Like many HNers, I was a pretty bright kid growing up. I scored embarrassingly well on most aptitude tests, and before entering middle school found myself the subject of repeated IQ, aptitude, learning style, personality style, thinking style, and psychological analysis by befuddled education specialists trying to figure out why I did so poorly in school.
Here's a sample of what I endured before entering 6th grade.
-6 IQ tests (the first when I was 4!)
-ITBS (I scored so high I had to take it twice, the second time isolated in a room with two observers since they thought I had cheated)
-MBTI - INTJ - I've taken this test at least a dozen times
-Keisey - I'm unfortunately a Mastermind
- Holland - Strongly R-I-A
- Various Thinking Style tests (abstract-to-concrete, abstract-sequential)
- Hermann A-D
When I got to High School, I endured another battery of tests (3 more IQ tests), interviews and other ridiculous activities. I spent one day a week sequestered in a "gifted lab" where I was expected to produce works of art or something, but I found interminably contrived and boring.
Why did I do so bad in school despite these indicators of intelligence? I was miserable. From 1st grade on I was miserable. I hated school and everything about it. Arbitrary rules, boring wrote memorization, pep rallies, uninteresting subjects, teachers more inclined to deal with behavior issues in class than teach anything. I only bothered to attend instead of skip classes because the school had a decent liberal arts program (which was fun and had teachers that "understood" being miserable in school) and I helped start a poetry club with several other disaffected youths.
The truth is that I felt like, and in fact was, socially outcast by all of the special programs, tests, special classes, after school mentoring programs etc. I couldn't really enjoy talking with other kids my age in the normal classes and getting involved in "special" classes instantly cast you as an outcast.
After enduring all that I never bothered to take the PSATs, SATs, GREs. I didn't care. I was done being tested, probed and made to do what others wanted in the interest of nurturing my potential.
The truth is that, as a smart, self motivated kid, I kept myself plenty occupied by intellectual pursuits. Just outside of school. I built computers, wrote software, wrote music (often in math class), performed in community orchestras, drew in pencil, created alphabets, painted, studied a couple martial arts, read an extraordinary number of books, played piano for modern dance recitals, published poetry, got heavily involved in the demoscene. School was to be endured, not to succeed in.
When I turned 15 I started feeling hopelessly trapped in a system and a world I couldn't escape. Buoyed by my "successes" in various IQ/Aptitude tests, I thought the world just didn't "get" me. I started having suicidal thoughts. At 16 I found myself thinking seriously about killing myself. I spent more than one night at my sink with a kitchen knife at my wrist wondering if I should go ahead and make the cut or not. It was not a good place to be. I was saved by my music, and ability to experience frisson (as weird as it sounds).
I did plenty of extracurricular I suppose, just none that would work on a university application.
Kids who succeeded in school were "losers" (I mistakenly thought), since they didn't have the inner light that led to self-creation (or so I thought). Regurgitation of endless facts and conforming to what the teachers wanted did not impress me.
Despite being extraordinarily bright, I was also hopelessly naive.
After graduating HS (just barely). I took a couple years off to find myself and to grow up a little. The rarefied environment I grew up in (along with some family issues) just gave me no chance to do that -- my IQ was high, but my EQ was low.
If I could do it all over again? I'd do the normal classes with the normal kids. I'd avoid all of the tests and other nonsense. I'd join the baseball team and the debate club. Get a perfect SAT score and get into a top school. Selling out? Maybe. But I think I'd have a been a lot less miserable and saved fighting the system for a later time.
Why did I do so poorly in school despite the tests? It was probably the tests. I was told I was so smart so many times that the effect mentioned in this article seems particularly germane. I didn't work hard, so I didn't do well, but I tested high, so I thought the system was broken, not me. I was already smart, so I didn't need that fact positively reinforced, but I did need instances of hard work reinforced. I had no work ethic coming out of high school, I simply did things that interested me and dropped things that didn't.
