# any former gifted program students?



## sparkationsgirl (Oct 25, 2008)

I was part of the gifted program from grades 4 onwards till the end of highschool. Looking back, I realized that I missed out on a lot of life experience in general. There was a lot of pressure from my parents for me to succeed in school, and it was competitive due to the classmates I had who cared about grades a lot. Looking back, I realized that there was no need to be that uptight about life and grades in general. I didn't date, was afraid of sex, didn't drink, didn't go out. I was very sheltered and clueless.I don't know, it was weird. 

I made up for that lack of life experience once I got to university. I started slacking off because I lost motivation, and instead developed life experience then. I started meeting more people, and developed relationships. Of course, it has taken me about 7 years to finish my bachelor's degree, but I guess at least I'm more aware of things, more experienced in life, and less clueless.


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## mathman (Jan 20, 2009)

I was in those programs -- and then some. The programs do vary wildly in content and quality, though the latter may be due in part to the different mix of kids. I actually really enjoyed the competitiveness that was introduced through at least one of the programs. It greatly motivated me in more ways than one. The competition made life more vivid and worthwhile. Later programs that I participated in lacked this competition factor and life became very static, dull, and uneventful. Losing the competitiveness of my peers was one of the reasons why I began to hate school. It divorced me from my peers and then the social anxiety set in.

At the time, I had no close friends (as this happened after a long distance relocation) and even though I tried to make friends regional differences maintained the distance between me and my peers. Former friends did not seem to want to maintain a long distance friendship. Some events happened. I quit talking to people all together. To fill my time I began playing lots of video games, surfing the internet, and reading.

It was like that up until college and is still like that, though I do talk on occasion now. The separation is still there. The last happy memories I have of relationships with people are from at least six years ago.

But anyway, some of those programs are absolutely awesome and others are complete ****. If only they were more uniform. And why does a school revoke an IEP only to put into place another a month or so down the road?


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## odd_one_out (Aug 22, 2006)

I've never come across gifted programs in the system we have. They would divide the year group into sets of 5 or 6 based on academic achievement. The gifted could end up in any, but those who did well in tests were placed among the top 15-20% achievers.

They further divided the top group in the sciences a couple of years before final exams. The more advanced received extra lessons after school. 

Growing up, academic achievement was not emphasised to me let alone pushed. I did not realise there would be final exams until a couple of years before leaving high school. I was 15 before I heard of a GCSE, an A level, or that a subject called physics existed (which I later took a research degree in). I noticed some parents pushing their children and some kids who could already read and write before starting school. I would have rebelled against that. My mother never even taught me to recognise my name, so it was a surprise I graduated high school top of the year. She has little clue about academics and doesn't even recall this or being at the prizegiving.

After that, it went downhill due to my conditions. I cannot access the academic community, despite qualifications, or pretty much any other arena involving people. I've been a recluse for years and am sure it's taught me far more than anything else.


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## wethesassy (Jul 2, 2010)

I was in a program like that in 4th and 5th grade but it changed in middle school and high school. It was no longer called a gifted program but just accelerated classes. My parents didn't really push me but they definitely wanted me to succeed. 

I remember my teachers were frustrated with me because I did well on standardized testing, never below proficient or 80th percentile, but I would get straight F's in all my classes. They eventually took me out of these programs because of my grades but I actually scored higher than everyone in my middle school at one point. 

Looking back I think it had something to do, rather a lot to do with my SA. The pressure of being someone who does well in school made me want to stop trying all together. Its so ridiculous but these are the types of things that make me so angry at having SA; because I know its completely irrational but I can't help it.


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## millenniumman75 (Feb 4, 2005)

wethesassy said:


> Looking back I think it had something to do, rather a lot to do with my SA. The pressure of being someone who does well in school made me want to stop trying all together. Its so ridiculous but these are the types of things that make me so angry at having SA; because I know its completely irrational but I can't help it.


They called it "academically talented" in my school system - what a bunch of bunk. I was never "classified as gifted" but I should have been.

