woodelf68:

stealthboy:

stealthboy:

stealthboy:

I have a rant about how smart kids are treated by the American school system let me hit this blunt a few more times and I’ll write it

ok I’m ready

Speaking as someone who has been being told I was “gifted” by schools since I was literally in preschool and who grew up to fail out of his college engineering program and consequentially suffer from the worst mental breakdown of his life, i fucking hate the assumption that all smart kids want and need to be challenged

Which translates in a school setting as “take the hardest and most demanding classes you can possibly take”

I distinctly remember always been pushed by my teachers to take the highest available level of all of my courses, and the few times that I resisted and decided to take an easier one they would shame me. They told me I was “better than that”, or expressed disappointment in me. In particular I remember one of my favorite teachers doing it when I said I didn’t want to take honors history and was politely declining the recommendation

I fucking HATE history. I had so much else going on in my life during that time besides just school. Why would I want to make it even harder for myself? Why would I want the extra load of stress and work? Just because, at the expense of my happiness and mental health, I could do it?

Like so many other students in the US I have grown used to watching my classmates sob and have panic attacks over exams and classes and school in general. That’s become disturbingly normal to us. And then people have the audacity to look at a student who actually has time to live and relax and not be constantly stressed out and say they aren’t “pushing themselves hard enough”. They should take more classes, or harder classes

And I fell for it. Growing up surrounded by that expectation of me I originally went into the college of engineering. You know why? Because I was smart. Because it was the hardest of the hard, and because I could do it, I was obligated to

And I couldn’t do it. I’m not the kind of person who can handle engineering. I have the intelligence, but I don’t have the personality or the mental health. The people who do? Fantastic. I’m happy for them and thankful they exist. But I’m not one of them, and I had to learn that it was okay that I wasn’t

End rant

ALSO, I don’t know about anyone else, but having this done to me as a young child led me to internalize the (false) notion that intelligence was the only thing I had going for me

And when I started struggling in school, failing classes, I had that breakdown because I felt like I had lost a huge part of my identity. I felt like the only trait that made me worthwhile was suddenly ripped out from under me, and the shell shock of that was devastating

“But you’re so smart – ”

Yes but I also HATED school and I certainly didn’t want to spend any more time having to do work for it.

all being “gifted” gave me was a crippling fear of failure to the point where im unlikely to try new things if im not positive that i’ll be good at it on the first try