I've thankfully grown out of many of these things, and the mantra I've used is simple, "If you're so smart, you should be able to figure out how to <insert problem>." If it's doing well in school, socializing well, working hard, etc. I try and overcome my problem with that simply phrase. It sounds silly, but it works and I wish I had known it growing up. I would have been a lot happier.
My god, this sounds so much like me!
Although I'm not always miserable, only I'd always done well in school except for the last two years when everything just got very, very boring.
I graduate this year, and everything you've said in:
> At 16 I found myself thinking seriously about killing myself. I spent more than one night at my sink with a kitchen knife at my wrist wondering if I should go ahead and make the cut or not. It was not a good place to be. I was saved by my music, and ability to experience frisson (as weird as it sounds).
I did plenty of extracurricular I suppose, just none that would work on a university application.
Kids who succeeded in school were "losers" (I mistakenly thought), since they didn't have the inner light that led to self-creation (or so I thought). Regurgitation of endless facts and conforming to what the teachers wanted did not impress me.
Despite being extraordinarily bright, I was also hopelessly naive.
Applies to me.
Could you please tell me how you got yourself out of this?
I'm quite desperate here.
When I was sitting there, knife to my wrist, the thought of all of the music that I would miss, that I wouldn't discover or be able to frisson to (I didn't know what it was called at the time and only learned what it was decades later, but I knew it was very real for me) was the one thing I couldn't accept.
I've never regretted that decision.
What I've found is that outside of academia, the real world problems are so messy, and so complicated, that it takes all of my intelligence to work on those problems and deal with other messy soft issues, like selling my ideas to higher ups, or balancing financials against employees, are so intellectually stimulating that it literally "gets better" if you have the drive and will to find a line of work where you get to work on interesting problems.
(I've always thought the wonderful "it gets better" ads do a disservice to other disaffected members of society by not talking specifically to us, even if the message it true for more than the community they target)
As a matter of fact, it doesn't just get better, it gets awesome. I've gotten a job I never get bored of, I got the girl, I get a pretty nice paycheck, live a nice life, travel as much as I want to wherever I feel like (see the world!), and always work to write a novel of my life that I'd find interesting.
Just remember, if you are as smart as they say you are, you can figure out how to solve your own problems. Not popular at school? That's a solvable problem. No girlfriend? Solvable. Bad grades? You can solve it. Your mind is your most powerful and flexible asset, you can use it to do anything you really put your mind to, even things that don't come naturally once you solve the problem of learning how to grind on boring stuff.
I had no idea frissoning was a unique thing. How repeatable is it for you? I've felt it countless times from music or moments in film or life in general when I experience something that is particularly profound or impressive on a visceral level. It's not a daily occurrence though. I've usually attributed it to the feeling of getting a surge of adrenaline. Interesting.
I can't repeat it much. I don't go chasing after it; I let it find me. It isn't something you can conjure up over and over. You feel like you are in contact with beauty itself, and then you are forever changed. The experience is fleeting, but I remain grateful for it when it happens.
In my case I found it in some music that I found at the exact right moment in my life and it served as a sort of pivot point to open myself up to life more. It's hard to know what caused what exactly; I don't believe it necessary to boil it down to something that would appease the cynics of the world. I instead see it as something of an omen: that I'd one day be able to participate in this thing called music.
It's a long road, but I thank you for reminding me of it.
If anything, I'd describe the experience (if what I experience is the same thing) as similar to, if not the same thing as, a small shot of endorphins dumped directly into the base of your neck.
If I find a new piece of music that triggers a strong reaction, it can be very repeatable. For example, when I was 12 I had a tape of some Rachmaninoff performances with one particular section in I think the Paganini Variations, only a few seconds long, that would send me into the stratosphere.
I played it thousands of times until the tape finally broke.
It's very different than finding something beautiful or sublime.
Sadly, it'll often wear itself out if I play a piece of music too often. Sometimes I'll "save" certain pieces of music and only play them once or twice a year to experience the "flavor" of the frisson to that music.
