does), or stopped to think about the human condition. Older people of moderately high intelligence have at least had the time to gain some experience and perspective, and I can relate to them - but this means my “in-group” is scattered to the winds, and I see them annually at best.&lt;p&gt;Anyway. This member of that group is doing ok - I struggle with depression and anxiety, but a hyperactive 15 years has allowed me to exit the bullshit-mill and live the life I want - in the countryside, learning new things about nature daily, with mountains of books, and &lt;i&gt;time&lt;/i&gt; to do what I want.&lt;p&gt;As it happens, I made my escape with one of the few people I could relate to at school - moderately smart guy, somewhere in the 150s, but a hard graft type who brute forced his way to knowledge - admirable in his own way. We drifted apart after school, but fate or somesuch brought us to a nexus where starting a business together was practically inevitable.&lt;p&gt;In all honesty, if I hadn’t been able to escape the manufactured world, I don’t think I’d be writing this now, I would have killed myself by this point.&lt;p&gt;As to a support group - problematic. Part of the impact of being surrounded by idiots is to take your intellectual supremacy for granted. I find myself sparring with anyone remotely my equal, as my identity is inextricably tied to being the smartest guy in the room&amp;#x2F;building&amp;#x2F;city.&lt;p&gt;I do, of course, dissemble, and very, very rarely speak my mind as I have here - and I thoroughly expect this to be an unpopular post.&lt;p&gt;Prideful, no, but self-protective, yes - when there’s no other social identity available to you you take what you can get.</text></item><item><author>preston4tw</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m currently 35 and I was ID&amp;#x27;d as a gifted child, so this paper caught my attention. There&amp;#x27;s a section that discusses outcomes based on whether gifted children were allowed to skip grades or not, and my personal experience largely matches what is described for what would be my group, the nonaccelerands:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Several of the nonaccelerands have serious and ongoing problems with social relationships. These young people find it very difficult to sustain friendships because having been, to a large extent, socially isolated at school, they have had much less practice in their formative years in developing and maintaining social relationships. Six have had counseling. Of these, two have been treated for severe depression. If educators were made responsible to ethics committees, as are researchers, such developmentally inappropriate educational misplacement would never be permitted.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I wonder how this group is doing these days. I wonder if the runners of the study ever considered introducing members of this group to the others to form a support group.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tomc1985</author><text>How can an attitude of intellectual superiority amount to any good? I too was identified gifted (and while I&amp;#x27;ve never had an IQ test I was probably never in the 180s) and while I share your frustrations with normies, dwelling on my &lt;i&gt;perceived&lt;/i&gt; intellectual differences with the world has done me no good. It certainly didn&amp;#x27;t help win me any friends. Being intelligent isn&amp;#x27;t all chess and quantum physics; there are lots of people in your ballpark that wouldn&amp;#x27;t come anywhere near fitting your description of a like mind.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve found life to be much more enjoyable by intentionally avoiding people like myself. For highminded intellectual stuff there is plenty conversation to be had here on the net. Befriending and hanging out with a diverse group of misfits from all manner of backgrounds has proven to be much more fulfilling and while, yes, sometimes they can be stupid, and sometimes it is hard to find things in common outside of the reasons the group stays together, I&amp;#x27;ve learned to see it as opportunities for further interpersonal growth.&lt;p&gt;If someone dedicates their life to filling their head with obscure knowledge they&amp;#x27;re just a nerd, no matter how much more intelligent they are than those around them. People may, collectively, be morons, but most individuals are surprisingly perceptive in at least a few areas, and while the prodigies in my life are indeed smart, I&amp;#x27;ve spent enough time around them to know they would still be fish out of water for 90% of what life could possibly throw at them. I hope that your lamentations are formed &lt;i&gt;after&lt;/i&gt; you&amp;#x27;ve sussed these qualities out of the folks you lament.</text></comment>
<story><title>Exceptionally gifted children: long-term outcomes of acceleration (2006) [pdf]</title><url>http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>madaxe_again</author><text>I’m 36, had a recorded IQ at school in the 180s, and was refused acceleration until I “socially adapted” to my classmates, which was challenging, as their interests (eg. football, wrestling, lads mags, pop music, sport, sport, sport) barely intersected with mine (eg. sciences, philosophy, coding, art, jazz &amp;amp; classical music). I was accelerated, eventually, but only by one year - at my prep school, I had been two years ahead, but I spent a regrettable year in the American “educational” system which meant I entered secondary school with my age cohort, as a commoner rather than a scholar, as scholarship exams were not available for overseas entrants at the time.&lt;p&gt;This was at boarding school. I was in detention incessantly, as I was bored out of my wits, and would do stuff like wandering out of an exam after 15 minutes, as I was done and damned if I was going to spend another three hours twiddling my thumbs, and I would disagree with teachers when they were flat-out wrong - that &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; pissed people off - I wasn’t such a blowhard as to vocally disagree over debatable or tenuous points, just factual error.