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QuantumChemist
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09 May 2021, 9:47 am

Dear_one wrote:
"The fall" is fairly common. My own grades had a steady decline because I didn't have to study early on, and so I never learned to focus on things that didn't interest me. This isn't all bad. It let me fill my head with more of what I would need, but some more discipline and general compatibility in groups would have helped.


My fall from emotionally matching my peers happened at age 11. We moved to a new state that year and things did not go well. I was not accepted by my new classmates and the bullying began. Over time, my grades slipped because I no longer cared. I just wanted to escape from it at any cost. The fall did not stop until we moved to a new town and I started a new high school.

Once there, I could get back to the old me a bit. I still did not fit in (too different), but I was not constantly targeted by bullies at the new school. The school put me into a quiz club as the anchor for their team. I was not fast at the buzzer, but could answer the questions that stumped the rest of the teams. That did help my social standing slightly as they won several contests with my help. I could never catch up to my peers socially, so I made friends with those three years younger than me. Once I went on to college and university, I spent most of my time in a laboratory instead of socializing. The social differences between me and my peers only increased with time.

I simply cannot relate to people from my graduating high school class anymore. We lived totally different lives. They talk about their grandchildren excessively, whereas I have never been married. Most never got advanced degrees past community college level, as it was a rural area. After they graduated with an associates degree, they went back to work on their family’s farms/ranches that they likely now own. I can talk about my research projects, but only a few would understand and even fewer would be interested in hearing about them. That is part of the curse of being AS gifted over a lifetime. You never fit in past a certain point in time.



Dear_one
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09 May 2021, 12:05 pm

^^ I've completely lost touch with almost everyone I knew several times. My sister only shares enough to be polite, and one guy I met around 1990 stays in touch, but only on about 1% of my interests. AS or not, if you are pushing the envelope, you don't have peers to talk to except on details. I avoided University because of the people pretending to be smart shouting down the real pioneers.



Paul05
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09 May 2021, 5:28 pm

In the meantime I try to draw closer to liberal arts. Other than English, I reached higher levels in Finnish and Chinese. Writing and reading seems to be easier for me, so I can get through A2 or B1 texts smoothly. I use simplified characters (nearly 1.600 of them) that are used mainly in mainland China :) It's always wondrous to me to see how differently linguistic groups may perceive even simplest things.

However, things were different before I went to elementary school. I adored mathematics and could draw multiplication tables, which was quite rare for the age of 3. On contrary, I didn't have success, progress or motivation for foreign languages back then. It changed when I had a couple of lessons with American volunteers as an adolescent. It gave me a lively inspiration for my independent studies.

If you ask me how it has been going with math recently, I can say that I've got so little progress compared to the school days. Maybe I lack inspiration, maybe textbooks that I have are outdated, maybe I didn't have an experienced teacher who could've been able to explain rules and curiosities of this science, maybe... who knows.

In other words, this situation is like a coin that has flipped. Nevertheless, the best point about it is that I like the things I mastered.



QuantumChemist
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10 May 2021, 9:54 am

Dear_one wrote:
AS or not, if you are pushing the envelope, you don't have peers to talk to except on details.


I deal with this issue every time I go to work. Even my research collaborator cannot talk shop with me at my level on what I am working on in the lab. We have enough results to easily write two good research publications on a special chemical synthesis process, yet he is at a loss for words when it comes to discussing the work. I would go it alone, but departmental rules say I have to be connected to a tenured or tenured-track professor to be able to do research there. The rest of my coworkers would not be capable of understanding this project because it involves a side of chemical engineering that is far above their knowledge levels. The majority of my coworkers just memorized what they needed to in grad school and cannot apply it in real research. I have become depressed over this issue, as I need the publications to move up the job ladder. Being so different from my coworkers can be a real drag sometimes.



AprilR
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10 May 2021, 10:15 am

I was constantly called gifted through my childhood and it left me so frustrated since i Really didn't feel like it!



Dear_one
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10 May 2021, 11:28 am

QuantumChemist wrote:
Dear_one wrote:
AS or not, if you are pushing the envelope, you don't have peers to talk to except on details.


I deal with this issue every time I go to work. Even my research collaborator cannot talk shop with me at my level on what I am working on in the lab. We have enough results to easily write two good research publications on a special chemical synthesis process, yet he is at a loss for words when it comes to discussing the work. I would go it alone, but departmental rules say I have to be connected to a tenured or tenured-track professor to be able to do research there. The rest of my coworkers would not be capable of understanding this project because it involves a side of chemical engineering that is far above their knowledge levels. The majority of my coworkers just memorized what they needed to in grad school and cannot apply it in real research. I have become depressed over this issue, as I need the publications to move up the job ladder. Being so different from my coworkers can be a real drag sometimes.


You have my total sympathy and general understanding. Did you read about the time that Richard Feynman exposed the entire physics department in Brazil for producing only memory-work? People are sheep. I once advised an author that he was promoting a stock fraud, as the brochure numbers didn't add up for anyone who got half-way through high school. It took him two more years to be convinced because "so many others couldn't be wrong."

