Oh I feel this so much. There’s a range of jobs and environments where I do really really well. But the way most organizations are structured I can never find a place where my strengths are desirable in the long term.
And selling myself is not one of my strengths.
Comment on yay, no dunning kruger for me! hold up, oh no
SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Giftedness easily becomes a social disability if your environment isn’t good for it. The education system isn’t ready to handle you constantly being ahead of the class? Get ready to sleep in school as the best years to take advantage of it pass by. Your topics of interest are too complex for everyone else around? Have fun enjoying your friendships less than everyone else. You don’t mask your intelligence? Here, have 10 lottery tickets to get bullied, no, you can’t return them. Congratulations, you graduated from college. Do you have the money for a masters degree? Oops, guess you studied for nothing. Got into debt and got a masters, but the job market isn’t booming? Do you have rich parents, or rich friends? Aw shucks, guess you couldn’t network your way into the type of job you would have liked.
Being intelligent helps, if you’re patient, hard-working, and have the means to look out for the less conventional options, but not so much as one would instinctively think.
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
xpinchx@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Try smaller businesses maybe? Corporate isn’t for everyone.
I got hired for two simple tasks and quickly realized the company (being small) was lacking in a lot of areas I specialize in or am passionate about. I started doing all these extra things and I got a lot of recognition and $$$ in return. I also don’t hate my job, it’s a small team and we all get along great.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
absolutely one of the worst parts of having an invisible disability is having to be your own advocate, it’s so fucking exhausting having to constantly defend and promote yourself.
Sabata11792@ani.social 3 weeks ago
Your topics of interest are too complex for everyone else around? Have fun enjoying your friendships less than everyone else.
This never goes away, but it at least got me a job.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
In my experience, the expectations of most people about “gifted” level intelligence seem to be shaped shaped by things like movies and are wholly unrealistic.
Even a twice as fast CPU is no guarantee that the software running in it is any good or appropriate for any one task.
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 3 weeks ago
Reminds me of this comic, in Dutch but the translation is right below it (for all the dumbasses who can’t read Dutch)
AlolanYoda@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Oh! I’m in the beginning stages of learning Dutch, but there were several words I didn’t know, which made me feel extra stupid. Well done!
GBU_28@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
If your undergrad offers you zero income opportunities, you weren’t so gifted after all
gibmiser@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Was everything super easy for you? Congrats, you never learned how to struggle and persist and you get discouraged easily. Good luck growing your skills and knowledge now…
scops@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Hey that’s me! I coasted through high school and got to college having no work ethic or ability to really study material that I almost, but not quite had down. Dropped out senior year to work in IT, got fired a year later, and had to move back in with my parents for almost a year before I went back and finished my degree and got a new job.
It was very humbling
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
I coasted through elementary school and ran up against undiagnosed autism, ADHD, and GAD (it was the 80s and I wasn’t disruptive) once homework started getting real. Had no problem learning the material, aced the tests, struggled with homework and writing assignments. “Not working up to his potential” became “lazy.” I took myself out of the gifted classes in middle school and bailed on “college prep” classes in my sophomore year. By the time I graduated I had failed English three times and wanted nothing to do with college and its endless papers I’d never write. Went to tech school for IT/electronics and did field service work for a bit before getting burned out and laid off. Landed in corporate IT and got real intimate with depression. 25 years later I’m still trying to recover from a lifetime of fighting uphill on hard mode against AuDHD, anxiety, depression, trauma, and the resulting burnout, keenly aware of my shortcomings the entire time while simultaneously fostering a deep seated contempt for the orphan crushing machines that define modern life.
My life would have been a whole lot easier if I had only been sociopathic.
kellyaster@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s rare, but you ain’t alone. Man, I feel your pain. This happened to me, too, in the 80s. I was undiagnosed ADHD, which was never suspected because at least time it was just “ADD” and I wasn’t hyperactive. I had a lot of difficulty focusing, which affected my ability to learn and got me labeled – yep, how’d you guess? – “lazy” unanimously by all the adults in my life. I still got excellent grades most of the time, which just reinforced the lazy theory.
But wait, it got worse! I hit a wall academically when we started learning more advanced stuff and I wasn’t able to brute-force my way into A’s and B’s, and so I immersed myself in art (as a way to cope, I’m now realizing in hindsight), graduated in the bottom quarter of a prestigious prep school, and graduated 5 yrs later from college with an art degree. And I didn’t know what to do with my life, so I went back! For a second art degree! And I nearly flunked out again and had to reapply and finally graduated again…jfc, this is exhausting having to recount, haha…anyway, fast forward a lot and guess what? Now I’m a programmer. Web developer, specifically.
Never went for the CS degree. I wanted to, but I honestly thought I was stupid and utterly incapable of handling the curriculum - especially the math - so I wrote off that career path entirely. Like, I never gave myself a chance. I’m finally where I feel like I should be, but it took so long to get here, ya know? I wish I knew when I was younger that I wasn’t stupid.
Shard@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Tell me, master Bruce, why do we fall?
So we can lock ourselves up.