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The point of “gifted child to adult burnout pipeline” was never to say “i had so much potential”, it was “people placed absurd and crushing expectations on me because they did not get that i wasn’t ‘gifted’, i just had normal hyperfixations”. This is completely missing the point of the meme, neurotypical ass bs.
Love to have grown up in the era of “ADHD isn’t real” so teachers could just berate me for being bored in class all the time
Love to be an adult during the era of “getting an AuDHD diagnosis will get you put on a registry and probably result in custody of your child being taken away” as a follow-up
so teachers could just berate me for being bored in class all the time
Class is fucking boring, good teachers realize this and work to make it engaging and connected to real life
But isn’t that the point of the “could’ve gone pro” comparison? Those athletes most likely weren’t pro-caliber either, they just had those expectations forced on them because they happened to be the ringer compared to the rest of their high school. But that was enough for the adults looking to live vicariously to push them to wreck their bodies young.
Most of the so-called gifted kids aren’t asserting that they were geniuses, but the jocks in this circumstance definitely are saying they could have gone pro. At least, that’s the received cultural understanding from the latter meme, since they are usually the only ones still talking about it. “I could have been a contender,” etc.
I think that comes from sports injuries being framed as accidents more so than as the result of repetitive over exertion. That one’s Achilles getting injured and not ever truly recovering from it is just chance that got in the way of their goal rather than their body being pushed beyond what it can shoulder. With mental over exertion, the common view is that the brain can take on infinite load and that burnout is just an excuse for lacking sufficient Protestant work ethic. So former “gifted” kids don’t talk like that because they know people will perceive them as making excuses, or believe it themselves and engage in self-loathing.
That being said, a lot of that debatelord, fallacyman,
brain mentality is a manifestation of former “gifted” kids trying to maintain that feeling of potential. They might’ve burned out their junior year of high school or dropped out of the good college a semester in, but if they can own someone online with logic facts and reason, they can convince themselves they’ve “still got it.”yeah i wouldn’t have been some multi millionaire tech guy, but i could’ve had a degree and a career instead of being unable to function in society
Yeah like kids going into the pro scene early and get that increase load that their body isn’t gonna be accustomed to and get injured at a critical time of their athletic development
I just found the classroom environment and prison mentality unbearable as an undiagnosed autistic person. I was punished for my autistic behaviours rather than having them recognised and accommodated, and this continued into adulthood until I got diagnosed. Hell I’ve been fired after diagnosis for requesting accomodations, they just make up some other bullshit excuse.
The point of “gifted child to adult burnout pipeline” was never to say “i had so much potential”
under-estimating the delusional self-regard of r*dditor scum? couldnt be me
Not everybody who resonates with that meme is an arrogant redditor, pls touch some grass.
Is the takeaway here that people whose academic talent as children allowed them to be functional enough to go without mental health treatment that probably would’ve helped prevent them from being unable to manage when all the structure and scaffolding support that previously seemed invisible is abruptly removed in adulthood is analogous to a reasonably good high school football player whose career ended due to an injury that likely occurred because children are being pushed to play on a similar level to adults whose lives are effectively over at 35 due to the compounding effects of successive brain injuries?
Am I missing the forest for the trees or are these two distinct symptoms of the same failing system?
No you pretty much nailed it.
honestly the whole thing around gifted children in america is so weird to me
it’s a mixture of parents desperate to see their children making it under neoliberalism (especially through gifted programs) and psychologists having a really hard time setting boundaries between the ordinary and the exceptional (while being financially incentivized to make those boundaries even murkier)
that said, there’s always time. just because the person went through the gifted child into underachieving adult pipeline doesn’t mean they have to stop there
i have my whole life ahead of me to plumb the depths of underachieving
Gifted child to underachieving youth to revolutionary adult arc
I was overpraised when I was young then accused of purposefully sabotaging myself as I got into my teenage years, and people still think that (and worse) into my adulthood. To this day I have a bit of an insecure desire to be the smartest person in the room, I’ll run myself into the ground getting to that point too and pretend that I’ve not.
I never did my homework, never studied, missed class pretty often too because I faked being sick to get away from bullies. got all As and Bs, did great on my standardized tests. I was the coolest shit ever. Got put into Talented And Gifted classes. Got a lot of “proud of yous” from family members.
Got my first C in 7th grade, did worse in 8th grade, pretty much had straight Ds all through high school.
I never had to study, so I never learned how to study. I asked a lot of questions in class when I was younger but when I got into middleschool and highschool teachers were less receptive of me asking a question they just got done explaining. Had a few teachers who berated me for doing poorly, a few who accused me of “just trying to coast through life”. This alongside a not super great homelife led to me missing even more school than I had before. I don’t really know how I was allowed to graduate tbh. I easily missed 2/5 of the school year every year of highschool.