I learned how to read by myself at age 3 (Thank you Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford - the original and BEST hosts of Wheel of Fortune!) - read to my preschool and kindergarten classes. I could tell time, too. In kindergarten, I was reading at a fifth grade level and doing math at the fourth grade level (couldn't do long division). They would not let me skip grades because I was "emotionally and socially a normal five-year-old".

Talk about scarring!


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## bezoomny (Feb 10, 2007)

I got a serious inferiority complex over the gifted program. It seemed like half the school was in it, except for me. I'd transferred into a public high school, having been in private school all my life previously. I was given the "gifted" test, which tested skill at art and math/science. I promptly failed it. I was called a nerd all the time, read a lot, and was either Latin club VP or pres at any given time. But not "academically gifted"? I wasn't even let into honors classes!

The resulting inferiority complex drove me, in part, to compete in academic contests (Latin mostly), which I'd then win, and to take several AP courses, which I'd make 5's in (highest possible score). I got into the Governor's Honors Program for Latin: one of the most competitive academic contests in Georgia, I was essentially declared one of the nine best students of Latin in Georgia. The gifted program is bull****. I have no idea how they choose who is "gifted" and who is not, but I know for certain that I'm much more academically gifted than those people chosen. They tend to not care about skill in literature, history and foreign language. It's annoying as hell because I had to deal with all those problems that the gifted program was supposed to correct: courses in high school were just insulting, they were so dull and so simple and I was just outright ignored whenever I voiced my frustration to anyone.

I know this doesn't answer your question at all, but I had to get that rant out.


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## millenniumman75 (Feb 4, 2005)

bezoomny said:


> I got a serious inferiority complex over the gifted program. It seemed like half the school was in it, except for me. I'd transferred into a public high school, having been in private school all my life previously. I was given the "gifted" test, which tested skill at art and math/science. I promptly failed it. I was called a nerd all the time, read a lot, and was either Latin club VP or pres at any given time. But not "academically gifted"? I wasn't even let into honors classes!
> 
> The resulting inferiority complex drove me, in part, to compete in academic contests (Latin mostly), which I'd then win, and to take several AP courses, which I'd make 5's in (highest possible score). I got into the Governor's Honors Program for Latin: one of the most competitive academic contests in Georgia, I was essentially declared one of the nine best students of Latin in Georgia. The gifted program is bull****. I have no idea how they choose who is "gifted" and who is not, but I know for certain that I'm much more academically gifted than those people chosen. They tend to not care about skill in literature, history and foreign language. It's annoying as hell because I had to deal with all those problems that the gifted program was supposed to correct: courses in high school were just insulting, they were so dull and so simple and I was just outright ignored whenever I voiced my frustration to anyone.
> 
> I know this doesn't answer your question at all, but I had to get that rant out.


^That's true - I also excelled in my Spanish courses and am trying to learn Hungarian (my father's native tongue). I play all the woodwind instruments well, too - I kept switching which drove my band directors crazy. I wasn't "gifted" - Heck, even the "gifted" people knew I was smart! Even with SA, it didn't kick me out of the Honor Roll (except for sophomore year - that year was hard on me). I didn't make their "Honor Society" either. I needed 20 credits to graduate high school. I could have graduated a year early if I had taken my senior Government and English classes my junior year! I had 26.5 credits at Graduation!


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## mathman (Jan 20, 2009)

bezoomny, it is true that a lot of the gifted programs seem to be nothing more than popularity contests. And really that is what I found the later programs I participated in to be. I feel for you not liking the gifted program where you attended school. Did you enjoy the motivation that came, even though it meant taking on an inferiority complex? It sounds like you were able to use it and get quite the benefit from it. There was no Governor's Honors program where I was but there was a Governor's School program (basically a summer boarding school setup). I found that to be yet another joke and popularity contest of sorts. Was yours any better? Was your contest written or verbal (also with a pronunciation section focusing on proper elision and whatnot)? Did you have to properly identify rhetoric devices? [Sorry for the many questions, it just sounds pretty cool and something I would have done if it were an option.] I commend you for the 5 on the AP latin test. Which test did you take (Vergil, Catullus-Cicero, Catullus-Horace, Catullus-Ovid)? I personally took the Vergil test and that was one hell of a test. It was the only one of all the AP tests that I actually felt was worthy of being deemed AP material (come on, 1856 lines!). The others just could not hold a candle to it.


