High Cognitive Minds

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Recently, I've gotten very angry about growing up gifted. I've been browsing the internet for information on, well, anything, really. I've found lots of support for (often highly deluded) parents of gifted kids, plenty of feel-good redefinitions of "giftedness", and a lot of completely useless observations of gifted adults. There aren't a lot of personal stories that detail other people's experiences as intellectual outliers living outside of academia. Where are they? It's great to know that I'm a highly creative and intuitive unique little snowflake who often experiences frustration and alienation, but where is the help I need to learn how to communicate effectively with the people I have to deal with daily? How do I resolve the bitterness I just discovered at being effectively punished for having such a "special gift" that I now see more like a birth defect? Where are the real answers?

Since I'm here, I'd love to hear about higher education alternatives for the astonishingly clever. I washed out of college the first time, and as an underemployed adult, I'm attending the local community college to put some credits in my record, and apparently learn the fine art of busy work. My research hasn't turned up anything, so I'd love to know if there are any ways of gaining a degree or two without having to suffer the college system. Can homeschooling grant a BA?

I do want to thank you, Catana, for introducing the idea of "hicogs". It's an interesting place to start when wondering, among the "exceptional", there are still outliers, and it helped straighten out some of my thoughts.

Mer, if you just started reading this blog, I think you'll find some answers, but I know I haven't addressed all of your issues. We do need more of the personal stories, but those tend to be limited to forums and mail lists. I'm very private and dislike talking about my personal experiences in public, and I think that's probably true of most highly gifted adults. It's something I'm struggling with, trying to be more forthcoming. A good topic for a post, actually.

I plan to deal more with education, but for the moment, check out two of the posts in the Scholarship category. Also, if you haven't accumulated all your freshman and sophomore credits yet, consider taking CLEP exams. They're a great way to avoid the boredom of sitting in classes, and save both time and money. Easy to find by googling.

I have felt this silent tense ripple, just under my skin, compelling me to find a group I must work with - like some of the mutants look for their kind; however, with a underlined sense of purpose. I have been looking on the internet and have joined some high iq groups, but to no end. I have felt, since very young, that I have been granted gifts with an expected performance on my part - as if my gifts were bestowed upon me with a debt I have yet to identify. I do not think it is a psychological "dead end" of being gifted, I feel this as though it, in itself, beckons my attention, as if it was based in instict and I can't run away from it.

I understand the feeling of needing to find people to work with, but nothing has ever worked out. I don't know, maybe everybody's goals are too different. I've tried forums, and even initiated discussion and potential work groups, but it's always petered out. Good thing I'm basically a loner, but it's still frustrating. I don't feel that I owe anybody anything, but I do want to put my cognitive skills to good use.

Quaere Genius, I ran across an interview with an author on Salon, and she made a little throw-away statement that, I think, hit the nail on the head:

"There is something inherently appalling about really intelligent people, in any context, not using their minds."

Now, the author was referring to privileged, educated women who left the working world to raise a family, but that attitude goes beyond mommies with masters. It's not an issue of whether or not people fulfill their potential, either, it's that third parties often take the liberty of determining what that potential should be. It's like... they consider us smart, and therefore we should do what they consider of value.

Mer, your comment about being underemployed was the point that most resonated with me.

Not long ago, I raised this issue on the boards of a British national newspaper. I wanted to put out feelers to find out if it was a widespread phenomenon to feel that one was capable of contributing more than one's job specification allows. I received some very snotty-nosed replies back, to the effect that it's up to the individual person to make sure their job matched up to their abilities.

I think that's true only up to a certain ability level. Beyond that, the workaday world just doesn't have any concept. It is difficult to communicate one's need to contribute more, because the average employer, or even the averagely-bright employer, has no frame of reference within which to understand what we are trying to explain.

Whatever qualifications you may achieve in your own time are often treated as irrelevant if you can't back them up with actual paid experience. (The fact that employers were ignoring voluntary work experience, transferable skills etc. was the topic of another thread in which respondents did nothing but agree with the "paid experience only" criteria.) Because the profoundly bright person will SUBJECTIVELY gain more "experience" within a very short space of time, any additional time spent on the job will serve as fine-tuning of that experience only, rather than be the significant part of the individual's learning-curve that it probably is for those of more "normal" levels of cognitive function.

I too washed out of school and have been struggling to catch up educationally ever since, because of my lack of tolerance of tedium and busy work. Here in the UK, we have universities that do home learning. I suffer from ill-health however which leaves little energy after work for study, which is a never-ending source of frustration. Because my desired career change is so radical (I want to get out of office work and into psychology) this is unlikely to happen without some kind of degree. Most university syllabi I have examined look rather boring. I don't know what the answer is.

Sue, I remember this topic coming up several years ago on a mail list. It's a perennial problem and an excellent subject for a future post.