It won't happen if I'm extremely stressed. It's actually a way I can tell I'm stressed, if music that should cause me to frisson doesn't. I've worked out some mental exercises and visualizing techniques to overcome the stress and let it happen which has been a great sort of therapy.
For me it is very repeatable, I can call it up if I'm not in a very wrong mood. Interesting to know it's got a name.
I talked to several religious people about how they know there is a god. What they described to me sounded a lot like this feeling, just a different conclusion from mine - if I interpreted them correctly. If this is true it might be quite common.
I've heard between 10-35% can experience it depending on the study (it's extraordinarily high in the population who go on to become musicians). I've personally only ever met 1 or 2 other people who claimed it.
> I'm one of the few percentage of the population that can frisson to certain works of music.
I've been labeling this feeling as an ASMR[1] (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). Is it really a rare occurrence? I can pretty much do this on demand when listening to certain songs/types of music.
My understanding is that ASMR and Frisson are similar, but different experiences. As far as I can tell, I can frisson, but not ASMR.
Interestingly, reddit has both a frisson and an ASMR subreddit.
I know that frisson is highly personal. What causes me to frisson won't cause another person to frisson, and I only know a couple people personally who I believe can frisson (but nobody really talks about it, because there's simply no awareness of it).
I don't know if the same is true for ASMR. But the triggers people post in the subreddit are not representative of anything that's ever triggered a frisson in me (soft voices, clicking sounds, etc.).
But that doesn't stop people from trying to share their triggers for each phenomenon!
I knew about the ASMR subreddit, but the frisson one is new to me. They are both strange. I do get chills/euphoric sensations from certain music and certain sounds, though. It would be cool to know exactly what's going on.
>Why did I do so poorly in school despite the tests? It was probably the tests. I was told I was so smart so many times that the effect mentioned in this article seems particularly germane. I didn't work hard, so I didn't do well, but I tested high, so I thought the system was broken, not me. I was already smart, so I didn't need that fact positively reinforced, but I did need instances of hard work reinforced. I had no work ethic coming out of high school, I simply did things that interested me and dropped things that didn't.
That I think is the most essential point you've made, how did you get around that?
If I know that then I certainly wouldn't be this depressed.
The how for me usually comes through a change in attitude. One such change is knowing that learning boring things now can pay off down the line, that what you're doing pays off. Once you accept that, you'll approach the mundane shit with new vigor. For me in high school, I hated history class - you learn some remote facts, you memorize them, you spit them out in an essay on a test. Who the hell cares? We had shitty weekly assignments where you literally just made an outline of the chapter you were reading. I remember very little of the actual content. But ... years later I'm really glad that I have the skill to quickly scan and digest mundane information. This ability didn't just happen - no one is born with a text filter that magically highlights important facts in paragraphs.
Not all the mundane bullshit you have to do will be important later in your life. But you won't know beforehand what parts were good and what parts weren't. So you can sink into not caring, or you can believe that maybe 1/5 boring things will save your ass someday. Sure, you might be smarter than your teachers now, but knowing how to impress 'dumber' people is a really important skill that about 50% of smart people don't grasp.
I've been through similar things, and I should emphasize that things do get better as bane says.
Here's a comic that helped to remind me that at some point it wasn't just about learning bullshit, but that at the end of the day you can do really cool things with crap that seems boring and trivial now: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2125#c...
Get around what exactly? I don't think he is saying he got around anything - just that he dropped things he didn't like.
If I know that then I certainly wouldn't be this depressed
It probably doesn't sound useful, but there probably isn't a single simple answer to how. BUT - more usefully, there are simple answers to when. Things will get awesome in somewhere between 1 and 3 years - as soon as you find fulfilling things to do, with people who get you. This will happen. It will take longer than you would like, or seems reasonable, or be easy, but it is achievable.
I meant how did he manage to stop doing that, unless he continues to do so, yet things are awesome for him now.
I want to know how things managed to become awesome if he still continues to drop boring things, or how he managed to convince himself to work on boring things.
