Comments on: Back to the future

By: Biggie's Momma

Biggie's Momma — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:10:27 +0000

Enrichment AND acceleration. I was lucky to have both.

And as far as kids learning they are not #1 at everything; I didn’t figure that out until I got to college and 50% of the class had been valedictorians. I was not, and it was the first time I was “below average”. It was humbling, but it happens to all of us at some point, and it is a learning experience.

By: Spacemom

Spacemom — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:09:51 +0000

I have many things to say, but no time to say them. I’ll try to email you.

By: carol

carol — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:06:28 +0000

I was GT, except for math. I got good grades in high school, except for math. We only had one teacher teach higher math in high school and he kept passing me even though I failed the tests, so I kept plugging away in confusion all the way through calculus. It was horrible.

Anyway, I didn’t have it as easy at you, but I still mostly coasted. Until college. I started out at a huge, major state university and got my butt kicked. I transferred to a regional university and had to work a bit, but my GPA immediately went up .5 a point.

Anyway, my question – how will you feel if L is an average or student? Our adopted twins are both smart, but not gifted like Holly and I were. Our daughter will do really well academically, Ben will be average or a bit above, but they are both gifted athletically. Even at four, the peewee coaches salivate over them. It’s kind of cool and way different than we had.

By: Asianmommy

Asianmommy — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:48:59 +0000

It’s interesting to see how different you and Mr. A’s approaches were to being gifted in school.

By: Alice

Alice — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:12:25 +0000

VERY interested to hear all of your thoughts on this – I was also tracked into my school’s gifted program, developed mediocre study habits at best (though thank you Ms. Holton for kicking our asses in writing!)
, and then coasted through most of HS and college and the year of law school I did before leaving.

I was content with the occasional B, and I rarely felt the internal drive to push myself academically, so the fact that my educational institutions weren’t challenging me meant that I ended up getting more and more comfortable with mediocrity. Like Julie, I’m pretty directionless now, and can’t help but feel that there’s some connection between those two things. Listening to your thoughts, as well as Mr. A’s, is really helpful in having a new way to approach all of this.