&lt;p&gt;I would fake illnesses so I would end up in the sanatorium, where I would have time to read, and the opportunity to hang out with the several other bright kids from other houses who had established the same methodology for respite. Fond memories of hanging out in our dressing gowns, playing chess and having actual conversations with people I could relate to. Sadly, of the four of us, one is dead, one is in an institution, one is me, and the other survivor fled for the hills and writes children’s science books.&lt;p&gt;School was an education in contempt. I remain convinced that the majority of people are idiots, with the equivalent of a flickering strip lamp for a mind, and nothing I see in the world around me dispels that thought. I am somewhat socially isolated - I have precious few friends near my age, instead most of them being three or four decades my senior - as, in similar fashion to my experiences at school, I have little in common with my supposed peers - they have not started businesses, or travelled extensively (package holidays to Marbella do not count as travel - hiking to Turkmenistan does), or stopped to think about the human condition. Older people of moderately high intelligence have at least had the time to gain some experience and perspective, and I can relate to them - but this means my “in-group” is scattered to the winds, and I see them annually at best.&lt;p&gt;Anyway. This member of that group is doing ok - I struggle with depression and anxiety, but a hyperactive 15 years has allowed me to exit the bullshit-mill and live the life I want - in the countryside, learning new things about nature daily, with mountains of books, and &lt;i&gt;time&lt;/i&gt; to do what I want.&lt;p&gt;As it happens, I made my escape with one of the few people I could relate to at school - moderately smart guy, somewhere in the 150s, but a hard graft type who brute forced his way to knowledge - admirable in his own way. We drifted apart after school, but fate or somesuch brought us to a nexus where starting a business together was practically inevitable.&lt;p&gt;In all honesty, if I hadn’t been able to escape the manufactured world, I don’t think I’d be writing this now, I would have killed myself by this point.&lt;p&gt;As to a support group - problematic. Part of the impact of being surrounded by idiots is to take your intellectual supremacy for granted. I find myself sparring with anyone remotely my equal, as my identity is inextricably tied to being the smartest guy in the room&amp;#x2F;building&amp;#x2F;city.&lt;p&gt;I do, of course, dissemble, and very, very rarely speak my mind as I have here - and I thoroughly expect this to be an unpopular post.&lt;p&gt;Prideful, no, but self-protective, yes - when there’s no other social identity available to you you take what you can get.</text></item><item><author>preston4tw</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m currently 35 and I was ID&amp;#x27;d as a gifted child, so this paper caught my attention. There&amp;#x27;s a section that discusses outcomes based on whether gifted children were allowed to skip grades or not, and my personal experience largely matches what is described for what would be my group, the nonaccelerands:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Several of the nonaccelerands have serious and ongoing problems with social relationships. These young people find it very difficult to sustain friendships because having been, to a large extent, socially isolated at school, they have had much less practice in their formative years in developing and maintaining social relationships. Six have had counseling. Of these, two have been treated for severe depression. If educators were made responsible to ethics committees, as are researchers, such developmentally inappropriate educational misplacement would never be permitted.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I wonder how this group is doing these days. I wonder if the runners of the study ever considered introducing members of this group to the others to form a support group.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ramraj07</author><text>So let&amp;#x27;s get this straight, &amp;quot;hiking to Turkmenistan&amp;quot; means you&amp;#x27;re a world-savvy individual but taking packaged tours means you&amp;#x27;re pedestrian drivel?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s very hard to confirm if you&amp;#x27;re trolling or if you truly belong to &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;im14andthisisdeep, but let&amp;#x27;s assume the latter. Hiking to Machu pichu doesn&amp;#x27;t make you smart. Either you don&amp;#x27;t subscribe to personal responsibility towards global warming or you do but can&amp;#x27;t see the irony in smoking a few tons of carbon in the name of &amp;quot;enlightenment&amp;quot; which apparently you can only find half way across the world. Both ways, the lack of sophistication in your part shines bright. How exactly is hiking in a forest in a poor country different from going to Bangkok to get salvation from ping pong balls?&lt;p&gt;Several of your comments are in similar vein - everyone is not stupid, they just don&amp;#x27;t insticntually care about factual education; a good fraction of people are smarter than you in their own ways. Even if they&amp;#x27;re not, it behooves us to respect the average human with some basic respect (which would likely include not comparing them to lamps).&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you&amp;#x27;re a smart person and perhaps you&amp;#x27;re trying to cure cancer as several of my similarly smart colleagues kept insisting for years when I was doing my PhD. However, they just couldn&amp;#x27;t get their heads out of wherever to start seeing the bigger picture and I sincerely hope for your sake and the world&amp;#x27;s sake that you do. We will all benefit if smart people start becoming that much more humble. Assuming you really are 180 smart, whatever the triangle-inside-square-puzzle-hell that means.</text></comment>