I didn't drop boring things. I taught myself how to do them. Take history for example, in HS I found it excruciatingly boring. Later in college I challenged myself to take it again and ace it. All that stuff I thought was boring, I learned to see it as interesting. As an evolving system. Piecing bits of history together, seeing the evolution of tax systems, or military patterns, or whatever.
Eventually, I got to the point where I could afford to travel a bit. And here's where the awesome part comes in. When I went to Athens, I could visualize Hadrian walking through his arch down to the temple of Zeus. Or in Florence, walk the exact same streets as Michelangelo and see exactly where Savonarola was burned to death.
In Rhodes I could see the approach the armies of Salah ah-Din had to make to assault the fortress of the Knights of St. John. It wasn't just a wall, or a bunch of bricks, it was a living, breathing piece of history. And knowing the history of it, I felt connected to it.
And now that I know that history can be so enlightening, I seek it out where I don't know it. In Korea I learned about King Sejong the Great and why he's great, and suddenly I find I'm interested in linguistics and invented writing systems (great site btw http://www.omniglot.com/). And I find connections between things everywhere!
It's just history, but other things in life suddenly have a vibrancy and flavor I never saw, because I never knew how to see.
Well I dropped boring things, and things turned out alright. Just make sure you aren't using that as an excuse for avoiding things that aren't as easy. I never found Math as easy as I'm sure some of the Math genius on HN find it, but I didn't drop it either, for example.
I do agree that developing a good work ethic is important.
I had to finish up high school, and simply get out in the real world. I worked odd jobs, shitty manual labor and such for a bit. When that got old (or I got tired of being outside) I found a job doing tech support. After a couple years of that I came away with two things
a) I had trouble doing tech support initially because communicating effectively with people is hard. I learned more skills related to handling people during that job than I have anywhere else, and it's the most valuable skill I've ever learned.
b) I absolutely hated doing tech support. I applied for some other, better jobs, and couldn't get them. Doing support couldn't pay my bills, and I finally found myself in a situation where I knew that the best way forward for me was to just go to school and get it over with. I took a couple remedial classes at the local community college to get over my fears from K-12, simple things like Algebra. But I took those classes also to learn how to study. If learned to grind. And I also learned that even when I thought I knew something, I learned I hadn't mastered it. If a teacher assigned 20 problems, I'd do 40, and invariably I'd find one or two I couldn't solve, or had trouble with.
I had to teach myself work ethic. Tell myself I was working hard, not that I was smart. After all, if I was so smart I wouldn't be 4 years out of High School taking Algebra classes at a Community College would I?
I generally avoided distractions, I had friends I studied with, but I didn't put a whole lot into the relationships. I eventually found people who were also interested in studying and working hard and we became a regular study group throughout most of my undergrad. That helped satiate my desire for human interaction, without becoming a drag on my time or a distraction away from school. I met my wife through that group. But we got together knowing we'd support each other through our schooling and study. So it wasn't like the relationship was a huge distraction like it can often become. (We studied extra together instead of going on dates, cheaper and more useful in the long run).
It wasn't easy. I still have work ethic issues that crop up. But I know how to spot them and work on working them out. Turns out these days, working in a more managerial position, most of the work is mindless grindwork, filling out paperwork, attending meetings, that sort of thing. But if I hand't taught myself to do it, I never would have made it.
The thing is, I knew I was smart, so I considered everything I couldn't do, even grindwork, as something I knew I could figure out. I took everything as a challenge to my intellect, and that's seen me through pretty well.
If At 16 I found myself thinking seriously about killing myself. I spent more than one night at my sink with a kitchen knife at my wrist wondering if I should go ahead and make the cut or not. applies to you, you need to tell someone, if you haven't already.
I'm similar too, except that my father drilled a work ethic in me. I also grew up in a very rural area. So, my father would give me projects that HAD to get done. Some examples:
"If you don't split this firewood, we won't be able to heat the house in the Wintertime."
