Memes

Agreed 100%, being a specialist in something always has led to someone taking a pot shot at your deficiencies.

It's actually insane how many teachers and other education professionals waved me off with 'you're smart enough, just try harder' while I was obviously suicidally depressed and extremely dysfunctional. Having undiagnosed autism because I was a teenage girl in the '00s was fun.

People who say that are just trying to be a dick to you. Say something soul-searing to them in response and they'll stop.

Ah, the ol' "here's the test here's exactly what you need to do to be successful" followed by "lol that was never the real test."

Go with what makes you happiest, most often more effort can lead to less rewards. Ultimately you have to find your comfort zone.

AscendedMeme.jpg: Being Dumb | Being Gifted | Being Just Smart Enough to Coast by Easily in life while enjoying it.

No, people in the red zone think they're in the green zone.

I had to do an official test along with a psychological examination for reasons when I was almost 18 years old, so I know at some point I was in the blue zone or above, but it doesn't really fucking matter when you have autism, a mood disorder and have been neglected by your parents so you never learned things like determination or frustration tolerance. I think I shaved a solid 10 IQ points off anyway from almost a decade of substance abuse issues, so now I'm just autistic and dysfunctional without the gifted part.

Most likely most of us would be in the yellow zone

Sometimes we wish that our impostors syndrome was true

The secret is we're all gifted and talented in our own ways. Our society is structured to benefit and work for a specific kind of gifted and talented. You got to an early start, and then when it was determined your talents weren't profitable, the problem was framed as you wasting them instead or the system failing you.

Not to mention our current identification of gifted and talented is basically just "So you know how that one kid has ADHD and his lack of structure in their home life results in poor grades? Well we put them in the remedial class. There we will teach them coping and organization skills. Meanwhile, this other kid? They also have ADHD but we don't realize it because their grades are fantastic. Turns out their home life is stressful in a specific way that means they get good grades, but they don't really know why or what structure is helping them. I school we will put them in the gifted and talented class. There, they'll be in an unstructured environment where they can learn and explore at their own pace and OH NO NOW THEY'RE ANXIOUS AND UPSET BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO BECAUSE THEY WERE THRIVING IN THE STRUCTURE OF A REGULAR CLASSROOM"

Our education system is not based on individual need and instead on assuming everyone is basically the same, just more or less advanced

Intelligence also doesn't necessarily translate to actual success. I've been through numerous assessments as a child that confirmed I am comfortably in the "green zone" (if measured by IQ, that is), but I also have pretty severe ADHD so I can only really make use of my brain for short periods of time.

I can get a week's worth of work done in a day, but only once a week, and I spend the rest of the week wondering where I'd be if only I could work like that every day. I was also a decent student in school/uni but never near the top of the class, because I couldn't bring myself to study for anything more than a few days before the exam.

No we're not, you're just in the blue zone. Us greens are quite happy.

I think a good part of that is because 'average human' is not a good way to represent who we are individually. I'm probably above average at specific things but in many other respects I'm average or below or wherever I'm supposed to be. Maybe most people are above average even though on average most of us are average.

Fully above average people IMO are like astronauts and stuff. We all live in the shadow of that former navy seal/doctor/astronaut who is like 45 or some crazy shit.

This really depends on the distribution. If some or all of the people in that bottom 20% are very, very stupid it could actually work out that 80% are above average, because the average is being pulled down by the people at the bottom.

This is why we have different averages like mean, median, mode, and RMS because they each give you different interpretations of the raw data. For example the mean electro motive force of the grid is around 0 volts because it spends as much time in the negative as the positive. We use RMS here because negative numbers become positive when squared.

Yeah, one of the most important epiphanies I've ever had is realizing I'm not a lazy genius, I'm just lazy. It was a rude awakening to realize that I need to work twice as hard to keep up. But it was probably the best thing to happen to me!

"Gifted" programs royally screwed my education. I had huge gaps in my knowledge because they decided that being top percentile in reading/writing (and being the weird kid) meant I could just skip out on classes for special little weird classes or sit with higher grade classes. I just had ADHD btw and really liked to read. Anyway, I would LOVE to know wtf they thought they were doing moving a kid around that much in 3rd-5th. I suffered the hardest with math. I was missing bits and pieces, which is pretty gd important in math, and I'd still somehow get the answers right but talked to about my overly complicated or ✨creative✨ solutions lol. Even now I hide my work if I need to solve something because I'm probably doing it weird... Then later it was really fun finding out that I couldn't really live up to being "gifted". 0/10 being special made me less educated.

The older I get the more I profoundly identify with Cypher. Ignorance truly is bliss.

I get what you mean… though, I feel like an IQ test is a biased test, I took one as a teenager and scored high. Which was a morale boost at the time, but a few months later I had medical problems and ended up having a stroke and had to basically start all over with speech, motor and memory.

Sure, I survived. But I went through every therapy, started back up and realized I wasn’t close to what I was before. Which was crushing, sure I knew it wouldn’t be the same and I’m still above average, but the latent memories of my capabilities before constantly haunt me.

I didn’t mean to depress anyone, just enjoy the blue zone if at all possible. I constantly try remembering, it can get worse. /hug

Yes, this is funny, but anyone worth knowing in a PhD program will quote Hawkings at you if you take the green part too seriously.

"Only losers brag about their IQ."

Or Thomas Edison (and yes, he was actually a decent engineer before he realized how much easier it is to just own a company)

"Great accomplishments depend not so much on ingenuity as on hard work."

As you get older, you sort of get used to the fact that the majority of your fellow passengers are oblivious to the fact we’re on a bus speeding towards a cliff, driven by depravity and delusions of grandeur. And you realize short of a miracle, nothing is going to change it. It’s either that or you go mad. ¯\(ツ)/¯

I avoided it by coasting, they did testing in kindergarten and I realized fast I didn’t want the attention. Especially being treated like a trophy by my dad.

Do I regret coasting now, of course. Do it for your self-confidence, later in life you’ll be happier you did.