Advice for a prodigal prodigy?

[palimpsest]

I see a lot here about awakening one's genius brain -- but would it be harder to get back a personal genius that's been rejected?

I'll try to explain concisely. I used to be a genius: 140 I.Q., learned to read at the age of 2, by the age of 8 I could read a book as thick as The Princess and the Goblins twice over and have it memorized, taught myself to play the piano ... but as it's been pointed out my so many before, it wasn't a formula for success: my classmates would get jealous that everything came so easily to me, the teachers thought I was showing off by reciting anything I'd learned outside their textbook, and my mother ignored all this social angst to show off her clever daughter. Unguided, I figured I'd be better off dumbing myself down and began self-injury and purposely flunking, which did make everybody ease up a bit.

Now, after some more kerfuffle, I'm 19 years old and repeating sophomore high school for the fourth time but homeschooled and suffering from the brilliant hindsight that dumbing myself down may not have been entirely advantageous in the long run. I'm my own supervisor, so if I can't get through it I can't really blame the school environment, I know it's my responsibility but -- I'm still having a disproportionate amount of trouble. I don't know if it's just that their sophomore high school standard includes topics I've learned in 4th grade and forgotten so I can be both insulted at the ease and frustrated at the difficulty, or that I've actually started forgetting things (what happened yesterday, or the start of a long sentence if somebody's talking,) and can't bring myself to concentrate on anything so easily anymore. Please, how do I pick up the pieces from this?

[Ilya]

I was never a prodigy. But I was a smart kid. I've learned to read only at the age of three, and my memory, or any other skills were not exceptional. I've read a lot and it gave me an edge over my classmates. I think I didn't really study at school but stayed at the top of the class until high school thanks to the knowledge I've picked up in early years.
I know what you went through from other jealous people. Dislike for smart ones seems to be universal in kids.

For high school I moved to another class, where everyone was gifted. Suddenly I understood that my erudition is not enough and my poor work ethics will not help me. I struggled to the end of the school, college and university, but my academic achievements were less then perfect. I have some regret over it, but not too much, because at the same time I've greatly improved my social skill. And that is much more valuable for my current life.

A few years back I started to practice the skills I was lacking or forgotten. I started reading again, after not doing it for several years. I started practicing languages again. Learned memory techniques. I'm still struggling with math, but it never was my strength.

The observation that might be useful for you is that mental skills are never lost. You may be a little rusty when you restart, but they come out of hiding real fast once you start practicing. And if you enjoyed it in the past, it's like meeting a long lost but dear friend - amazing feeling.

You write that your strengths were reading and memory and music. Start doing it. Read good books - the classics and make a slight effort to recall what you've read. Do it at a regular intervals after finishing. Start playing piano if you can. Try pieces that you enjoyed. You might not become the world leading pianist just like that, but you will help the sleeping talents to awaken.

You've already done the most important part - awakened yourself from the toxic thought patterns that were forced on you by the people around.

As for school, one of the goals of school education is to teach people to cope with difficult tasks that you have to go through with persistence. Sometimes, you have to sit down and do it in non-gifted way. This may be boring, but that's the rules of the game. Don't let it intimidate you. It is not making your talents unnecessary, they are just better applied in more liberal settings.
You know some of these topics may be truly difficult to do right and you need to practice to be able to get them right, memory and understanding might not be enough. This is hard for smart people to accept, but it is true.

Hope this helps, palimpsest. By the way you have a very interesting nickname.

[Erki]

Originally Posted by Ilya

Hope this helps, palimpsest. By the way you have a very interesting nickname.

What does her nickname mean?

[Addict]

One of the most important lessons I've learned is that some people will do anything to see you fail, especially if you are rising above them. With this in mind, you must do everything in your power to ignore them and realize your full potential. I'm sure you already learned this the hard way. But now what?

I'm not really sure what your problem here is. Maybe it would help us to give you advice if you explained what was holding you back when you kept retaking your sophomore year. From my understanding, you were trying to "dumb yourself down," but were you trying to do worse than your peers as well?

[Matthew Shea]

I'd look into finding a school that's equipped to handle above-average IQs. It sounds like you need a challenge and some guidance. The right academic institution should be able to provide that.

[Doku]

Originally Posted by Matthew Shea

I'd look into finding a school that's equipped to handle above-average IQs. It sounds like you need a challenge and some guidance. The right academic institution should be able to provide that.

At 19, it's a little late for that.
My advice: go to sylvan learning, or any of the other "professional tutor" places. Let them know your situation, and that you want to pass the GED. then get your GED.
While you are doing that, figure out what you want to do with your life. (There are "tests" that are actually "interest inventories" that tell you what jobs you would most enjoy, and be the best at.)

I fell into the same trap as a kid. Fortunately for me, I had a cousin who was in college and would give me his stuff... so I would read that and ignore the teacher. It's kinda hard for a 4th grade math teacher to scream at you to, "put down that calc book and pay attention. i'm trying to teach you long division!" (which actually did happen to me... I just looked at her funny, and she realized how stupid that sounded, and then ignored me for the rest of the year)

Recovering lost talents/skills is not too hard. I used to be great languages, and then I sucked at it. I tried to pick up japanese, and i was by far the worst in the class. I dropped the class, and went back to the materials I had as a kid when I was learning spanish (which I had forgotten) and started learning with them again. Slow start, then I flew through them. went back to Japanese a year later, and flew through that as well. So, I would suggest that you do as Ilya suggested... go re-visit some old/familiar material, and work forward from there.

Good luck!

