Work Ethic

[TheGatesofLogic]

By now most of you know I enjoy learning and progressing in my knowledge of not only how things work, but all of the whys, whethers, ifs, and whens that i could also ask about these things. Well, i have a nephew (three actually, but this is the one i'll be talking about.) who is a junior in highschool, and he is absolutely brilliant, and every single little quirk of his reminds me of myself as a kid (no, he's not MINE, his personality is just like mine as a kid, and he is interested in all the things i would be interested in as well). My brother has his own quirks though, and despite my telling him a thousand times that telling a kid he is smart in America's fucked up industrial education system will only teach that kid that he doesn't need to work as hard as students who are less inherently intelligent. I'm not saying that it's not true, but it is an attitude that ruins the potential of such people. Last year the Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts came back to the highschool I attended as a Celebrated Alumnus and a Guest Speaker for the year's graduation ceremony and i had the honor to hear him speak and what strikes true in my ears now is what he said regarding work ethic, "The World is absolutely filled with talented individuals who lack persistence, and without that persistence they will never achieve their ultimate goals" My nephew has been taught he is a genius, and he has been taught to be complacent. His grades have been slipping to lower than his potential, and his father has given up. I talked with my fiancee for hours on end about this and i've decided to visit him once every week and try and teach him the value of persistence, as we've always been close.
What i'm trying to ask is how do i do this? how do i teach this brilliant kid to work harder and reach his potential? how do i teach a kid who is so mentally mature that he can reflectively analyse his own mind yet so weak willed that he cannot apply his own reflections? Do any of you have any advice? i just need enough to work off of, but i'm just not sure where to begin...

[DNoved1]

Best cure for a lack of work ethic in my opinion is the failure that results. Make him dual enroll next year and laugh at him as his grades plummet (it has to actually be a difficult school of course...)

This only works if grades are of importance to him, of course. Does he plan on going to any particular college, or something else perhaps?

[FlowerChild]

Having been through a bit of this myself as a kid, I will say that it's not necessarily telling him he's smart that's at fault.

If he's smart, he can figure out on his own that he doesn't need to work as hard as other kids. Maybe repeatedly telling him that may have accelerated the process, but I think it would be only a matter of time before that realization set in anyways.

What he may be is utterly bored due to lack of any meaningful challenge at school and the painfully slow (from his perspective) rate at which things are being taught. I know this drove me absolutely nuts as a kid, and what I wound up doing to cope was carrying my D&D books with me to every class, totally tuning out and writing adventures to play after school with my friends, and maintaining the illusion of being a studious little brat for the consumption of the teachers in the process since I was always furiously scribbling like I was taking notes with a book open in front of me. The classes were a joke, and despite being totally absent in every meaningful way, I kept an average consistently in the low 80's just by occasionally reading over the textbook the night before exams (I think I was mainly concerned with not being bothered, and learned that if my marks went too low my parents got on my case, and if they went too high, that attracted unwanted positive attention).

I don't think there is much of a solution there other than to try and get him into a school or program that is more suitable for his level of intelligence. I often look back on that period of my life and wonder how things would have played out differently had I attended a school to which I was better suited. I don't have any regrets there mind you, as I found my own path and I am very happy with how my life has turned out (and really...what I was doing even then is using my time in school to practice game design instead), but it's an interesting thing for me to ponder given how utterly different I suspect my life would be now.

So yeah man, if you haven't already, I'd give some thought to not necessarily how he needs to change, but how his environment may not be at all suitable for someone of his potential. The average school is tailored for the lowest common denominator, and from what you're saying, he sounds like he's very far removed from that. If he's as smart as you say he is, you may be subjecting him to a daily tortuous experience in having to listen to the monotonous drone of information he could have assimilated in minutes being spread out over hours, and he may simply be coping with that as best he can.

[Taleric]

You could shoot for ask what his 50 year plan is, if he is so mature. Stick to pointed questions that spark curiosity about his planned IRA contributions, location to retire ect.

If you can get him over to big picture thinking and express that school is a game to show your grade superiority over peers to be selected for college programs and finally jobs.

Sounds very similar to my experiance with school. I was bored to tears by the lack of challenge and realized too late putting on a show leads to opportunities.