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## Banzai (Jun 4, 2009)

odd_one_out said:


> I've never come across gifted programs in the system we have. They would divide the year group into sets of 5 or 6 based on academic achievement. The gifted could end up in any, but those who did well in tests were placed among the top 15-20% achievers.
> 
> They further divided the top group in the sciences a couple of years before final exams. The more advanced received extra lessons after school.
> 
> ...


There is one - it's called "gifted and talented". It's usually just a label for schools/teachers so that they can push them further. Some schools do projects for people with the label - I don't think it's anything as extensive as the states though.


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## Catlover4100 (Feb 10, 2009)

My school didn't have a single "gifted" program, but it did have "accelerated" classes that you could get into by exam placement and grades, and these let me skip a year of both math and science in middle school. And in the last two years of high school, there were more options for people of different academic abilities, like AP and advanced classes and some easy electives for those who didn't excel in certain subjects.


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## bezoomny (Feb 10, 2007)

mathman said:


> bezoomny, it is true that a lot of the gifted programs seem to be nothing more than popularity contests. And really that is what I found the later programs I participated in to be. I feel for you not liking the gifted program where you attended school. Did you enjoy the motivation that came, even though it meant taking on an inferiority complex? It sounds like you were able to use it and get quite the benefit from it. There was no Governor's Honors program where I was but there was a Governor's School program (basically a summer boarding school setup). I found that to be yet another joke and popularity contest of sorts. Was yours any better? Was your contest written or verbal (also with a pronunciation section focusing on proper elision and whatnot)? Did you have to properly identify rhetoric devices? [Sorry for the many questions, it just sounds pretty cool and something I would have done if it were an option.] I commend you for the 5 on the AP latin test. Which test did you take (Vergil, Catullus-Cicero, Catullus-Horace, Catullus-Ovid)? I personally took the Vergil test and that was one hell of a test. It was the only one of all the AP tests that I actually felt was worthy of being deemed AP material (come on, 1856 lines!). The others just could not hold a candle to it.


I never got in to the gifted program at my high school. The inferiority complex came from not being let in while *knowing* that I was incredibly talented and gifted.

I've done a lot of academic contests for Latin, which mostly came in the form of written tests on grammar, translation, and history/culture. The great exception would be certamen, which is a quiz bowl/Jeopardy type deal.

My teacher wasn't certified to teach AP Latin, so I never took it. I wasn't let into AP literature (because I wasn't in honors lit, which I wasn't let into either... magnificent catch-22 eh?). So I took the history and art history AP courses.

For GHP, it was an application followed by a series of three interviews. In the interviews, I was quizzed in person about my knowledge of Greece and Rome, asked to sight read/translate, and asked to read poetry in meter. There were also these pictures that I'd then have to explain (Ara Pacis, Pantheon, a statue of Antinous, etc.). I don't remember anything about literary devices being on it.

GHP itself was fantastic. It was about two or three months in the summer where a few hundred students lived at one of the colleges in Georgia. We had about five hours of classes in our major every day, and an hour or two of a minor. The Latin class was focused on things that we just never encountered in classes - late Latin literature (silver age/Neronian, and some medieval Latin). Also, we weren't allowed to speak English during the first half of the day, only Latin. Lol. This lead to contests between us over who could make the most complicated sentences or use as many literary devices as possible. We each worked on one main project, which could be on *anything* related to classics (mine was on the Iceni rebellion and the later legendary reputation of Boudica). The best part about it was meeting people who were there for other majors. Everyone called it "nerd camp," and it pretty much was. There were people there for all sorts of things, from math to history to violin.