On the brighter side:
"You can get almost anything done if you don't care who gets the credit."
- Winston Churchill



1986
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10 May 2021, 10:57 pm

I used to think my cognitive levels were not affected by my schizophrenic illness, but lately having discovered old IQ-scores showing a decline of 1 standard deviation in just 2 years of active psychosis, I've been forced to give up that thought.

I feel a bit like a football player who lost a leg.



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10 May 2021, 11:02 pm

1986 wrote:
I used to think my cognitive levels were not affected by my schizophrenic illness, but lately having discovered old IQ-scores showing a decline of 1 standard deviation in just 2 years of active psychosis, I've been forced to give up that thought.

I feel a bit like a football player who lost a leg.


Trauma really wrecks my IQ. I moved here to escape a bad situation, and it took me years to notice which screens fit which windows, etc. However, underneath, I was figuring out some new stuff.



1986
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10 May 2021, 11:26 pm

I've heard that antipsychotics will likely improve a schizophrenic patient's performance by, say, 0.4 standard deviations. With lots of training, it appears possible to bring it up a few notches more. Sadly, my avolition problems do their best to demotivate me whenever I try to challenge myself mentally with a book or a lecture, or something.

If there was a cognitive performance boot camp available somewhere, I'd ask to attend.



traven
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10 May 2021, 11:58 pm

Dear_one wrote:

On the brighter side:
"You can get almost anything done if you don't care who gets the credit."
- Winston Churchill


good one ! !

(as one makes a fool of oneself trying to make a point no one believes anyway)



firemonkey
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11 May 2021, 7:57 am

1986 wrote:
I used to think my cognitive levels were not affected by my schizophrenic illness, but lately having discovered old IQ-scores showing a decline of 1 standard deviation in just 2 years of active psychosis, I've been forced to give up that thought.

I feel a bit like a football player who lost a leg.


If anything has dulled my brain it's age rather than sz/sz-a or medication. The cognitive areas I was comparatively bad at pre SMI are the areas I'm comparatively bad after 46 years of having a SMI.



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12 May 2021, 1:19 am

Twice exceptional.

Ahead of my same age peers in some ways but behind in others.

Ie moral development ahead, emotional development behind.

Intellectually I performed well, socially I was and always have been a complete idiot.



vividgroovy
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12 May 2021, 6:53 am

I talked before I could walk and I could read at a very young age. When my first kindergarten teacher found out I could already read, she complained to my mother that I would have to be "un-taught" and "re-taught the right way." Luckily, I switched schools after that and got a much nicer teacher. I was put in a group for advanced readers, but I quickly found out this just meant more work for me and asked to stop.

Once, we were given the assignment to read "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" and look up all the words we didn't know in the dictionary. I didn't know what to do because I knew all the words.

Meanwhile, I always hated math. I would always forget to carry the one or some silly mistake and I would wind up with the wrong answer. Also, the tests were timed and I couldn't do the problems fast enough. Every problem I didn't answer was marked wrong. What school wanted from me most of the time was to do a lot of boring things really, really fast. (That's what every job I've ever had has been like as well.)

Socially, I had little in common with my sports-loving peers and spent most of recess re-enacting scenes from movies.

When I was eight, I passed the test to get into the "GATE program" for advanced students. My teacher and the school psychiatrist called my mother in to discuss this, but instead used the meeting to complain about the fact that she walked me to class, which I guess I was supposed to be too old for.

When I was 10, I started home-schooling, which I preferred. However, I continued to hate math and anything related to it. My mother and stepfather, who both loved math in school, said I should view it as a challenge, but it was one I had no interest in undertaking. They also commented on how "scary" it was that I could sit there with a algebra problem just "spinning my wheels," unable to understand the process. I fantasized about dissolving my Chemistry textbook in acid, but I never got around to it. I did, at one point, become so frustrated that I tore out a page, crumbled it up and spit on it.

When I took the G.E.D. at 18, I tested in the 90th+ percentile in every area except math, though I also performed decently in that.



Joe90
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12 May 2021, 2:20 pm

Nope, just hyperactive, emotional, whiny and wimpy.


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longshot
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13 May 2021, 7:10 pm

Well, as often I say to people in my life be it online or offline; I was, never gifted in fact, I tended to flounder while in school overall, as there were no means of help for me till, I was in high school and beyond, yet that was not substantial. Anyways, I feel many autistic people have a great many unused abilities and talents overall that, go unrecognized initially.



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15 May 2021, 1:01 pm

Nope I wasn't at all. I was put into special needs for the first two years of high school. I went into mainstream in the end and passed with strangely a higher than average amount of GCSE's and got passes in all but one.

Gifted or not I think it matters little in the long run. I think not shying away from challenges and life experiences will do far more good for an aspie than being gifted. The aspies who are the worst emotional wrecks I've seen throughout my life are the ones that were aggressively molly coddled to the point of being made mentally disabled.