All my friends in situations like mine salvaged things and babysit servers at universities :P

[FlowerChild]

If you can get him over to big picture thinking and express that school is a game to show your grade superiority over peers to be selected for college programs and finally jobs.

I agree that's what the average school is man, but if you turn school into a game instead of a place to learn something, that's a very sad fucking statement that raises the very legitimate question of "why are you wasting my time with this garbage?". If you reduce it to the level of a game (and an entirely boring and nonsensical one to boot), at that point you may as well just cheat, which teaches an entirely different (and distinctly negative) set of lessons.

Also, good luck getting a kid with his whole life in front of him, and who likely still views a month as an eternity, to be interested in a retirement plan :P

I think most people in that situation learn that lesson "too late" as you just don't have the perspective on time at that age, given how little of it you've experienced, to treat the long term very seriously. Really, that's a central part of the maturation process as with time you begin to realize that tomorrow really does happen and you have to act accordingly today. It's not something you can really just be told and accept as truth, as illustrated by how you often hear elderly people going on about how quickly time flies by, and how you start off rolling your eyes at it, and then slowly begin to think as the years roll by "oh fuck...they were right after all".

[FlowerChild]

I just want to bring up an analogy here that I think may cast a different light on the subject:

What would happen to a relatively normal kid if you decided to stick them in special ed?

Would they excel because it's easier? Or would they grow bored, lose interest, begin treating those around them with resentment, and rebel?

The answer is likely dependent on the individual, but as harsh and un-PC as it may sound, that's essentially what's being done to this kid. We have a rather alarming habit in western culture of acting embarrassed when someone exhibits talents beyond the norm, and refusing to make accommodations for it based on not wanting to give anyone "preferential treatment", while bending over backwards for those that are less capable than average to make sure they're ok.

To the kid though, it's largely the same. They're surrounded by idiots (relatively speaking), being treated like an idiot, being taught by idiots, and people are trying to strong arm them into taking it all seriously when they probably think the people doing so are idiots too.

Anyways man, if you really care about the kid (which you seem to), I'd suggest taking a step back from how people think he "should" behave, and take a real close look at the cold realities of his situation and what it's likely doing to his psychology and overall outlook on life.

[PatriotBob]

I can't say it's completely the same, but FlowerChild description of high school with D&D manuals is pretty much a dead ringer for my experience. Breezed through high school, got just about 3 years of college before I could no longer get financial aid to help pay for tuition. And I can honestly say I put out little to no effort as the content, even in college, was nothing I didn't already know. It was at that point that I had huge student loans, outstanding balances at the school and nothing to show for it.

So I got a job in construction to make ends meet and pay down money owed. I can honestly say that even in my career of software development, the 5 years I spent laying tile and stone did more for me as a professional than anything I could have learned at school. I busted my ass, I bled, I worked 6 days a week, 16 hours days, for months at a time. Because it's what I had to do. And when I wasn't working that hard, I programmed. I took the drive I had acquired at work and used it at home to learn, program, and progress at what I wanted to do. Software Development.

It bring false sense of security being lackadaisical but generally smarter than 99% of the people you meet. It's hard to justify working hard when you can put out 10% effort and keep up with everyone else. But I think, at least for me, it boils down to 2 things.

First, I was at a point where the only course out of my predicament was to work as harder than I knew I could. If I got lazy, bills weren't paid, I couldn't eat, and worse of all the internet might get shut off.

Second, I started with a minimum wage job. And it didn't cut it in the slightest. So when a construction job opportunity showed up, for potentially much better pay, I took it. (Even though at 6' and 125lbs wet, hauling concrete is rough) But I can't stress enough that there is something amazingly rewarding about working with your hands. I was blessed enough to get a chance to work under a man who could do amazing things with stone. So learning to build things out of marble and granite gave me the chance to create and the reward of a job well done is something I can not express well in words.

I think when mental tasks come so easily, working with your hands can put you out of your element enough that you are forced to truly exert yourself. And finding something that you can create and be rewarded by your hard work will carry over outside of just manual labor. Restore an old car or remodel a house. Find something that can catch his interest and get him sweating and pursuing completion. That's what did it for me.

I don't know if my long ramblings will be of any help but I thought it was worth at least posting.

