You didn’t peak at sixth grade: Breaking free of the gifted kid syndrome
Being on a pedestal also means perpetually having to fight for your place in it.
Future was looking bright for the seven-year-old Kim, who always managed to bag all the important awards her elementary school could offer at the end of every school year. She always gave her parents something to post on Facebook: The Youngest Reader of the Year, Class Valedictorian, Inter-school Champion, the list could go on and on.
That version of Kim was the poster child of every Asian family’s notion of successful parenting. My parents had put me on a pedestal, and my head was on the clouds. Everyone told me that my future was indeed bright, and appraised my award-hoarding as a tell-tale sign of future professional excellence. I was a gifted child, they told me, and I believed them. How could I not?
However, being on a pedestal also means perpetually having to fight for your place in it. You can’t get too comfortable: peace was too high a price to pay.
So when it became clear that junior high school wasn’t going to be as easy as middle school, I put on extra hours at night. My pedestal-wrestling knew no boundaries. I also had to be the best in extra-curricular. I was the Student Council’s President and, in ninth grade, became the youngest editor-in-chief in the history of our school gazette.
I especially liked it when people refer to me with “the.” Kim is the president. The best in her class. The representative. There’s a world of difference between the articles “the” and “a”; one establishes distinction and the other commonness, one is reserved for a few, and the other is for everyone else. God knows I did everything (even at the expense of my physical and mental health) to stay on the lane of “the” privileges.
And I managed to dance and jump around that lane until I entered university.
Transitioning from a small-town school to a university is like releasing a goldfish who have only known the corners of a fish tank into the vast sea. It’s almost cruel. Like the goldfish, the tiny space that I’ve known all my life assured me that I was the best. Or that at least I was good enough. I thought I was someone “the”-worthy.
The enormity of the university starkly juxtaposed my smallness. My self-image collapsed in on itself.
I still remember how I proudly told my new classmates that I have graduated as the valedictorian of our batch only to find out that so were ten of them. At that moment, I knew that my pedestal-standing days were over. My future in the university wasn’t looking so bright anymore.
I was trained to always have my eyes on the prize, whatever it was. So, when there were suddenly no prizes to take home, I was lost at the university. My grades were mediocre, and I fell miles behind my classmates. On top of that, I also developed a habit of beating myself for not being good enough. It was borderline self-destructive, how much I associated all the ugly adjectives with myself just because I couldn’t be the best in class. Did I peak at sixth grade? Will it all be downhill from there?
Finally, I came face to face with my biggest fear: I am not cut above the rest. I am average.
I was a gifted child, they told me, and I believed them. But how could they let me put all my self-worth in a single basket? How could they let me attach all my life’s pride and joy to academic awards?
However, later I learned that I was not the only one suffering from the “gifted kid syndrome” consequences. I’ve talked to a lot of people in the university who also underwent the small-school-to-university transition. Like me, they also fell victim to misdiagnoses of being a “gifted kid.”
According to studies, many situational factors contribute to the common propensity to misdiagnose a child: idealism, impatience, intensity, or a highly-competitive-environment. Mislabeling children are typical because of the lack of understanding and cooperation between parents, health professionals, and educators. The early burst of creativity and excellence is not always an indicator of giftedness.
I’m one of the casualties of this misdiagnosis. I was a passionate kid who also happened to have a fat drive to please her parents, nothing more. I was not a gifted child.
At eighteen, I was already diagnosed with clinical burnout. The treatment was pretty straight-forward: resting and easing off. But it proved to be more complicated than it sounds. Unlearning a whole belief system that I engineered (with my parents and the rest of the society) does not happen overnight.
No one “peaks” at sixth grade. In retrospect, I realized how ridiculous that notion was and how only people with a gifted-kid-syndrome-hangover would ever seriously consider the thought. Our potential extends beyond the grimy gates of any educational institution. Currently, I’m in college so being a student occupies a copious part of my life right now — but it’s not the sum of my existence. I’m a daughter, friend, citizen, and heck, a writer. I’m so much more than a burned-out student with a gifted kid hangover.
I wish I could tell the seven-year-old Kim that it was okay to play and dream and just be a kid. My future is still looking bright, and not because that’s my academic prognosis, but because I simply said so. My concept of a “bright future” has evolved, and so did I. After all, the ocean has so much more in store for me.