"If you don't clean these ditches, now in the Fall, then the Spring snowmelt will wash-out our driveway."
"If you don't carry buckets of water to the house this morning, we won't have any to use the rest of the day."
Because of these tasks, I developed a "can-do" attitude. I learnt that if I can figure out how the most efficient way to split firewood, than I can also discover the most efficient way to be fit / be attractive / get high-paying jobs / etc. It just takes cleverness and determination to get out of a bad situation.
But what I do rather than giving up is just sink into my own world, and if that's not destructive, I don't know what is.
I just feel depressed, and then end up feeling that I should be stronger and I'm weak because I'm depressed, which just makes me even more miserable.
Maybe give this game a shot, that a game designer created after herself having suicidal thoughts – it's a playful way to get you to do things that help when you're depressed (talking to people, focusing on short term plans, finding things that make you happy, etc): https://www.superbetter.com
Meta-emotion will destroy you. I deal with it occasionally and it is absolutely vicious. I'm considering trying cognitive behavioral therapy to get away from it.
It can. What helped me was learning that depression is a physical phenomenon resulting from trained signaling pathways in one's brain that can be observed and retrained. That's what CBT attempts to do, but learning some of the science behind it allowed me to really figure out what I needed to do to help myself.
Right. Try and avoid abstract meta thinking about your state of affairs. Try and think in terms of concrete, short term plans. Things you can do today, this week, this month. Do them. Do them with purpose. Don't just exist and observe.
Chunky, do you have a role model? A mentor? Whether a PG-type or someone successful in some other dimension, I'd encourage, nay, exhort you, to find and talk with a mentor who can tell you about the world that awaits your beyond your "beach of dreams" and current educational straight-jacket. Please, please don't assume that your smarts are all you need to see your future from your current vantage point.
Many have walked through your dilemma. There are a ton of people here who would help you out. Even me.
Indeed there is, but even when I do talk to that person, it's seems to just highlight the fact that I'm stuck in a place I don't want to be, and though I want to get out of it, there's no conceivable way to do so.
There' so little time to do anything, and this year's going to decide my future.
It's really hard to not think of it like a noose around your neck, and whenever I do think about it, I keep wondering whether I shouldn't have tightened it long ago.
I promise you these things pass. I felt this throughout school up until I left Senior School for College and started having more control over what I did in my life, looking back now I feel like a completely different person from the me 4 years ago.
Trust me it gets amazing once you get out of there, you just have to get through the endurance test first.
This year's going to decide my future
No it's not. It's going to change your available options, but look around for some people who are successful and happy, not one of them is going to say to you "I'm here now because High School put me here". What matters is the choices you make once you're out of there, and whether that takes you closer to the kind of life you'd like to have.
There's so little time to do anything
I'm going to guess you're talking about exams here, but I guess this applies whatever it is. Even with 5 minutes left using that 5 minutes effectively will help you. If you care about the outcome then make use of whatever seemingly-tiny amount of time you have left. If you don't care about the outcome then use that time somewhere else. You sound pretty smart, your blog is well written, I'm sure that you can make meaningful progress at what you want to make progress in.
1 Well, my experience is of Senior School in the UK, but from what you're saying the difference sounds negligible for this situation.
That is totally, absolutely wrong. Just because teachers etc say it doesn't mean you should believe it. I'm sure you've read how Steve Jobs forced himself to go to college because it was what was expected, and then dropped out. Personally, I missed the course I wanted to do, started something else, dropped that and finally ended up doing a computer science degree (which was something I'd ignored for 3 years). (Edit: and it all worked out better than if I'd done the degree I'd initially wanted to do)
There are plenty of examples of the opposite - people who don't go to college straight out of school.
Think it through - there are very, very few decisions that "decide your future" in a way that can't be changed, and the few that are usually are crimes.
Sure, work hard and go to college or whatever, but DON'T THINK "MISTAKES" CAN'T BE FIXED".
When someone tells you "this decision decides your future" nod politely, and ignore the implied pressure. They are incorrect.
