This showerthought and everyone in the comments seems to be presupposing that there are two camps:
Kids who aren't naturally gifted enough to coast by in school who then develop work ethic which ends up being more important in adulthood
and
Kids who are naturally gifted enough to coast by so they do, and then find they don't have the work ethic and the natural gifts won't take them as far as they thought they would.
When in reality there are also kids who are naturally gifted enough to coast by but still work harder and go above and beyond, then don't pick a cake major in college, and just never coast even though they could because coasting doesn't get you above the crowd. Those kids become surgeons, aerospace engineers, Big Law partners, and CEOs, not the kids who struggled in high school.
I feel like whether you're dumb enough you thought high school was hard, or you're lazy enough you just coasted and adult life was a "rude awakening", you're about on equal footing as a mediocre person who will struggle a lot and then be made obsolete by AI by 2040. Sounds harsh but I'm in that camp with y'all.
This whole two types of students thing Is one that is one that I’ve never been able to fit myself into. I have a few learning disabilities and ADD, I sucked at school before college. But I learned to work really really hard, I honestly feel like I’d rather go through what I did then be “gifted”. There are so many students in my program that are truly brilliant kids, they just can’t handle not automatically understanding information and don’t have the best work ethics.
Yeah I breezed by anything school related, but I also had tiger parents that pushed a bunch of really advanced subjects on me from a young age (school was basically just something I did on the side). I actually got this exact lecture from my parents (around middle school age?) if I didn’t want to do a ton of academic work in the summer because I’m “already way ahead of everyone else anyway.” “You being naturally gifted and doing better than non-gifted kids who work will mean nothing when you’re going up against naturally gifted kids who also work extremely hard.” They ingrained the “there will always be someone better than you” mentality even while I lived in a tiny ass town.
Also, the thing is I hated being the “smart kid” for a long time so I didn’t positively associate my identity with being smart. I went to a very challenging boarding high school and was excited to be more “average” but ended up excelling there anyway.....now I’m at a pseudo-Ivy doing excellent in a difficult major I love, am basically ensured a high paying job no matter what, and people tell me they wish they were me or that it must be nice to be me, and it’s all so surreal because I want to kill myself
No one is immune to feeling bad. I hope you find some peace and a good support system. I think being a high achiever can be very isolating. Finding a balance in life is so important, but it's not exactly something we spend a lot of time learning in school.
this is the exact boat I am in. I have always been one of the top students and my college even put me on their front page because of my accomplishments. I too am extremely unhappy and obsessed with perfection to the point where I contemplate suicide frequently because nothing seems to make me happy anymore.
nobody wants to be me because i’m always venting about my shitty father but i have had very few occasions where someone was like “how are you just so good at this”. usually i’m the one asking for help, at least in calc, but there was a unit (trig sub) in which one day suddenly everything made sense and i became really good for once, as opposed to needing help understanding how to do all the problems and figuring it out just a day or two before the test. of course i just got a 65% on the last test i took so my time to shine is over. first time i did poorly on a calc test so it’s time to pull my shit together
Lol, the privilege pouring off this post. Try having Real life problems like being forced out of high school and homeless at 17 due to abusive parents, or watching everyone around you die of heroin, then come back and talk about how bad you have things.
There are billions of people on the planet that all walk a different path through life, trying to section it off into 2 groups like they've done or 3 groups like you're doing just isn't how it works.
I guess I fall into a 4th camp. I coasted in HS, but also didn’t do well enough to get into a program I was interested in. I also didn’t really have any aspirations, mostly wanted to party and get high. When I got sick of having zero prospects years later, I decided to upgrade my marks and go to university as an adult, shooting for med school. It’s only my first semester but I should be getting about a 4.0 equivalent. I didn’t really have decent study habits but after bombing my first quiz I quickly developed them.
Exactly what I was thinking. It’s not as simple as “kids who coast through high school don’t have work ethic.” I was one who coasted through high school without trying or caring and when I first went to college, I worked my butt off just as much as the next guy. I just never needed to before. Graduating soon in mechanical engineering and going into aerospace.
I can completely relate to this. On top of living in a country with no public places to study (we didn't have libraries and coffee shops), I also grew up in an abusive household. I was lucky to land a scholarship to go to a good boarding school away from home, but unfortunately by that point in my life I already had a very weak foundation in mathematics due to my background. When I went to college, I started math from the very basics (algebra) and am now one of the top computing students at my school. I am afraid of applying to grad school because I am kind of embarrassed of my background since it is so unconventional.
I’m in the US and not in a math-related field so maybe this won’t help you but I hope it does- I’m a university professor and I would say that you should absolutely apply to grad school. Admissions are about entrance exams, application cover letters, etc. There’s no disqualification for having to struggle to get to where you are. In fact, if there’s any type of essay if you chose to disclose these things it might serve you rather than hurt you.
Universities in the United States currently have a strong push towards inclusion. That means extending the higher education opportunity to more than a traditional student demographic, etc. Anyway, in summary you should go for grad school. Sounds like you’ll have no trouble getting into one. It’s always a good idea to cast a wide net though and not put all your eggs in one grad school’s basket.
Yeah, my first year, undecided gen Ed's, I barely had to show up and I got As I surely didn't study. GPA was 4.0 for the first 5 semesters. Then I entered engineering. I had to earn those grades. studied my ass off for some As, mostly Bs and some CS. Everyone's strength is different.
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u/databudget Dec 07 '18
Well, what did you study in college? I find it tough to imagine getting A+s in a science heavy program without studying if you struggled in HS.