Edit: Grammar and FC summed up some of this in his usual 'short-n-awesome' fashion

[FlowerChild]

So I got a job in construction to make ends meet and pay down money owed. I can honestly say that even in my career of software development, the 5 years I spent laying tile and stone did more for me as a professional than anything I could have learned at school. I busted my ass, I bled, I worked 6 days a week, 16 hours days, for months at a time. Because it's what I had to do. And when I wasn't working that hard, I programmed. I took the drive I had acquired at work and used it at home to learn, program, and progress at what I wanted to do. Software Development.

I think I had a similar experience with the army. It's what snapped me out of my almost purely intellectual youth, and turned me into the big machine gunner guy with several books in ziplock bags tucked into his ammo pouches :P

I kind of oscillated back and forth between the two rather distinct identities that resulted for a few years before assimilating them both into who I eventually became, along with an outrageous (and I do mean epic, I almost always do things to extreme excess) party animal phase thrown into the mix.

A lot of your story above resonates with me man, including the college experience. I eventually wound up dropping out of university entirely at least partially out of boredom (I remember the last exam I took was in a theoretical physics class, and I got 100% with the class average being in the 70's, and I never went back to it), and the realization that if I really excelled in my field it would likely wind up killing people. The party animal phase coincided with me dropping out actually as I went totally hedonist in a "fuck it all...none of it matters anyways" manner.

Eventually, during that phase, I wound up hearing about a guy that had been hired by a local start up game company straight out of a local community college that offered programming courses for adults. I had been programming games since I was 12, so I figured all I needed was some kind of piece of paper to get my foot in the door. Took the course (I spent most of that time coding game demos to act as a portfolio), got the job, and there began my career. I guess I had finally learned to play the game a bit, because I didn't learn anything there either ;)

As a lucky coincidence, turns out the president of that company had served in the same military regiment I had (at a different time mind you, I didn't know him), so he immediately liked me. Just one of those moments in life where everything seems to come together and all the chaos leading up to it makes sense.

I guess why I say above that I don't regret any of it is that it's been one hell of a wild ride that's allowed me to experience a much wider cross-section of life than I think would have been likely had my initial education experience been different, as it was basically my rebellion against that which pushed me to such extremes. I can't really look back on that and regret it. I'm occasionally surprised I survived it all as intact as I did, and I wouldn't recommend that path to anyone, but I can't really regret it :)

[magikeh]

Ive got that bit of connection to this one. Except for the part about being brilliant, i find myself to be quite average although I went to a school where the others around me were just lumps of meat. Classes were easy, only because of the slow pace, average 80s and never had homework because class was more than enough time to do it. But one thing, I grew up working with my hands, in the garage with dad, out diggin dirt because fuck you or just in the basement with a screwdriver and a bunch of old electronics. Its the working with my hands, the fact that for everything that I did i could see an immediate result, remove these screws and there is a new part, do this to a car and it fucks that up.. etc. I was driven mostly by curiosity and the anticipated results (imagination was always in overdrive) but this summer it really dawned on me how hard I actually work when there is shit to be done. I started in a heavy labour job setting up agriculture equipment, the guys that I worked with were pretty fucking smart, both of em were in engineering later years with the high marks and all that, both of em are x2 times my size but they worked so slow because they knew they would be able to get it done, me on the other hand had to bust my ass to keep up, but by the end of the summer i was surpassing them in workload, mostly because of new muscles, but the ethic was still there. Long story short i think the best course of action would to be to get him a hobby of sorts that won't hinder him (because if its him that is teaching/leading then it's him that sets the pace)

PS: Screwdriver set and a bunch of kitchen appliances from the thrift shop for christmas were the best presents i've ever received

[Taleric]

Yeah this is one of the age old dilemmas that has so many books and songs about it :P

You need that experience/strife to give yourself character and definition to take ownership of your life.

When I meet young people that have had a difficult childhood, born in a third world country, both parents passed away ect.; I take heart in their maturity and work ethic engaging all opportunities.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah this is one of the age old dilemmas that has so many books and songs about it :P

Yeah, exactly man, and I think when people look at really smart kids, they somehow expect them to assimilate those lessons without the experience, just by being told the way things are.

