Originally Posted by
qcpmsame
This! I was called to the office as an 8th grader and told in front of other students that my IQ score was low but, "don't worry you'll find something to do." The HS teachers I had would dress you down in front of the class using this I.Q. information, had this done to me many times. I was told that I needed to look at a manual labor job or if I was lucky a skilled trade by teachers when they did the class schedules for the next year, and not to sign up for any advanced classes, or else. Funny that the teacher that gave me the most grief was the one that always had me fixing her appliances and electrical items for her home, on my time and my dime. I have to study really hard for anything I do, I read things multiple times and I have to take time when I am writing something out. I depend on my memory to get me by. I managed to work through my engineering degree and a law degree as well as a year of my MBA by memorizing everything I read, pretty much in total. I write everything out long hand, even my mathematics, Calculus was a bear for me, Physics I loved and memorization of the formulas was easy for me.
This gave me a chuckle. Good thing you took their advice about getting a menial job, eh? We need to chat over a beer sometime.
I took something akin to an IQ test in elementary school. My parents later came to me and said the school wanted me to skip a grade, so I guess I did OK. As it was, I was already younger than everyone else (November birthday), so I had absolutely no interest in that. Thank God my mother insisted the decision be left up to me. I suppose I'm reasonably bright, but I honestly think any success I've had isn't so much because of intelligence as it is really liking the learning process.
As a child, my son was brilliant. He taught himself to read at 3.5 years old, and was a handful because his intellect was so ridiculously beyond his judgment. I have some great stories about that little miscreant. He tested out at 160+, and he too is an under achiever. I was just haranguing him last night about his grades in bonehead English.
Don't get me started about how poorly a lot of school districts deal with gifted kids. It's a tragedy of lost opportunity.
Oh, and remember the Lisa Simpson quandary:
