When I was five years old, I was put into a room with no windows, a 65-year-old woman, and a set of puzzle blocks. After I successfully configured the blocks into the correct pattern about sixteen times, my entire life changed. I began going to a special school for “gifted” students once a week for the next six years. In sixth grade, this shifted from once a week to every day for the following three years. I started at an accelerated program for middle schoolers, where at the ripe age of eleven, I began taking high school level classes that would remain on my transcript forever. At that age, I didn’t realize the impact this would have on me, not only academically, but mentally. On the academic side, the importance of passing these courses that college admissions officers would one day see was lost on eleven-year-old me. I had been used to easily cruising through school my entire life. Whether it was finishing tests early and reading for the remaining thirty minutes or being a peer tutor for some of my struggling classmates, school was never something I had to worry about. This all changed when I began this program and was no longer the smartest person in my classes.
Not only was I struggling academically, I was struggling mentally as well. I wrestled with how different my life had become, and my mental health was quickly declining due to the pressure placed on me by everyone in my life. I not only had to deal with the stereotypical drama of middle school– mean girls, boyfriends, parental troubles– but I also carried the added stress of knowing the grades I was earning at the time would stick with me forever.Â
I was placed into these programs by my parents and teachers so that I wouldn’t be bored with school. While they always had my best intentions at heart, the long-term impact of growing up in these programs has been harmful. The competition between myself and my peers was always present, even if it was never openly discussed between us. She got a 31 on her ACT? Well, that means I have to get a 32. While this did motivate me to strive for greatness, it also pushed me to constantly compare myself to those around me, leading to serious self-esteem problems. Up until my sophomore year of high school, I would have sacrificed anything and everything to get any sort of academic validation, including my mental health. And sacrifice, I did.
You can only push yourself to the limit for so long, and my limit came in the middle of my junior year. I had gone from never earning a grade lower than an A- and turning in every assignment on time, to getting my very first C and racking up dozens of missing assignments. All I had ever known in life was school, and when I wasn’t succeeding in that anymore, I felt like I had nothing left. I was severely depressed (for many reasons, not just school, although that was a factor), and was failing all my classes. While I always managed to pull my grades up at the end of each semester, this cycle repeated for the rest of my high school years. I had been so overworked all my life that when it finally came time for my grades to matter, I couldn’t pull myself out of the slump I was in.Â
While college has been an amazing clean slate for me, and I have been doing significantly better than I was in high school, these long-term effects still appear every so often when I get overwhelmed or I have a friend who scored better than me on a test. Although I don’t let these feelings control my life anymore (thank you, therapy and self-growth), it’s important to bring awareness and help others who grew up in gifted communities feel less isolated.Â