But it really doesn't work that way. You can even intellectually acknowledge the truth of something without really groking it and thus really believing it. I nodded sagely at countless lectures about how I should be behaving, recognizing the truth of what was being said, then going back to behaving exactly the same way I had been (maybe after a few days or a week of token reformation). Heck, I was probably way smarter when I was 16 than I am now considering all the abuse I've subjected myself to since, but I pulled way dumber moves on a regular basis because of the experience that was lacking.

[RobinHood3]

I can say, having read this, that you guys have successfully frightened me out of my wits!

At the risk of sounding like an egotistic, self-righteous snob (open spoiler for a self-righteous rant)..

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I'm well above average in schooling. I'm currently 16 and a senior in high school (skipped a grade)... I got over 2300 on my SAT (close to a 1600 two-part) without studying at all, an average of 4.6 on my five AP tests, won the regional science fair as the leader of a team project, am one of the highest scorers in my state in academic quizzing, have single-handedly won a 16-school TEAM math competition two years in a row, going on three, have a GPA of over 4.3... I could continue but I try to be humble and laying out my accomplishments is hard for me.
I currently go to a Governor's School for math and science, where I routinely have the highest grades in my classes (some of which are difficult - our latest physics test had a class average of under 55). I have studied - roughly, I'm guessing - 4 hours TOTAL over the last 4 months (at gov school, which is supposed to be college-level difficulty, as all teachers are also professors at colleges). As I go through various courses in gov school, I'm beginning to understand what I want to do in life and what I truly love doing (my computer science/Java programming course is amazing and I'm falling in love with everything FC says - his game development mantra is fascinating to me!). I'm developing who I am going to be in life and loving the experience.

However, I'm beginning to experience a kind of apathy that I've never experienced before... and to be quite frank, it's scaring me. First in my class last year, I recently fell to salutatorian because two of the extra virtual AP classes I took last year only netted me 4.0s instead of 5.0s (Bs, rather than As) because I refused to do the homework (still got As on the tests/quizzes and 5s on the AP exams). Someone else in my graduating class took empty blocks instead and since our GPAs are over 4, my 4.0s dragged me down while his blank block kept him stationary (ahead of me).

I'm scared, to be honest. I've never really had a challenge that warrants studying or creativity in school and thought 1) skipping a grade would bring it [it didn't], 2) going to governor's school would bring it [it didn't], 3) taking vocational classes (engine repair, auto workshop, etc.) would bring it, since I'm intellectual and not the best at manual labor [it didn't - after the class ends I'm faster at fixing them than the rednecks who've done it their whole lives], 4)etc. Nothing in my life has challenged me.

And I'm frightened. And you guys are making it worse! Hahaha.

Any advice? I'm kind of bull-sh*tting my way through college applications since I know without a doubt I'll make it in the college near my hometown (one of the best engineering schools in the nation) where I want to go. I haven't picked a major yet, but I feel as if it'll be physics, engineering, computer science/programming, or something else STEM related. I've never talked to anybody I know about this and feel awkward bringing it up in person since I haven't yet figured out I'm not special (pride, guys, I'm referring to pride).
I don't want to be crushed when I get to the "real world" where I have to put forth effort but I have a hard time putting forth effort now. I'm afraid.

[Taleric]

Internship is my first though. Ping educators and professionals you respect for intern recommendations.

Being able to observe real word application of your interest is invaluable. Paying special attention too all aspects of your mentor's conduct that provides the desired results. Figure how they manage their networking, references and resources.

This is a great start to building your plan and contingencies that you to stick to reach retirement.

[FlowerChild]

Just to throw some fuel on the fire here for consideration (this thread has got me all introspective about my own past), I want to mention one other thing that can contribute to this kind of apathy:

Teenagers try to fit in. They're discovering how to be social animals and relate to others. This can go so far as to cause people who are different to become targets. The stereotype of the smart kid getting targeted for bullying by jocks or what have you has become a comical cliche, but that's largely because there's a lot of truth to it.

How do some (maybe even most) cope with this? By trying to appear average. You dress like other kids, you talk like other kids, and you try your very best to not stand out and to fit in.

This can very easily take the form of a strong motivation not to excel at school. For me, this is another example of why an average school can be very bad for exceptional kids. They may be getting exposed to very strong and constant conditioning, maybe even physical, that teaches them they should never excel so as not to appear different or weird. If they are surrounded by other exceptional kids though, then fitting in means living up to their own potential.

