how to not be an annoying former gifted kid

perhaps all your cages are mental and you haven't wasted all your potential

I am decidedly not a fan of the term “former gifted kid,” though I am one (objectively.)

Besides being one of the most mocked labels on TikTok, it feels boastful in a sort of pathetic way, an admittance to the fact that one has already wasted all my potential, though I know this is not true. I think I’d feel better about using it if the quotation marks were actually hugging the word gifted, so as to say I am a former quote-unquote “gifted” kid. That way it’s more realistic and self-deprecating, less arrogant and sad.

I can tell you right now the most glaringly obvious reason as to why “former gifted kids” are the subject of many eye-rolls and snickers: they look like they’re clinging onto a title they got when the baseline for being considered smart was laughably easy. I was placed in what is called a “gifted and talented” program when I was just in kindergarten, which in hindsight, was not the most difficult of grade levels.

According to the Texas Education Agency (I am from Texas), a “gifted/talented student is a child or youth who performs at or shows the potential for performing at a remarkably high level of accomplishment when compared to others of the same age, experience, or environment.” I have little recollection of how I even ended up in the gifted program, considering I was probably no more than five. I remember being in a sterile, empty computer lab in my elementary school with an older woman I didn’t know. I remember being given somewhat menial tasks in order to test my creativity. The lady would show vague shapes and lines, and ask me to create something out of them. I made a bird out of a squiggle, a house out of a triangle. I believe I took some kind of IQ test too, but I can’t remember. I’m guessing that it went well, as this all culminated in me, along with two of my fellow classmates, getting pulled out of our regular class once a week. During this intimate weekly endeavor, the three of us would partake in more “rigorous” activities, such as learning how to use video-editing software, or conducting research on the internet for a project about our favorite animals.

From a young age I understood the gravity of being called “gifted,” and I held this label with pride. It was difficult not to when adults would fawn over the mere idea of me being an apparently clever child, as if it made me more special. More valuable (In actuality of course, perceived intelligence is not a marker of value. Nothing is). My parents and teachers would often echo similar sentiments to each other about my intellect and work ethic at the occasional parent-teacher conference. According to them, I read at a higher level than my peers. I caught onto concepts faster. My writing was imaginative and whimsical. I was “going places.”

But eventually my childhood trailed behind me and adolescence stood before me, and being “gifted” became more of a burden and the catalyst for my imposter-syndrome than anything worth flaunting anywhere. If I got a B on an assignment, I would rush into my bedroom and shamefully shove it into the trashcan before my mother could get her hands on it. When my grades in math and science began to falter, I convinced myself that it was because I was just not a STEM-inclined student rather than the more plausible idea that I just needed to practice more. It was especially discouraging when I did not score high marks on my writing, something I have always held to extremely high standards. Long story short, I wasn’t a cute and clever kid anymore. I went to a rigorous high school, and it hit me that everyone is smart. I was just lucky enough to read a little faster when I was five, and privileged enough to be recognized for it, which is not much of an accomplishment in the grand scheme of my life.

Though not exactly the same situation, that scene from the movie Booksmart comes to mind; Yale-bound Molly (Beanie Feldstein), in an existential frenzy, harasses the schoolmates she had deemed as slackers and asks them where they are going to college, and they all name similarly elite and prestigious institutions. In this moment, Molly experiences a rude awakening: she spent her whole high school career making her whole life about being “smart,” even though everyone around her was just as intelligent.

This example is where I think a lot of the mockery around the “former gifted kid” label comes from.

“Former gifted kids” are often the laughing stock of the internet because they’re mostly in the end of their adolescence or already in adulthood but still seem to be standing on a two-foot pedestal built for them in the fourth grade. Stereotypically, they are the type to flaunt their AR reading level (does this still exist?) at the bar, or find some way at the corporate meeting to gloat about how they were the fastest at their times tables. If the people that peaked in high school seemed sad (even though the notion of peaking in high school is problematic), this was simply on another more pitiful level.

The flack seems to not only comes from former gifted kids believing that they were somehow better than their peers for being labeled as “gifted,” but also from thinking that their experiences as adults are singular because they were labeled as such.

“Being a former gifted kid means never actually trying at anything because you were told you were naturally smart.”

“Being a former gifted kid gave me low self esteem as an adult.”

“I have former gifted kid burnout!”

As it turns out, everyone in adulthood also struggles with learning new things, struggles with their self esteem, and is extremely burnt out, whether they were a “pleasure to have in class” or not.

So, how can I, as a former gifted kid, not be the subject of mockery when discussing a longing for the past and the tribulations of entering adulthood? How can I not be annoying?

First of all, it helps to remember that everyone around you is also gifted. As well-meaning as gifted programs are, they have the ability to create inequality in the school system.

There is an episode of the wildly successful ABC mockumentary, Abbott Elementary, called “Gifted Program.” In this episode the sprightly protagonist, Janine Teagues, convinces the principal to start a gifted program. Though started with good intentions, this program only created a hierarchy, where the “gifted” children were pulled out once a week to do “fun” activities while the on-level students were forced to watch.

The label of “gifted” as it is often used in the education world inadvertently places kids who aren’t labeled as such as inferior, though this is not true at all. In reality, students can be “gifted” in a number of ways outside of just being academically inclined. This is proposed in Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, where he suggests that all people harness different types of intelligences. Students might have kinesthetic intelligence that makes them amazing athletes, or interpersonal intelligence that allows them to communicate very well with others. Schools face the struggle of not being able to accommodate for all the types of giftedness that might actually be present in classes of all levels, not just the advanced ones. This results in the scope of “giftedness” in the actual classroom being incredibly limited. Really, your “non-gifted” peers could very well also be talented. They simply just didn’t get recognized for it.

Second of all, just because you think you were once great does not mean that you cannot be great once again.

To put yourself into the box of “former gifted kid” means reducing your present self to someone who is no longer special. You’re characterizing yourself by your perceived shortcomings, the loss of what could’ve been, all the burnout and unmet expectations. But really, you still have all the talent and potential that you did when you were a child. It is not too late to tap into that potential once again, even if it has been a while.

There is a great satirical piece from The New Yorker titled “Unchosen: Eleven Signs That You’re a Former Gifted Kid.”

The first 10 bullet points no doubt are making fun of the generalizations that former gifted kids trademark as their own, such as having mood swings or being introverted. But the last one offers a glimmer of hope—that perhaps you were never special, but you still can be. “Former gifted kid” be damned.

p.s. here is my roundup of some things i have been enjoying as a former gifted kid trying to find joy and not be annoying

what i’ve been consuming:

• homemade pumpkin pie chai cookies (made from premade cookie dough mix, but still made at home!)

• Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett: a fantastical but approachable story about a scholar named Emily as she ventures into a small town in the far north to do research on the most elusive of fae

• Girl, What Waist?: an article about how the waist (yes, the body part) is racialized

• It and It 2: two horror movies that I am very late to seeing but thoroughly enjoyed

what i am yearning for:

• more fantasy book recommendations similar to Encyclopaedia of Faeries (more cozy, feel-good stories)

• the Glossier Balm Dot Com holiday duo (biscotti and espresso!!!!)

• a trip to a pumpkin patch

• a long weekend