I felt like an Idiot in High School

Ruminating on Imposter Syndrome.

Robert McKeon Aloe
Age of Awareness
Published in
3 min readJun 5, 2021

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You wouldn’t know it based on my degrees that I didn’t feel smart in high school. I felt average at best, and I felt like even doing my best, I was only average. When I got to university, I realized I was pretty smart. So where was the disconnect?

I wasn’t bullied for being stupid in middle school or high school, but I was bullied for being different. I was certainly different academically for most of high school because I was in the highest math classes without being at the same level in other subjects. Typically, people were either in the “Gifted and Talented” classes or not; they did not have a mixed schedule.

Generally, class schedules were more of a driving factor in how friends formed than anything else. I felt more difficulty making friends, which again feel odd because I’m very outgoing and talkative. I felt I was too much for most people, but I didn’t have a dial to bring it down from 11.

Whatever the case, it wasn’t until my last two years in high school that I felt I was high intelligence when I was in 4 high levels and 2 low levels when most people did 3 and 3 (for the International Baccalaureate (IB)). I would have done a 5th high level if I could have.

When I arrived at university, I was still odd because I jumped right into Calculus 2 without issue. All the people told incoming freshman to retake Calculus, that the second course was a weed-out course. So many people dropped the course and dropped engineering.

I charged forward. By my second year, I was certain that I was really smart. I was wondering what happened in high school. I didn’t have a good answer for why I felt stupid.

Reflecting back now, I noticed that I wasn’t great at doing high school work, which at the time, was designed for neurotypical people. It was not designed to allow for creativity. It wasn’t design to learn at your own pace, fast or slow. It did not account for the possibility that the work was boring and uninteresting.

I’m not sure if that is good or bad. For me, it wasn’t good. I made it through, and clearly did well for myself at the university.

I haven’t been diagnosed as having ADHD, but after my son was diagnosed, I started looking at the symptoms. I started seeing patterns that made sense all the way back to childhood.

I can’t quite fault my parents because the way I am is normal in my very large extended family, and at the time, the treatment method was basically medication only. On top of that, there wasn’t a social acceptance or an accommodation outside of the minimum.

What if they redesigned schools to account for the diversity that is in the population? What if school could be optimized for regular thinking people, people with ADHD, bipolar, autism, and everything else?

If as a society, we committed to helping everyone have the opportunity to be their best selves, how would that affect our culture, species, and planet?

If you like, follow me on Twitter and YouTube where I post videos of espresso shots on different machines and espresso related stuff. You can also find me on LinkedIn. You can also follow me on Medium.

Further readings of mine:

Collection of Espresso Articles

A Collection of Work and School Stories

Personal Stories and Concerns

LEGO Story Splash Page

Photography Splash Page

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Age of Awareness
Age of Awareness

Published in Age of Awareness

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Robert McKeon Aloe
Robert McKeon Aloe

Written by Robert McKeon Aloe

I’m in love with my Wife, my Kids, Espresso, Data Science, tomatoes, cooking, engineering, talking, family, Paris, and Italy, not necessarily in that order.

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