Thread by @dylan_thyme

been watching the recent conversations about the after-effects of gifted&talented school programs w/interest. i was in a (please read heavy airquotes) “gifted” program in school. it didn’t do great things for my brain! i don’t talk about it much, but i want to, semi-briefly, now.

i was a verbally advanced child from very young; i have always, for whatever reason, been good with the english language, whether written or spoken. what i am not good at is executive functioning! there’s a whole cocktail of reasons why that boil down to mental health.

i didn’t understand these issues until my 20s in any concrete terms. resultingly, i had an... interesting time, in school. there were times i was ahead of all my classmates, & times where i’d struggle so much with finishing homework/turning in assignments that i’d nearly fail.

more often than not, i’d cycle through these times once, or more than once, in a given year. this means that most if not all of my “gifted” teachers encountered a version of me that could ace all the assignments, and a version of me that could not complete them.

and when that would happen? when i’d get overwhelmed and tangled up in the little details, the tracking and remembering, the focusing and not procrastinating and all that other shit undiagnosed adhd & anxiety & depression can fuck up in a brain? the answer was always the same.

“you’re too smart to be doing so poorly,” they would say. “you’re not trying hard enough,” they would say. “you’re obviously capable of doing the work,” they would say. “you’re lazy,” they would say. “you’re doing this on purpose,” they would say. after a while, i believed them.

it was such a consistent message, you see! and it was about such a consistent problem that i heard it a lot, from people i had been told and taught to think of think as authorities, as arbiters of merit. their opinions felt more weighted, realer, than my own.

“you’re not trying hard enough,” i’d tell myself, eventually, as i sat awake for hours panicking about homework, struggling in vain to make myself just get up and DO it. “you’re doing this on purpose,” i’d think, crying in the bathroom because i was so ashamed.

i’ve seen a lot of discussion about burnout, and about finding it prohibitively difficult to learn skills you’re not automatically, innately good at. and man, do i hugely relate to both of those things, and struggle with them to this day.

but i’d take either over the damage that my “gifted” program did to my conception of myself, over how badly it compounded my mental health issues. i am still trying to unlearn the ways it taught me to think, and suspect i will be for decades.

the thing is, i didn’t need more advanced language arts education. i was reading, and learning, plenty on my own. what i needed was basic executive functioning skills. i still do, to be honest. i never learned them; i just learned to hate myself for not having them.

it is not a teacher’s responsibility to spot&diagnose mental health issues in their students. that would be a hideous, unfair thing to expect. i have also been lucky enough to know many incredible educators over the years. it’s a noble profession for which i have endless respect.

but the lot i happened to draw was filled with teachers who loved me, but only when i was performing well, and who berated me, expressed their deep disappointment in me, and sometimes hated me when i, inevitably, slipped. i could tell you a lot of stories about that.

i could tell you about the guidance counselor who told me i’d ruined my life after getting a C, sat coldly and watched me weep in her office for ten minutes, only to pull me out of a class to hug me the following year when i was named a national merit scholar for my PSAT scores.

i could tell you about the teacher whose class i had to retake in summer school, because after i started struggling he went from loving me to HATING me, and made it viciously, constantly clear, leaving me so afraid in his class that i couldn’t remember anything he taught us.

i could tell you about the teacher who gave me a zero on a HUGE assignment i’d turned in — one i’d agonized over, bc i struggled so much with her homework — and then wouldn’t grade it when she found it where SHE’D lost it, bc i’d had issues before and “that’s what you get”

i could tell you a lot of stories. about myself, too; i’m far from blameless in this. i know i must have been a difficult and frustrating student, that teaching someone so inconsistent must have been hard. i can understand and even empathize with that.

but if even one of those educators — even 1! — had said, “hey, there’s a real disconnect between how bright you seem, how upset you are about struggling, and these periods of poor grades. maybe we should bring in the school psychologist,” my whole life might have been different.

because while i may have been a “gifted and talented” child? i am not a “gifted and talented” adult. i dropped out of college; i struggle enormously with basic life management tasks most of my peers don’t even think about; i am often distracted, disorganized, overwhelmed.

and i am learning, slowly but surely, how to manage that. i am better now than i used to be; some day, i hope to be better still. but this has already lost me jobs, friendships, opportunities; god, i wish i’d learned when i was young.

idk what the point of this thread is, really; there isn’t a lesson i want to drive home. i don’t think all accelerated programs are necessarily bad; i don’t think teachers are monsters. education‘s complicated & there are more pressing flaws in our current system than this one.

and i don’t think this ruined my life or anything, either; i have a partner i love and friends i adore and i’ve written things i’m proud of and figured out a lot about myself. i’m lucky. it sucked, and the aftereffects continue to suck, but i like to think i’m doing okay.

but i’m sad, for the kid i was, and for the adult i became, and for the other kids like me, and for the other adults walking around hating themselves for struggling. hating themselves for something they can’t help.

i guess i’ll close with this: i have been trying for nearly thirty years to check the boxes of normal human executive functionality. i have cried and bled over this pursuit; it keeps me awake at night. some successes, more failures, but nearly thirty years of effort.

and after all those years, when i struggle, the first thought in my mind remains: “you’re not trying hard enough.” that’s what i learned from my “gifted and talented” program, because that’s what it taught me.