By: Victoria Sanderson
When a child is young, it’s not uncommon for those seen as exceptionally bright or
talented to be showered with compliments and praise from every adult around them. “She’s
reading at a college level already—she’s so bright!” “What a smart kid; he’s so beyond the
others!” “What a gifted kid you’ve got there!” All common phrases, all meant to encourage a
child’s creativity and seemingly inherent intelligence. “Gifted kid.” It seems like such an
innocuous phrase, but when constantly repeated to a child, it can all too quickly become a label — and an expectation.
I was one of these children, constantly hearing how above everyone else I was without
even trying and unwittingly forming my whole identity around it. I became afraid to try new
things that I wasn’t immediately good at and became incredibly anxious about keeping my
grades perfect, even though my parents didn’t care what I got as long as I tried my best. Being smart became a core part of my personality, and I learned to carry myself with maturity long before most of my peers. Even though it wasn’t, my worth as a person seemed to be riding on my ability to excel in academics, leading to a voracious battle against myself in the hopes of keeping my grades, and by extension, my identity, intact.
The odd thing is, as you look at higher and higher levels of education, you find less and
less of these so-called “gifted kids.” What happened to them? Where did they go? The truth is, they haven’t gone anywhere. They’re still there, many in honors programs, and many just trying to have a typical college experience. Once we get to college, the label “gifted” disappears from our vocabulary as we transition to the incredibly different environment that is college, suddenly surrounded by people just like us. No longer are we the one-of-a-kind, brilliant child, but just another person in a sea of intelligence.
The feeling is somewhat akin to culture shock. Everyone treats you differently, no longer
showering you with compliments and no more easy drifting. No longer is your schedule dictated by the bell, and suddenly you’re entirely responsible for getting yourself to and from class, no matter how long between them.
“High school structured my schedule for me, but now I have to learn to do it myself,”
said Paige Osche, a first-semester honors student here at High Point University. “I have horrible time management skills. When you’re on a ‘bell rings, you switch classes’ schedule, it’s very easy just to know when things are going to happen and when things are due, but now I have to be a lot more self-sufficient than I thought I had to be, even though I thought I was prepared.”
Most new college students struggle with time management, but for the honors kids, it hits
much harder. Most of us haven’t had to try too hard before in that aspect, or the effort we’ve put in has been different. It’s not uncommon to hear that an honors student attended a college prep school, but even those don’t have the same schedule as an actual university.
The struggle of trying to form a healthy and productive schedule is well-known to most
college students. I know I struggled with it when I first started college. The change in routine and environment was so drastic that I found myself drained and completely exhausted, fighting to stay awake and focus on my work.
I only slept 5-6 hours on a good night and closer to 2 hours on a bad one. I spent most of my time in a study room with a friend or two, fighting against the clock to finish assignments I’d forgotten or pushed off in favor of others. I had no idea how to manage my time without running myself ragged, barely dragging myself across the finish line of my first semester.
Many of us are used to getting perfect grades across the board. We’ll have been straight-
A students our whole lives before suddenly being faced with a B or, even worse, a C. That letter swims before your eyes the first time you get one, and suddenly your whole life gets thrown into doubt. If your personality has been formed around your intelligence, what does this less-than- perfect grade mean about you? For many, that first B or C launches our hearts into our throats and can even trigger panic attacks.
When I started college, I was a neuroscience major—a much different path than
Journalism, my current field of study. I came in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, confident in my ability to get at least a high B in any class. I’d already dealt with my first B in high school and come to terms with it, so I felt alright when my classes started quite tricky.
But then, things changed.
Chemistry never got more manageable, as most courses do. I never understood more than
what I’d had coming into college. Biology became overwhelming. Getting out of bed for my
7:50 Spanish class became near impossible as I lay still, paralyzed by the dread of going to class just to tank my grade further. B’s slipped to C’s, then D’s. I destroyed my sleep habits in an attempt to work enough to fix everything. My meals became snacks; I didn’t think I had time to eat anything substantial until I improved my grades.
I stopped talking to people. I didn’t speak to my mom as much, terrified that she’d be
disappointed in me. My social group shrank to the three people I studied with; I didn’t have time for other friends. The overwhelming tidal wave that is the fear of failure had filled my mind, leaving me to fight not to drown in it.