And Jesus Christ, kudos for taking a standardized test on Vergil during high school. I hated him so much when I was in high school (I later studied book 2 in depth in college and have changed my opinion of him dramatically!).

EDIT: I would also consider Comparative Government and Art History to be worthy of the AP title. For Art History, we had to be prepared to write about every major work of art ever created, both Western and non-Western. Comparative Government was another nightmare of a course where we had to learn the ins and outs of the governments of five vastly different countries. And there was no cop-out DBQ on that, oh no. It became exceptionally difficult when memorizing the names of the different governmental components that were, of course, a very basic transliteration from another language.


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## Kwtrader (Oct 10, 2007)

when i was in the 7th grade i had to go to high school to take math class and science class in the morning then i had to go by bus back to my middle school. so i guess i was gifted in a way. then i got to skip the 8th grade on short notice.

it would have been nice to experience the 8th grade i at least had friends in middle school. i didn't really have friends in high school.

i didn't deserve to skip a grade but my middle school teachers didn't teach (lazy) so my dad decided its best i don't spend another year there and go on right to hs. 

all in all i turned out to be a failure after i skipped a grade. flunking classes in high school and dropping out of college.


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## wethesassy (Jul 2, 2010)

@millenniumman75

That really sucks that you weren't able to skip a grade or two. I was in a similar position in 1st grade, but at least later I did get placed in a "gifted" program in 4th grade and "accelerated" classes in middle school. I think that the schools should better assess the students.


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## gopherinferno (Apr 7, 2009)

My Advanced Placement classes prepared me fairly well for college, although their ridiculous formulas for how to write essays were of no use to me.

Did anyone else notice that it was mostly the rich popular kids in the advanced classes? That's how it was in middle school and high school for me. I was the one poor/loner kid in most of those classes, but sometimes still the smartest


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## odd_one_out (Aug 22, 2006)

Banzai said:


> There is one - it's called "gifted and talented". It's usually just a label for schools/teachers so that they can push them further. Some schools do projects for people with the label - I don't think it's anything as extensive as the states though.


Is it this one? They say it's about to be scrapped. There are some recent White Papers on strategies for schools, but with the new government it's looking uncertain.


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## societe anonyme (Dec 12, 2009)

I was in English enrichment and Maths enrichment at school back in the day...

Maths did squat, but English enrichment saw me reading Chaucer in the original middle English and learning how to do cryptic crosswords, a skill that has served me well to the present day...


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## bobthebuilder (Jun 17, 2009)

Catlover4100 said:


> My school didn't have a single "gifted" program, but it did have "accelerated" classes that you could get into by exam placement and grades, and these let me skip a year of both math and science in middle school. And in the last two years of high school, there were more options for people of different academic abilities, like AP and advanced classes and some easy electives for those who didn't excel in certain subjects.


my school was the same way. I was in the accelerated classes, tho only barely. I never did homework, so i was only held afloat by tests/quizes anything done in class, which i could ace. Drove my teachers nuts tho, I could have been in the top 5 (top 3 imo, i know two other kids were likely smarter than me) in my grade academically, but i was just barely holding onto above average grades, because i hated doing homework. I forgot about it a lot, and resented the whole concept-grades were based more on effort than actual knowledge. Halo 2 wasnt helping either.


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## DuncanThaw (Jun 19, 2009)

When I was in second grade, some students from my class (including me) were chosen to take some sort of gifted (from what I can remember, it seemed like it was probably an IQ test) placement exam along with some third grade students. All I know is that I scored the highest but that my parents wouldn't allow me to participate in the programs available. 

Since I went to a small (rural, not private or anything) K-12 school, that was it -- they didn't have any subsequent testing or placement for "gifted" students.

I think it would have been very beneficial for me to have participated in the programs, particularly being as reticent as I was and also coming from an economically disadvantaged family.