When I was 18 my whole family kind of did this intervention style thing where with no mincing of words I was told to “pull my head out of my ass” by all the people who I thought had been in my corner and who I thought supported me. Still haven’t figured out what exactly people wanted from me. Still bar none the most hurtful experience of my life and that’s saying something considering my father tried to shoot me. (one of those situations where a person has set the bar so low its just expected behavior, I’m sure someone here will understand)
Into adulthood I struggle with work too. It doesn’t feel like anything changed from highschool it just got worse. It’s particularly upsetting. Maybe it isn’t conveyed over text very well but typing this up made me cry. It’s my life ya know? And I’ve seen it circle the toilet bowl for a really long time. Do I have a disability? Idk. I’m probably pretty fucking traumatized though considering I felt the need to share all this on a meme post.
I’m on the gifted kid to burnt out adult pipeline and it’s not a shoulda-coulda-woulda thing. It’s me coming to terms with likely having undiagnosed ADHD or some mild ASD, but since I was good in school and my family is poor, there was no investigation done. For a long time, I didn’t even know how to have opinions. Someone would ask me if I liked the color of something, for example, and I would lock up because there wasn’t a quantifiable answer I could solve for.
I never really bought into the “kid genius” type thing for myself. I just did what I was told above expectations with no pushback. The worst thing I did was be completely naive and actually believe all the maxims that were told to me. Hard work, study lots, don’t go out/drink/drugs, etc. I did all that and nothing stopped the economy from exploding when I graduated. There were no new hire opportunities and by the time they started coming back, I was too removed from the system to take advantage of them.
the ways we’re let down by the capitalist education system aren’t our fault.
injuries are accidents, a student crashing out is a systemic failure.
injuries are accidents, a student crashing out is a systemic failure.
Injuries often are also systemic failures because adults with unreasonable expectations are recklessly pushing these children far harder than they should in ways that destroy their bodies. I think the comparison is more apt than it seems, but not for the reason the OOP thinks.
Then there’s also the psychological abuse that many young athletes experience, and sexual abuse as well. And it’s often systemic, with teams/coaches/schools/parents etc covering it up and allowing it to go on.
There’s a lot more risks involved than fucking up your knees or whatever.
Injuries can be “merely” accidents, but very often they are not. There are many different ways in which sports programs and the surrounding culture push people in a direction that results in injury.
sadly, crippling mental illness is also extremely prevalent among aspiring athletes, with the people suffering from it being confronted with just as much, if not more, stigma and discrimination.
It was fun when I first read about Indigo Children, the trend right before Gifted Children to explain the same undiagnosed neurological disorders. If I had been born a decade earlier my mother would have thought I was a Warhammer 40k psyker instead of just a kid who was good at reading. The toxic positivity that instilled could have been so much weirder.
Hey! I’m both. A former star athlete who competed at the regional (Central American and the Caribbean) level and had his career cut short at a youngish age because of injury.
Also a former “gifted child” who took classes with high schoolers when I would have been in sixth grade, only to eventually burn out.
I later found my spirit again in the trades and haven’t looked back but it wasn’t easy getting there.
We never pulled the “could’ve gone pro” stuff but we were in an athletic program that put way too much pressure on us. And we were also a “former gifted student” who was just unmedicated AuDHD with special interests that aligned well with certain school subjects. It’s really sad thinking about it, we used to love learning because we did it for fun. We used to love sport and being active for the same reason. We’re still trying to rediscover that joy to this day. We had nightmares about showing up to a fitness test “too fat” for the better part of a decade after we stopped competing. We are still averse to reading for or learning if there’s even the slightest bit of pressure attached to it. We want to go back and undo these things so badly
Here’s a thought, if a kid is thriving in an environment, don’t rip them away from that environment in order to “appropriately challenge them.” Backwards ass logic.
who is we in this scenario
this is a good point however i am forced to disregard it due to the most important vow ive made to myself, which is to never respect anyone who uses the word “sportsball”
Jokes on you, I never thought I was smart or had potential
I always thought everyone else was just horribly misinformed
I’ve pretty consistently had realistic career expectations for myself. It’s not my fault nobody listened
In my 5th grade year book I expected myself to be “out of college and working some random job” at 25 when everyone else said they’d be astronauts or secret agents. Well we’re all 25 now motherfuckers how’d that work out for you, cause it’s working out as expected for me!
Yeah sure I was a gifted kid but now I’m just a worthless pile of trash who is a constant detriment to everyone around him and who should probably die
Some jocks simply never had the makings of a varsity athlete
oh!