Any advice? I'm kind of bull-sh*tting my way through college applications since I know without a doubt I'll make it in the college near my hometown (one of the best engineering schools in the nation) where I want to go.

Oi vey. Shit just got real :)

This is the kind of thing that's much easier to discuss in the abstract man, especially when it happened to you decades before. Talking to someone going through it in the present is a whole other ball of wax ;)

Let me think about this some. I don't want to fire some off the cuff bullshit at you like "stay in school", "don't do drugs" or whatever catch phrase is trendy right now.

If I can say anything now from my own experience, it's that you aren't alone, and your peers are out there waiting for you. You likely see very few of them where you are now and may be feeling like some kind of alien by comparison. When you meet them, you will likely love them to death, and they will love you in return.

If I have one regret about the path I took it's that I largely missed out on that for a very long time and just wound up feeling more and more isolated as the years went by. By the time I began to meet those people (which only really started for me when I began my career in the game industry, which used to be comprised almost exclusively of brilliant and eccentric individuals before it became so mainstream) I distinctly felt like I had lost out on years of camaraderie that would have done me a world of good and likely caused me to bypass some very dark and lonely days.

No idea if it's the same for you man, but in your shoes, that's what I'd be focused on: the exceptional people that excelling will bring into your life. Your situation at present likely sucks, but you are on the very brink of changing it into something dramatically different and absolutely wonderful by comparison if you can get through the final stretch.

[TheGatesofLogic]

well, it looks like all of you have come to a similar conclusion that i have, in regards to experiential learning being the best path to better work ethic. And FlowerChild, as much as i agree that the system is a problem, and even though what you said is USUALLY right, in this particular case not ALL of the teachers are morons. My nephew told me about him last month, he's his AP USH teacher, and I talked to him once and we immediately clicked, and we're great friends now (oddly enough, neither of us are really the type of people who have any particular group of friends but rather just talk to anyone around freely). This guy basically embodies what a highschool teacher OUGHT to be like. He teaches kids to analyze, rather than to store and retrieve at a later date. He's the type of dude who grew up with a drug addict mom and a drunk father, went to school and worked hard, went to college with a decent scholarship, and when he was deciding what field to learn in instead of choosing any form of math or finance , the two things he was best at, chose to study history, because that is where he faultered most, even though the job market for such was so ridiculously low that it was entirely likely he would never find a job. pretty amazing guy. and a good example of how a teacher should be.

With regards to why i absolutely hate telling a kid they are smart, the reason i think so is that i went through this, and i firmly believe that Intelligence is nearly static through all of people's lives past puberty, and as such telling a kid they are smarter is at the very least inconsequential to their success, and can even potentially cause damage in the end. regardless, if you praise a kid for their work ethic they certainly will work harder, regardless of their intelligent capacity, which is why i feel it is best to completely avoid telling a kid they are smart, and skip straight to praising their work ethic to maximize their potential.

I would like to respond to all of the above quotes, but i don't have the time right now, thank you all for helping me figure out a solution.

edit: very wrong word

[FlowerChild]

Actually, I think the best I can do is tell a rather personal story:

One of the most poignant nights of my life was when I first went to a party just off campus at MIT that was thrown by a bunch of students that had a communal house there. I was there as a guest, not a student (I was a few years older than most by that point, dating a girl that was working on her masters thesis).

As I stumbled through the place half in the bag, I kept overhearing snippets of conversation about topics like genetics and robotics. The brilliance was utterly oozing off the place. I remember talking to one girl who shared a common interest in Dance Dance Revolution, who wound up telling me about the arcade quality dance pads she had made from scratch because all the home ones on the market were total crap. Smoke machine, lights, drinks, music, probably more than a few joints going around...it was a party like many other I had been to, but so utterly different in the subtext that I may as well have been on another planet from what I was used to.

I was honestly on the verge of tears, both out of joy in that I felt like I was finally home, and regret that I had not found it sooner and taken a path that would have lead me there.

So yeah man, if I can emphatically suggest anything, it is working towards your own version of that moment.

[AdmiralJonB]

It's interesting hearing what others are talking about, as this is something that's on my mind a lot about myself. I realise in myself that I'm looking for a challenge, and have been all my life. I've always followed the path to a supposed 'greater challenge'. Even now, I'm just starting a PhD to get that next level higher, to try and find a real challenge, to try and find something that I can put my all into. I worry that it'll get me screwed one day (almost did during my masters degree) but has yet to happen and it only makes the cycle longer.