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## kikachuck (Nov 10, 2003)

I always had a bit of a complex with those gifted classes too. I always wondered what the criteria for getting into those classes was because I was just as good, if not better, than a lot of those kids academically. I know this because the gifted kids still took classes with the norms and I would end up helping some of these people with their work!

But in retrospect, it doesn't really matter. I know where a few of those kids who were in gifted class are today and they aren't really any better off for it.


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## Ambivert (Jan 16, 2010)

High school doesn't really matter except to serve as an entry point to college by getting good pre-requisite grades. It's college that will determine your worth to future employers. of course College isn't just about building up your resume (many will shake off that image and take the intellectual path)


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## shy girl (May 7, 2010)

I am on the gifted program, especially for languages. I think this is part of the reason I have social anxiety because I have always been the "nerd" and I'm scared people will pick on me for it. It also means I have different interests to my class mates and they find it hard to follow what I'm saying.


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## Absurd (Jul 17, 2010)

I was in the gifted classes midway through middle school, but I was like the dumb one. I got into the program late and everyone had already had the same teachers. I was pretty much out of place the whole time (especially considering I was the only ethnically different person there other than asians).

In high school though, like others have said here, I made up for it in AP classes, I burned through those things.

Now most of the people who were in those AP classes with me are burnouts in community colleges. The actual diligent ones though are in ivy league schools and whatnot.


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## creativedissent (Oct 25, 2008)

meh... society ain't gonna give a damn. The "gifted program" I was shoved into as a six-year-old created the single most outlandish destruction for my forthcoming ego. :S
Perhaps they reasoned I was too smart so I received so much humiliation from my teachers. Why does education exist? Ans: to redeem the stupid!


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## creativedissent (Oct 25, 2008)

If you troll upon Askmen.com, you'd learn that Giftedness = SEX appeal - something that Even I am ashamed of admitting. You could so tell I love BEING ASIAN.


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## LALoner (Dec 3, 2008)

sparkationsgirl said:


> I was part of the gifted program from grades 4 onwards till the end of highschool. Looking back, I realized that I missed out on a lot of life experience in general. There was a lot of pressure from my parents for me to succeed in school, and it was competitive due to the classmates I had who cared about grades a lot. Looking back, I realized that there was no need to be that uptight about life and grades in general. I didn't date, was afraid of sex, didn't drink, didn't go out. I was very sheltered and clueless.I don't know, it was weird.
> 
> I made up for that lack of life experience once I got to university. I started slacking off because I lost motivation, and instead developed life experience then. I started meeting more people, and developed relationships. Of course, it has taken me about 7 years to finish my bachelor's degree, but I guess at least I'm more aware of things, more experienced in life, and less clueless.


I passed the test for the gifted students program but my mom wouldn't let me in because she thought that would make me spoiled. Not being in it didn't help me any.


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## lucyinthesky (Mar 29, 2009)

I'm in my school's gifted and talented programme. I don't think the nerd status really brings you down at my school, as all the popular people are super-intelligent too. Some people just have it all... :b


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## FallenofTrack (Jul 23, 2010)

Absurd said:


> I was in the gifted classes midway through middle school, but I was like the dumb one. I got into the program late and everyone had already had the same teachers. I was pretty much out of place the whole time (especially considering I was the only ethnically different person there other than asians).
> 
> In high school though, like others have said here, I made up for it in AP classes, I burned through those things.
> 
> Now most of the people who were in those AP classes with me are burnouts in community colleges. The actual diligent ones though are in ivy league schools and whatnot.


It was kind of the reverse for me. I wasn't in a gifted program in middle school, but based on my grades and writing ability in middle school, I was placed in AP classes in high school. Then when I transferred to another high school in sophmore year, I was placed in the gifted program. The only problem is that since I transfered into this high school, by that point all of the kids in the classes already knew each other from elementary and middle school. I felt very uncomfortable in those classes because the other students were so familiar with each other and a lot of them were outgoing and extroverted. It was a completely different atmosphere than at my previous high school.


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