Giftedness

So, I decided I have to talk about this all

My name is Thomas, I am 21 years old, I live in western Occitania aka southwestern France, I am currently a computer science undergraduate and a soon-to-be also language science undergraduate, and I am gifted.

I was first tested when I was 4, because I already could read and was supposed to skip a grade. The skipping did not go well. (understatement of the century)

I did not know about any of this for years. But when I was nearly 10, I read Louis Sachar’s Someday Angeline (a fantastic book that I’d recommend to any kid near that age) at the library, and was hit by the realization that lots of aspects of Angeline (the main character)’s life resembled my life way too closely. Nowadays, the commonalities don’t seem so shocking to me (I have both my parents for starters), but back then it was unbelievable to me, to the point I initially thought that someone around me had written the book under a pen name. That someone was spying on me.

So I asked my parents about it, and they explained the whole deal to me. A year after that, I entered a middle school specialized in gifted kids. At least, theoretically.

In reality, all of the dispositives that had existed prior had been cancelled a few months before I entered the schools. Some would later be restored, but never in a way I could have taken advantage of (I was always slightly too old to be included in any of the programs). Overall, my middle school years didn’t go well (yet another understatement), but during the later high school years, things started to get better, until they reached the status of “good” just before I graduated. I might discuss some of it more in detail later.

Around the time I entered high school, I started getting interested in the literature around giftedness (physical and online). I’d barely thought about the subject at all in middle school, but it was becoming interesting.

Now, what I will mean by gifted on this website is simple: the most accepted meaning of the term. Someone with an IQ two standard deviations at least above the mean. This is a whole other can of worms that I discuss here.

The topic of gifted literature in France is complicated too. There are at least 4 commonly used terms for “gifted”, with the proponents of each often attacking the users of the others. The most common genre in terms of books is self-help books addressing gifted adults, and it’s not at all uncommon for adults to get “diagnosed” (that is, tested) as a part of their therapy. There are 4 big brands of myths that people believe in about giftedness, at least 2 of them probably specific to France. And the online community, while it helped me a lot back in the day, is really toxic let’s not lie. Specifically, in 2017, It was tearing itself apart over the “Zebra war”, and the desolate landscape it left was the perfect fertile terrain for the appearance of what I call the fourth myth.

After high school, I spend two years in a higher school preparatory class, during which was supposed to lead me to an engineering school, but I ended up continuing in the university instead.

I decided I have to start writing (blogging?) there, because virtually all good blogs on the subject have been abandoned over time (in France, only Rayures et Ratures remains (EDIT: Overthe130 updated on June 20!), and in the English speaking world, I think Rainforest Mind is still updating. Can’t think of much more.

Besides, this is such a vast subject I have so much opinions about, and I don’t get exactly often the option to rant about it. And oftentimes, I need to send some of this to English-speaking people. This is why I’ll be writing in English, even though I’m writing from a French perspective.

I won’t be quoting sources super-regularly, I leave that to Overthe130 whose author is more reliable at it than I’ll ever be. I’m not really trying to be an information blog. This will be mostly about my experiences and opinions.

Good luck,

Thomas