Personally, I missed the course I wanted to do, started something else, dropped that and finally ended up doing a computer science degree (which was something I'd ignored for 3 years)
I had a very similar experience that took this geeky computer nerd into the crazy and scary world of politics for a couple years. I ended up running a state senate campaign and worked for the WI Senate Majority Leader for about 2 years. It was crazy and completely different from anything I would have experienced had I stuck to Computer Engineering and graduated in the standard 4 years like everyone expects. It happened by accident (because I was purposefully wandering) and was far more educational than anything I could have done in college. It was is by far the best thing I ever did.
Don't be afraid of a curvy path through life. There's a lot of value in the curves.
I agree with you, and this is what I'd thought for the most part, but I find that if I don't think this way, I do exactly what bane did and just abandon whatever bores me. I don't want to just barely pass high school, I want to do well.
No matter what anybody tells you, this isn't true at all. You can decide your future whenever you damn well want to. In fact you should always be adjusting your future as you need to. Don't listen to those that make you feel like this is it.
I've changed my future 3 or 4 times as I wanted to as an adult and never regretted it.
Different people are different distances and difficulties away from their ideal life, but the only way you're really stuck is if you give up. "this year's going to decide my future" is not true. Well, aside from the tautology that every year, every moment decides your future. The noose is a mirage, just as much as the resume/admissions game is. Play the game or don't - but don't let it bind you.
You family may neg you for the rest of your life if they are that kind of people but so long as you do something with your life it doesn't matter much in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Trust me, everyone here is 100% right when they say that this is just so not true. Myself, I went to college to study music and audio engineering, I discovered partying and living on my own and dropped out. I got married. I got divorced. I lost all my possessions multiple times. I've experienced addiction, depression, the whole nine yards. I didn't discover programming until I turned 25. I'm turning 32 next year, and I couldn't be happier with my life. The whole thing has been a terrifying rollercoaster so far, and I'm not betting on it slowing down that much for a while. But trust me the one thing I can promise you is that things change, lots, all the time!!
Take it from someone who has believed the same lies.
What the teachers are saying right now doesn't apply to you at all.
It is meant for those who needs to shape up to graduate.
Even though it is so incredibly unfair, these are almost the only people whom the teachers will focus on.
And for what it is worth: as hard as the yc interview is, pg isn't going to care if you graduate high school or not. The journalists who interview you will, because it makes for a better story.
Hah, if you only knew how untrue this is. What happens in high school is essentially meaningless (take it from someone who graduated with pretty much prefect marks). Go to college not in your home town, enrol in a degree that seems at least mildly interesting, and be open to changing your mind.
Don't worry: your future is not held captive by your 18-year-old self.
At Simon's Rock, the whole entering class consists of students who just finished 10th grade. In my experience there, self-selected 16-yr olds given the opportunity and expectation to live like adults mostly rise to the occasion.
That advice comes a bit late, given you have just 6 months of high school left. For you I would say two things:
Most 16 year olds will be happy to do what is expected of them if they are treated as adults. The worst parts of being a teenage isn't that it is difficult but that you have no freedom and nobody takes you seriously.
So the question then is -- did you really often not try because you didn't care, or specifically because you were secretly (even to yourself) afraid of making a mistake and thus disproving everyone's beliefs about you being smart (being afraid of letting people down, or not living up to the expectations of others)?
This is exactly what happened to me. I often was thought of as smart, (though still to this day I don't know why), but nonetheless it affected me and led me to avoid certain challenges. To think that it was all a result of a belief in a "fixed/unchangeable intelligence/personality/self", as opposed to the opposite, is both incredibly enlightening and exciting and very frustrating that I allowed myself to form the mindset in the first place.
This does not say much for the value of testing _and making presumptions based on test results_. Note the emphasis on the second part of that sentence. Testing is ok. Recognising that all children are not the same intellectually is fine. But making presumptions based on limited evidence, like test scores, is something I have always wondered about. This story only reinforces my beliefs.