I know I’m not alone in experiencing this uniquely awful fear. Many college students
struggle, feeling like there’s nothing to do about their grades slowly slipping out of their grasp.
For the formerly gifted children turned honors students, there’s no worse feeling in the world.
“Coming into the honors program, all of us are used to school not necessarily being
easy,” says first-semester freshman Claire Barnes, “but we’re used to seeing satisfying grades
and numbers. I will say I haven’t been seeing the most satisfying numbers in the first 8 weeks of school, which is kind of frustrating since I’m so accustomed to ‘my test scores are so high, my gpa is perfect.’ You’re striving for perfection all the time.”
Claire knew she wouldn’t have a 100 in every class she took in college. She tried her best
to prepare herself for it mentally, but she didn’t anticipate just how tough it would be. “The first time, it was kind of like, ‘okay, you can handle this,’” she said. “With the subsequent ones, it was almost as if someone had stabbed me with a knife and dug it in a little bit farther with each one.”
Why does this happen to gifted kids? What’s different about us than other people?
Everyone struggles, sure, but gifted children burn bright when they’re young but weakly fizzle out as they age. The problem is the label of “gifted.”
A compliment to a child’s intelligence seems like it should be a good thing, but many
studies have shown that that type of encouragement can do significantly more harm than good.
British Psychologist Joan Freeman discovered that the label of “gifted” harms many children’s long-term growth. Her study split 210 children into three groups and labeled them: gifted, identical ability, and average. The identical ability group was no different than the other two, but they were not given an actual label to apply to themselves. Her findings? Only 3% of the so- called “gifted” children actually managed to become traditionally successful.
The rest of the gifted group ended up as young geniuses that wound up at McDonald’s and college dropouts.
Freeman discussed her findings with the magazine New Science and concluded that
parents are doing their children no favors.
“If you label a child as gifted when they are not, as some parents do, the child has the
most terrible burden,” Freeman said. “If you are incapable of fulfilling your parents’ dreams, you must fail over and over – you can’t win.”
So what do we do to adapt? In college, we have to make a severe change to our mindset.
Claire started working on how she viewed her grades and dealt with them rather quickly. “The work that I’m putting in might not necessarily be reflected in a number or a letter,” she says, “but if I know personally that I’m putting 110% into every single paper or assignment I do, then I know I’ve done everything I can.”
For some other freshmen, adjusting to the new situation is much harder, but they’re doing
their best to adjust, no matter how difficult. “I’m trying to be okay with my grades at the
moment,” says Paige. “I will never start anything with a pessimistic mindset; that’s not helpful.
If you think something won’t work out, it won’t. I don’t want to do that to myself.
“I won’t lie: as of right now, I’m feeling pretty pessimistic about it, but I’m trying
everything not to be.”
As time goes on, we get better. We get grades that aren’t stellar, grades that are, and we
realize the compliments we always used to get haven’t gone away: they’ve changed.
I now rarely, if ever, get complimented on my raw intelligence, and if I do, it’s from other
students—my peers— and never my teachers. Instead, my teachers and mentors praise my drive to try. I now get told, “it looks like you worked really hard on this, good job!” instead of, “you did great on this, you’re very smart!”
Time and time again, compliments on effort have been proven to be a more substantial
and constructive encouragement. Children who grow up hearing that giving what they do their all are much more likely to be successful and feel significantly less stressed about their grades since they know from the start that their grades don’t define them: their efforts do.
The comments about my efforts are doled out, even if my grade is a C or a B. Every teacher I’ve had rewards students simply for trying, taking a ton of stress off us “burned-out
former gifted kids.” My first semester in college left me as a candle with a half-burned wick,
snuffed out early by a breath of wind. The next semester took a lighter to me, lighting my flame brighter than ever.
Throughout my time in college, the constant repetition of praise for trying my best has
slowly undone much of the anxious fussing about grades. Of course, I still strive to do the best I can, but I’ve learned that if my best is a B or a C, no one will think less of me. Some of my favorite classes have been those in which I got a lower grade. Finally, after so many years of stress, I’m okay with that. With enough time, others can learn to be okay too.
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