[Amadeus]

There are two trains of thought here. First of all, I'd be curious as to how your parents raised you with this "gift". Were they encouraging, discouraging, or just indifferent to the whole thing? As a parent I would not see my child go through the same grade 4 times in a row. I would find other options and maybe move if I had to.

As a kid, of course you wanted to fit in. I.Q. is usually not correlated with maturity level (wisdom level). I think a common mistake by parents and the school system in general is to assume that maturity level equals IQ level. Prodigies can be thrown in adult situations they are not equipped to deal with. This reminds me of a 14 year old girl that started going to college and stayed at a co-ed dorm room. Some football thugs talked her into having sex with them. She should have never been in that situation. However, she should have been learning at the college level.

Your teachers were probably jealous as hell at you that is why they didn't let you be you. I am assuming you went to a public school (no surprise there). You were given a gift that others did not embrace. However, you are an adult now and you must live your life making your own decisions. You owe it to the World to make the most of your gift as possible. We all owe it to the World to do the very best we can to be productive.

Here is what I would do. Get out a piece of paper and decide what field or fields you want to go into. Once you have decided on the specialized field then start a game plan on how you want to approach your career of choice. I think once you crystallize what you want to do with your life, this other stuff that has been bothering you will start to go away.


Yo

[Advent Shade]

In a way it sounds like a lack of belief on your part. When you were younger and you cared less you were able to harness that inner genius and use it to it's full potential without pausing for thought. But peer pressure on your friends side and a certain amount of neglect on your mother's wiped that belief and you started building up all these internal blocks which you now struggle to get past.

Would I be correct in assuming that you might be a little autistic? Such incredible memory capacity is certainly quite a unique and rare trait. Please don't be offended if this isn't the case...

Please, how do I pick up the pieces from this?

By starting at the beginning. Now think. What is the next move you have to take. A personal appointment with an advisor, psychologist or teacher? Or sorting out a study plan so you cover all the topics you need to cover? Or even something as simple as taking a deep breath, relaxing and accepting the current moment as it is? Take small steps in a positive direction and you will feel the momentum gradually build up beneath you.

[silicon toad2000]

I was recently reading up on REM sleep and brain development and I found a few articles that stated the human brain develops it hard wiring well into the teens and sometimes into the early 20's.
I would suggest you start training your brain to learn again. I don't think you'll get that 140 IQ back as those neural pathways which are not used are discarded by the brain, but your brain may still be forming new ones.
The main thing is to maintain a passion for learning and knowledge. Someone with a 100iq with a passion for learning new things will go much further in lifer than someone with a 140iq who is not interested in learning new things.

[Sam988]

Originally Posted by silicon toad2000

I was recently reading up on REM sleep and brain development and I found a few articles that stated the human brain develops it hard wiring well into the teens and sometimes into the early 20's.
I would suggest you start training your brain to learn again. I don't think you'll get that 140 IQ back as those neural pathways which are not used are discarded by the brain, but your brain may still be forming new ones.
The main thing is to maintain a passion for learning and knowledge. Someone with a 100iq with a passion for learning new things will go much further in lifer than someone with a 140iq who is not interested in learning new things.

I dont think anyone "loses their IQ for good" (dementia and other brain disease cases excluded).

If someone is born with the potential to reach a 140 IQ then it will never be lost, at most the person can lose the "brain muscles" by not training them but can recover it as soon as one trains them back.

Everybody has a certain potential to which degree one's IQ can go by training the brain muscles, at least thats how i believe it works. If one is born with a 140 IQ, one might be able to go even further but can go down, so lets say the person can go from 120 IQ to 160 IQ, being the average 140 IQ.



By the way, IMO, some may be able to push their IQs up even in a bigger size of range, while at the same time also being susceptible to having their IQs lower a lot inside this big range, maybe thats the case of palimpsest.

[palimpsest]

Thank you all for your great advice. The one main thing I can think of that was holding me back was my really poor coping techniques. My whole middle school experience was hell as mentioned, my (single parent) mother is very inconsistent in her support, and I fell into a depression. I'd stopped bathing, spent the whole afternoon sort-of sleeping and zoned out through most of my classes... my mom thought I was lazy or lacking vitamins. Eventually she moved me to a school I recovered in, but following that came a financial fall-out that got me a year-long hiatus with my angry and disappointed family who kind of spread their anger around.

My mom doesn't count me as an adult until I've graduated college (because you actually need a college diploma to get any job at all here,) and I personally don't feel like an adult at all, wondering why everyone around me seems to expect my knowledge of commute routes and banking protocols to spontaneously pop up. I mean, I know I should take some responsibility but I've never had the slightest clue how or even how to figure out how.

I used to want to work with animals and the environment, but it just isn't that fulfilling anymore. I became a bit of an astrophysics autodidact, but this is entirely the wrong continent for it. I've turned to occultism at first to overcompensate for my powerlessness and insignificance, and even though I didn't directly find what I needed there it's adequately systemic to keep my interest and the most exciting hobby I have now but I know I can't really build a solid career on it.

I did reasonably well academically at my last school, but the social environment... not as bad as middle school, but still unbearable... and I took up homeschooling because I would be able to pace myself. Only, I'm still under the homeschooling curriculum and it turns out they have five pages of cursive writing as part of their sophomore high school syllabus, to give you an idea of their standards of "challenge" ... and whenever I sit myself down to it I just can't focus at all.

[Sifox]

Let yourself finally explode out of that shell you have continued shading in around yourself. Let your heart and soul go boom.
You have tons of support.
The real help came when you took your first breath, follow this.
"Above all,To thine own-self, be true."