What kills me most is knowing that I am very capable of working harder than most and being a miracle worker. Every time when it comes to crunch time, I always pull off some amazing feats. At the end of the last project I was on, I was working 12 hour days like it was nothing. Even when I caught I stomach bug and wasn't able to eat, I just kept going on (I don't recommend doing it btw).

If there's one thing that doesn't work on me, is telling me I'm smart and better than those around. It never really worked for me back in the equivalent of high school, and still doesn't work for me now. For one thing, I don't believe it. As for another, it seems to have the opposite affect on me when I am told. I seem to bring myself down when it happens.

I just don't have the motivation to do much unless I'm put under pressure. Every kind of thing I've tried to do it to myself just doesn't seem to work. I've still yet to find the event to completely get me able to 'switch on' all the time, but I hope one day I do. I think in some ways that FC is right about trying to find those moments. I've come close, but not close enough. I lived with a group of people for 4 years that are the most intelligent people I know. Coming down to the kitchen every day to people that were talking about all the latest discoveries, or how to implement certain algorithms, or the finesse of game design really made my day. Too bad they could be so unmotivated to do things. I had to get out of there as it felt like it was dragging me down.

I guess the only thing I can say for advice is to try work on creating things together, and having intellectual conversations. Maybe if your nephew can be with people that are doing things that rely on brains, it will help motivate him more. That's definitely something I wish I had in my life: others that are intelligent and motivated to do things and include me as a part of them.

[ExpHP]

I don't want to be crushed when I get to the "real world" where I have to put forth effort but I have a hard time putting forth effort now. I'm afraid.

It's funny. What you describe sounds very much like what I felt years ago before I entered college.

And it's how I continue to feel today, one semester away from earning my Bachelor's degree in Physics, even as I continue to consistently rank near the top of my class.

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Honestly, I feel like I don't deserve to be where I am; I feel like it's only through sheer luck that I've always managed to pull through and get my work done on time. I procrastinate for days at a time, and often find myself only able to buckle down when the deadline has almost come. Even then, I've lately become prone to burning out quickly, and need to spread my work out over several days (and there are times where I have simply given up because of this). It's a wonder I still manage to get anything done!

Whenever I bring this up with anyone, they find it laughable. How can anyone have made it this far without putting in enough effort?

Part of my situation though, which may or may not apply to you, is that I am diagnosed with a social disorder. I've been trying to keep it on the down low lately, because I feel like people always gave me special (read:unfairly advantageous) treatment because of it. None of my current professors have been told about it. Of course, I imagine it's still possible to tell that something is "off" with me, seeing as I always make abrupt conversation and never make eye contact. So I still worry that some professors might just be giving me the unfair edge, as I've never had trouble getting i.e. an extension when I needed it.

But there's another side to this. See, it also makes me one hell of an introvert, and so I've always worked alone.

Just this past week, I've tried fighting the urge to hide and work alone on my computer, and instead decided to work where most of the physics majors do. And as I've been there and listening to the conversations, I've begun to realize that a whole lot of students at my level are just "bullshitting" their way through, as well. As in, they were doing very much the same thing I was doing, but they weren't beating themselves up over it (I suppose because they already knew they were in company?).

It seems to me that there's simply a lot I don't understand about the world I'm a part of. Maybe that's my problem. Perhaps it could be yours, too?

...

One thing did change, though: I did start "studying" to some small extent. I'm not sure when it happened exactly, but I do now spend 1-2 hours before a test going through the book and jotting stuff down in little memo pad. I think I might've started this practice after getting destroyed by a test in one of those classes that allows you to bring in a cheat sheet (as I've found that simply the act of creating the cheat sheet helps me remember most of what I put on it).

[Daisjun]

I think the problem is a lot more common than people acknowledge. Institutionalization for 13 years does not set you up to make a rational decision on the direction you want to take after you leave high school. If you, as I did, show even a minor glimmer of academic brilliance, you're made to feel as though that if you don't utilize it to your full potential, you're a failure to everyone and you're wasting your intelligence.

