Gifted Kid Grows Up
Or: God, did my childhood turn me into an asshole?
I used to be a gifted child. Since then, similarly to that moment in the ninth grade when all the boys shot up past my shoulders, I think the rest of my peers have evolved while I am somehow still stuck in this arrogant, entitled, gifted-child mind. Now I really am not trying to reinforce the current millennial stereotype that has been wafting around the rhetoric at large, and I am not trying to be overly melodramatic. I just think that maybe I’m going through an existential crisis that I am not equipped to handle.
I was “the smart kid” all the way through elementary school and middle school. On group projects I was a sought-after partner, which I accepted with barely concealed smugness. I was the first one in the school to graduate to the secondary section of the library, which bypassed all the kids books. It was nice to be known for something, even if it wasn’t for having those bright orange zip-off pants from Limited Too. I brushed off taunts that I was a teacher’s pet, because, well, screw you I’m gifted! I could have skipped a grade if my parents had let me! Apparently though, people don’t like it when you walk around the seventh grade thinking that you are smarter than everyone else. After two years of good ole fashioned ostracism and bullying, I learned to shut my trap and keep it to myself.
When I moved schools after the ninth grade, I found myself challenged for the first time in my life. My classmate, and later best friend, was the resident “smart kid.” The niche was filled. When faced with someone who was intellectually superior, and driven to boot, I shrank back. I still took a rigorous course load, finished my math requirement a year early, and was one of two students in my grade to get a 5 on the AP World History exam, but I was no longer “the smart kid.” I was just smart, with a hefty dash of luck.
If I told my ten year old self that I wouldn’t go to an Ivy league college, she would not have believed you. If I had told ten year old me that I would be unemployed, and be one of the last of my friends to still be searching for a real job, she would not have believed you. I still don’t believe it. But I end up reminding myself every day, and every day I get to feel that sense of inadequacy. The ten year old with a superiority complex inside me is still an asshole, and she is really unhappy that I am questioning the foundation of her assholery. If I’m not smarter than my peers, what is my significance? What am I “great” at? I haven’t worked as hard as some people, and I don’t have any creative ideas that will revolutionize the way we think or change the world. Maybe I’m just slightly above average.
Either way, I don’t have the privilege of being an asshole anymore. As I have learned in this job market: it’s all about who you know, not what you know, and proud people with inflated opinions of themselves don’t make a great impression. It’s a lot like seventh grade in that way. The ten year old won’t let me demean myself with flamboyant ass-kissing in cover letters (which frustrates some of my well-meaning friends who graciously try to give advice), but she also makes it hard to shamelessly ask for help from well-connected acquaintances.
But no matter how bad it seems right now, I know that some of my peers are going through the same thing. There was a post on Tumblr that quippily encompassed my whole post in one line about having a rough transition between being a gifted child, and ending up an average or below average adult. The post appeared multiple times on my dashboard, often accompanied by the hashtag: #sobbing. So maybe it is true about millennials, that we were coddled and told we were special from infancy, but later we realized that even special snowflakes can get lost in the drift.
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