#Can you tell that I'm still ungodly levels of salty about this years later?

[enby-soup-computer]

I got saddled with the "gifted" status in... 1st grade I think? And for me personally, it rarely actually helped (though there were a couple weekend classes that were actually kinda fun in grade school, but honestly, those should've been an option for anyone who wanted to go), but rather set up a level of expectations that would cause me to burn out, hard, multiple times in middle and high school.

Y'all ever heard the "if only you applied yourself" bit? Yeah, me to! Constantly. If I was not getting an A in all subjects, I'd be "we're not mad, but we know you can do better". Then! Years later! When I'm finally making some progress in letting myself do less than perfect without a terrible level of guilt, I get diagnosed with ADHD, and guess what! My Mother Knew And Didn't Tell Me. Like that wouldn't fuck some serious shit up for me.

Anyway, yeah. "gifted".

ohhhhh I get it now. the "gifted kid" discourse exists because people see it fundamentally as a sign of Privilege and not as a largely meaningless category that puffs up weird children before setting them up for the same unremarkable lives as everyone else; thus they interpret people going "the educational system gave me false expectations before ultimately abandoning me to the same heartless world as everyone else" as "why am I, The Main Character, not getting everything I ever wanted."