This is exactly how I felt when I left high school. So I went into engineering, despite not having any real interest in it, but I thought it was where my talents could be best utilised. I was a stupid teenager that didn't know any better and had no experience outside of school. And guess what? I hated it. I soooooooo fucking hated it. I didn't attend a single exam in my first semester, failed every subject and dropped out. I made the decision that everyone else wanted me to make, and it was completely the wrong one.

Conversely though, the dux (amazingly smart guy) of my year went on to do adult education, a course with one of the lowest entry marks, then of course everyone went on about how he could've easily become a doctor, engineer etc etc and how he had wasted all his hard work in high school. Yeah well...fuck them, it's what he wanted to do, who the hell was anyone else to tell him otherwise?

It's nice to see that I'm like a lot of other people here, I empathize with your situations completely. I breezed through most assessments with barely any effort, never studied etc. Problem is I never had any direction. I never had anyone sit me down and ask me what I really wanted, and I had never experienced anything so even if someone did sit me down so I couldn't tell them. And here I am now with a bachelor's in business, medical science and am about to finish up my law degree (which I am absolutely struggling through atm, not through difficulty, but abject apathy) and I still don't have a clue what I want to do.

The point is, yes your nephew may be a genius, but that doesn't mean it's his calling to go on to cure cancer. He may very well be able to if he tried, but that doesn't mean it'll make him happy or it's what he truly desires to do. I mean, my parents knew how intelligent I was, but they never forced me in one direction or the other, they just wanted me to make the decision that I felt was right for me.

Has anyone considered just sitting him down and asking him what he wants? It may reveal a lot of things that explain his behavior.

Your teenage years are some of the most influential in your life and for me the mentality that my teachers and everyone else had when I didn't meet expectations (despite still being above average) was so shit and really damaging for me, I wasted a lot of time that I'll never get back.

I'm definitely not saying that trying to encourage him is not beneficial to him, it's obvious that you really care about him and that's awesome, just that you need to go the right way about it. Don't make him feel as though he's done something wrong just because you think he can do better, try and understand why he's let his grades slip and work from there.

[Mr_Hosed]

Bit of an echo I suppose, but like so many before have said, school was stupidly simple for me (160 IQ for what that's worth). One thing that helped, but didn't prevent a similar path as seems to be the consensus, was my old man's insistence that I work everyday after school in his machine shop.

I have one regret that would have changed my trajectory towards success much sooner in age. I wanted to go into the work force for at least a year before I entered college. I knew myself well by 18 and knew I needed more discipline if I hoped to succeed with out the purview of parents. Unfortunately I took the advice of my parents and teachers and went straight to college.

I have a saying. "One doesn't know how to make money until he's can't afford to turn on the heat in winter". I believe the same is true of success in general. Some things can't be taught, only experienced. As a parent (friend/teacher) all you can hope to do is equip your pupil with the tools he'll need to climb out of whatever hole he ends up digging for himself.

[MAZD1X1E]

I was going to write a wall o' text about how this thread has struck a chord with me, but I couldn't find the right words to express things.

Suffice to say that many of the experiences posted here are also true for me, and for those of you that have found your path after leaving (escaping?) the education system, I envy you.

[ExpHP]

Suffice to say that many of the experiences posted here are also true for me, and for those of you that have found your path after leaving (escaping?) the education system, I envy you.

Indeed. I think we all need to find our selves! I know I haven't...

[Gilberreke]

This is very much a controversial topic for me. Boils down to not knowing the answers to any question posed here and knowing that a good many solutions posted here might simply fail, as they did with me.

Maybe I'll share a bit of my story, give it some perspective.

Like a lot of others above I was mister wonder kid. Went to primary school and when the teacher tried to teach me to read, it was suddenly apparent that not only could I read already, I was reading adult novels two weeks after they discovered it. I finished the year that you learn the alphabet with a note stuck to my report saying "can easily read at a high school level".

Big problem here is: how the hell do you motivate a kid that is at least 7 years ahead when he STARTS school. Apparently, by punishing him very hard for every mistake. Third year of primary school (age 9), my teacher decided that he'd whip me into shape by taking away every lunch break and recess until the end of the year. I spent 7 months being bored out of my mind in class, then copying some boring punishment sentence onto paper, like I was in a Simpsons intro, then going back to class, for 8 hours a day. Of course, I kept a high 90's grade through all of this, so no one was concerned about a 9 year old kid not getting the time to play with his friends.

