#it was like a middle schooler book idk what that age group would be defined as

[i-dont-r3member]

RANDOM SHOWER THOUGHT/MEMORY UNLOCKED/I NEED ANSWERS RIGHT THIS MINUTE

Does anyone else remember a book series from like…idk prolly the mid to late 2010s (or at least that’s when I think I read it it was probably older) where the main characters could like travel through mirrors??? And there was like this whole world in between the mirrors and these big bug creatures that they had to feed (?) so they would bring them to the correct exit mirror and there was like a lord of this mirror plane/world/dimension who was a jerk and they ended up like fighting(? Im p sure they outsmarted him technically) because I only remember this specific aspect and now I HAVE to know the series so I can remember the context around why they traveled by mirror

[foundcarcosa]

“the ex gifted kid this is just an inherently privileged mindset“ (taken from this post)

See, the funny thing about this anon is that they’re talking about AP, which I didn’t even consider as a “gifted kid” thing -- the way I see it, AP was for high-schoolers who hit the books hardcore and were ambitious about their secondary education options. AP was generally a mix of hard-working students of pretty average intelligence and those hyper-intelligent slackers that coasted by on whatever it is that made their brains run like computers.

(cut for length)

I was pressured to take AP classes at the beginning of high school, but my apathy saved my ass -- I lacked the ambition to give a fuck about AP, and I started failing hardcore in regular classes (partially because I didn’t give a fuck and was preoccupied with mental stuff but also because I am just... not that fucking intelligent, not in an academic sense) which is bad enough but can you imagine how catastrophically I would have tanked in AP? Would have been a waste of everyone’s time.

Anyway, tangent aside, I know the misconception is that “ex-gifted kids” are those slackers they knew from AP who didn’t want to do all the grunt work but every once in a while they’d turn in a project and adults would ooh-and-ahh over it and laud them as a prodigy and a future Silicon Valley mogul and all this shit. And I guess there probably are some tumblr usrs running around calling themselves “ex-gifted” but having this background.

But from my experience, “ex-gifted” kids are often (often, I said; there are likely a fair amount of NT ex-gifteds too) autistic or otherwise-ND kids who were advanced in one aspect of brain development but also deficient in other aspects; the adults around them focused on the parts they were advanced in, usually flat-out ignoring the remedial development areas, or assuming that “of course they can’t socialise, they’re too smart for those other pleb children who are probably jealous*” -- and yeah, that’s a real fucked up mindset on grown folks’ part that probably doesn’t get addressed much either. I, for example, was hyperlexic and a bookish nerd to boot, and that’s apparently all it takes in the ghetto for a kid to be lauded as the smartest kid in their age group. My dad, being a damn Leo, definitely fed into this -- he was proud of me but he was proud of me for something I didn’t actually put work into doing. The things I loved doing -- drawing, for example, and singing -- didn’t get any attention because all anyone cared about was the fact that I knew the names of all the cloud formations (special interests, y’all) and I could pronounce and define multisyllabic words at age 5. (My reading comprehension was like baseline at best, though, but... no one noticed that part.)

Meanwhile, my social development was so remedial that I basically had to teach myself how not to be a raging spaz when I moved out at 17 after graduation and had to face the world at large without the guardianship of my father to fall back on. I didn’t actually start succeeding in that self-learning process until around 19-20, and right now I consider myself learnéd enough to get by, but I’m still weak in some areas, and I’m always going to be ND so that’s always going to be a struggle no matter what.

-- What first made me notice that the “gifted kid” thing was a crock of shit was when I hit high school. Shit just stopped making sense in school for me around that time; I think the one time I was on my classmates’ level was in middle school. Before that I was slightly ahead; after that I was markedly behind. Math I was all right at, I think (I just didn’t like it) but English? Science? Yeah, I couldn’t understand a goddamn thing. I got 0s on my English midterm and final in 11th grade. 0s, because I stared at the exam for 2 hours with a gaping void in my mind where the thought processes that lead to essay-writing should be. Suddenly, I might as well have been stupid, remedially stupid, because in comparison to my classmates I sure seemed that way.

That’s around the time when burnout seems to happen -- when one realises that the system and the adults around them have been lying to them. That being “gifted” is not really a thing, that we had some atypical behaviours as children, a little headstart in reading or a special interest in something that made us sound like Poindexters because we memorised the words in books and would parrot them at everyone in passing, or whatever, but that doesn’t mean anything once we’re not children anymore. That our parents (or whomever) ignored the things we were actually good at -- as in, worked at constantly because we enjoyed them, and developed real skill in as a result -- for some nebulous sense of “intelligence” that usually just inflated their own egos and gave them something to brag about at cookouts. 

That school is actually fucking difficult, and full of bullshit, and is sometimes impossible to perform in with any success if you also are struggling with nascent mental disorders, the universal hormonal surges of adolescence, and the fact that peer socialisation is only getting more and more difficult even as it’s becoming more and more important. (I happened to not have alcohol and drugs to deal with because my dad was hella strict, which I guess is a good thing in hindsight -- but I know plenty of kids ended up using those to compensate, and substances + still-developing brains = not a good look, y’all. It really can mess you up, in varying ways and intensities, and usually does.)

And then the adults around you, when you inevitably start failing, blame you for it. “You’re not working up to your potential!” “You’re so smart, why are you pretending to be stupid?” “You’re just being lazy. Just study harder!” (That last one is iffy. Sometimes we are being lazy, or apathetic, or preoccupied with like, idk, boys/girls or parties or the internet. But that’s because we’re teenagers. Duh.)

All these things combined plus a little hindsight when one is in one’s 20s can lead to some outrage. And a lot of former “gifted kids” are working through that outrage. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to be blaming their problems on that part of their life forever. But it does mean that brain development doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and everything contributes. This is one thing that often goes overlooked, probably because everyone assumes that smart people (or so-called smart people) don’t have problems and the world bends to accommodate them, or whatever. I don’t know what y’all think.

I came out ... relatively all right in this area because of apathy, and because other things in my life seemed to have more of an impact. Also because I have no interest in being “intelligent” or anything, so it doesn’t matter if someone thinks I am or not. But I see how this shit happens, and I promise you it’s real.

*Also, when other children do become envious of “gifted” kids, it has nothing to do with thinking those kids are smarter than them -- it has a lot more to do with those kids being set apart and given special treatment just because they can do math better or whatever, which enforces a “they’re better than you” mentality that sometimes fucks those kids over later. Everyone gets fucked by the gifted-kid system in some way.