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.