Here's a sample of what I endured before entering 6th grade.
-6 IQ tests (the first when I was 4!)
-ITBS (I scored so high I had to take it twice, the second time isolated in a room with two observers since they thought I had cheated)
-MBTI - INTJ - I've taken this test at least a dozen times
-Keisey - I'm unfortunately a Mastermind
- Holland - Strongly R-I-A
- Various Thinking Style tests (abstract-to-concrete, abstract-sequential)
- Hermann A-D
When I got to High School, I endured another battery of tests (3 more IQ tests), interviews and other ridiculous activities. I spent one day a week sequestered in a "gifted lab" where I was expected to produce works of art or something, but I found interminably contrived and boring.
Why did I do so bad in school despite these indicators of intelligence? I was miserable. From 1st grade on I was miserable. I hated school and everything about it. Arbitrary rules, boring wrote memorization, pep rallies, uninteresting subjects, teachers more inclined to deal with behavior issues in class than teach anything. I only bothered to attend instead of skip classes because the school had a decent liberal arts program (which was fun and had teachers that "understood" being miserable in school) and I helped start a poetry club with several other disaffected youths.
The truth is that I felt like, and in fact was, socially outcast by all of the special programs, tests, special classes, after school mentoring programs etc. I couldn't really enjoy talking with other kids my age in the normal classes and getting involved in "special" classes instantly cast you as an outcast.
After enduring all that I never bothered to take the PSATs, SATs, GREs. I didn't care. I was done being tested, probed and made to do what others wanted in the interest of nurturing my potential.
The truth is that, as a smart, self motivated kid, I kept myself plenty occupied by intellectual pursuits. Just outside of school. I built computers, wrote software, wrote music (often in math class), performed in community orchestras, drew in pencil, created alphabets, painted, studied a couple martial arts, read an extraordinary number of books, played piano for modern dance recitals, published poetry, got heavily involved in the demoscene. School was to be endured, not to succeed in.
When I turned 15 I started feeling hopelessly trapped in a system and a world I couldn't escape. Buoyed by my "successes" in various IQ/Aptitude tests, I thought the world just didn't "get" me. I started having suicidal thoughts. At 16 I found myself thinking seriously about killing myself. I spent more than one night at my sink with a kitchen knife at my wrist wondering if I should go ahead and make the cut or not. It was not a good place to be. I was saved by my music, and ability to experience frisson (as weird as it sounds).
I did plenty of extracurricular I suppose, just none that would work on a university application.
Kids who succeeded in school were "losers" (I mistakenly thought), since they didn't have the inner light that led to self-creation (or so I thought). Regurgitation of endless facts and conforming to what the teachers wanted did not impress me.
Despite being extraordinarily bright, I was also hopelessly naive.
After graduating HS (just barely). I took a couple years off to find myself and to grow up a little. The rarefied environment I grew up in (along with some family issues) just gave me no chance to do that -- my IQ was high, but my EQ was low.
If I could do it all over again? I'd do the normal classes with the normal kids. I'd avoid all of the tests and other nonsense. I'd join the baseball team and the debate club. Get a perfect SAT score and get into a top school. Selling out? Maybe. But I think I'd have a been a lot less miserable and saved fighting the system for a later time.
Why did I do so poorly in school despite the tests? It was probably the tests. I was told I was so smart so many times that the effect mentioned in this article seems particularly germane. I didn't work hard, so I didn't do well, but I tested high, so I thought the system was broken, not me. I was already smart, so I didn't need that fact positively reinforced, but I did need instances of hard work reinforced. I had no work ethic coming out of high school, I simply did things that interested me and dropped things that didn't.
I've thankfully grown out of many of these things, and the mantra I've used is simple, "If you're so smart, you should be able to figure out how to <insert problem>." If it's doing well in school, socializing well, working hard, etc. I try and overcome my problem with that simply phrase. It sounds silly, but it works and I wish I had known it growing up. I would have been a lot happier.