By the time I got to high school, I was completely alienated from the other kids, my grades started dropping sharply. Suddenly the whole world figured it was time "to save me". I got the full-on preferential treatment (alienating me even more from my peers), teachers routinely told me I'd be "famous" one day, etc. The other kids obviously responded by even more bullying, so I responded by a lot of punching. Having been bullied for years at that point, I was capable enough in defending myself, that I could easily solve my problems by just punching lights out. By the time I was 15, I was thoroughly disgusted by my own attitude, so I stopped caring. I started laughing when bullied, stopped showing any semblance of caring about studying or teachers. For some reason this rebel act turned me into a crowd favorite, so I went from being an outcast to one of the more popular kids in school. I never got my high-school degree in the end, though I did manage to break the school's math olympiad high score the same year as I dropped out.

Life hasn't really gone in an upward trend from there for me, though I did manage to eventually get my bachelor's degree (which was a joke to get, though it caused me a great deal of courage to get, what with my phobia for institutions).

I have no effing clue what you'd need to get out of this story. Personally I think that intelligence is overrated, completely useless and a burden. It doesn't actually have ANY useful effects on my life at this point.

[devak]

This is very much a controversial topic for me. Boils down to not knowing the answers to any question posed here and knowing that a good many solutions posted here might simply fail, as they did with me.

Maybe I'll share a bit of my story, give it some perspective.
(...)

I have no effing clue what you'd need to get out of this story. Personally I think that intelligence is overrated, completely useless and a burden. It doesn't actually have ANY useful effects on my life at this point.

wow man that sucks. It was mostly just being the impopular kid for me. Bang for the Buck is what i apply to school: doing the minimal amount of effort to get the right grades. That sometimes fails since some subjects like Math require at least some practice. But doing barely anything while paying attention in class works like 80% of the time and the other 20% i have a second attempt for, so that doesn't matter either.

When it comes to "saving" an intellectual kid it strongly depends on the type of intellect. I myself only need to listen to the actual class. That's pretty much all i need to pass my tests. I have grown a dislike for reading books, and while the classes can be boring, the books are even more boring. The only real thing you can do for a smart kid is try to find it an interest and have it perform well for that interest. That, or transferring it to a different school but that doesn't always work out either.

[FlowerChild]

Man, this has become a super interesting thread. I'm kinda taken aback by how many of us here seem to have had similar experiences growing up. As I mentioned on IRC, I really do love the BTW community :)

Personally I think that intelligence is overrated, completely useless and a burden. It doesn't actually have ANY useful effects on my life at this point.

One of my best friends subscribes to the point of view that intelligence only really serves to make you isolated and miserable, and that it's basically a curse.

I see both his point, and yours, and have certainly gone through periods of loneliness related to it (high school being the classic example for many of us here I think), but I can't say that I agree. Intelligence has opened doors for me and taken me places that I don't think I could have gone otherwise. Pretty much all my recreational pursuits revolve around it in one way or another, so I derive most of the pleasure I find in life from it in some way. It keeps me interested and engaged in things when I might just have my life slip by in front of the TV as so many others seem to. It inspires me to take on projects that no one else might consider or have the vision to pursue. It has lead me to meet and become friends with some of the most spectacular and interesting people I have ever encountered.

I dunno man, I've gone through incredibly angsty periods in my life, but I guess with time I've just learned that I actually really like who I am. If I weren't me, I'd really like to sit down with myself, have a few drinks, and listen to some stories. I may not like every single thing about myself, and I certainly have my share of regrets from the past (and I think that common to the human experience regardless of your level of intelligence), but when I look back over the big picture, my usual reaction is along the lines of "hehe...that was pretty cool...nice job man".

I really do maintain that finding your peers is central to finding both happiness, and your own identity, and I think not having that is the central point to many of the more painful stories that are shared here. I would urge anyone who is feeling this way to put some long hard thought into how they might go about finding and engaging such people for the sake of their own well being.

Loneliness and isolation sucks for everyone man, and that really has nothing to do with intelligence. Being different from the norm in any way will likely make it a more difficult problem to resolve, but in all but the most extreme cases, it's certainly doable.