I am one of four kids of two professors. My dad was a ridiculously brilliant, heavily Asbergers-y theoretical physicist – pretty well recognized in his field. When we visited colleges, we would drop in on his colleagues, many of whom were Nobel prize winners (e.g., Hans Bethe) or top of the field folks. My mom taught Spanish and Spanish literature.
Me: They didn’t do gifted back in the dark ages, though I do recall them giving me an IQ test and talking with my parents about it. My dad took a sabbatical at Oxford when I was in 2nd grade and I went to a terrific private school in Oxford with student-centered curriculum. I returned the next year a number of years ahead in most subjects. My public elementary school skipped me to 4th grade so I never learned cursive writing and never fit in socially. Although they skipped me, the work still wasn’t particularly challenging and I recall having some kind of self-paced reading program (SRA?). At middle school, my mother asked me if I wanted to go to a local hoity-toity private school because she thought I would like it more academically. But I was concerned that I would be this middle class Jewish kid in among upper class WASPs and wouldn’t fit in and said no. In hindsight, bad choice on my part. HS: After the first week of HS, they skipped me to 10th grade, but this put me in my sister’s classes. Very awkward. And, the material still wasn’t particularly challenging. So I moved myself back to 9th. Still did not fit in socially. I was the shortest boy in my 9th grade gym class (I grew my last inch to 6’2" as a college freshman). Graduated probably in the top 5. Went to one of HYPSM as an undergraduate. Very challenging and had lots of really smart classmates. Worked incredibly hard. Played a minor varsity sport. Senior thesis was a published paper in best journal in its field. Graduated magna cum laude, which was hard to get. Went to to two of HYPSM for grad school in an applied math field, and began my career as a professor at one of them.
ShawWife: Talented visually and with her hands; unbelievable social skills, really dyslexic. Grew up in Montreal, attended CEGEP, did a year of service for the Canadian government with First Nations in Northern Ontario and in Fiji. She always wanted to be an artist but was told she needed to be able to make a living and went to a small and now defunct touchy-feely liberal arts college (her dad wanted her to go there because her even more dyslexic sister was there). She graduated in two years with a degree with a double major in botany and art and went to work for the national parks. After a year, she got a very modest inheritance and mistakenly thought she could live on it for the rest of her life and afford to be an artist. (She’s much better at art than math or finance). Nonetheless, she attended RISD and is now a painter who shows in galleries in NY, London, Toronto, etc. and in museums in US and Canada.
ShawSon: brilliant kid good at abstract reasoning and severely dyslexic (reading and writing hurt physically) and with a speech delay. A neuropsychologist said that they called kids with his profile severely gifted – the difference between extremely high IQ and ability to communicate the thoughts (either in writing or speech) often leads to bad academic performance, frustration, depression and drug use. In elementary school, I would do advanced math problems with him for fun. The dyslexia and speech delay became problems and we sent him to a private school for grades 4-5 with a program for 6 or 7 boys with high IQs and language-related learning disabilities. It was great. Then the private school mainstreamed him for middle school, which didn’t work. Send him to public HS, where the Deputy Superintended of Schools got him very early and recommended that we partially home school him. Math and English (reading/writing/literature) at home. Lab science, social science, gym, art at school. Probably in the top three in GPA. Did not apply to college until a gap year (in which he had surgery for a significant health problem and did lots of interesting things). We were concerned about how he would do on standardized tests given his dyslexia. But, he studied for three weeks. Told us he would get an 800 in math and between 700 and 800 on both Verbal and Writing. Exceeded expectations. Chose a top NESCAC school over an Ivy – I thought they would quickly realize how smart he was and the Disabilities Services Office was great – and he thrived. Interested in behavioral econ but took a math course ever semester and was a Math/Econ/Behavioral Econ triple major. Found college math sufficiently easy that he did not have to do reading or go to lecture to be at the top of his class. The first course in which he had to do the reading was Groups, Rings and Fields (Algebra). Graduated summa cum laude with a number of prizes for academic excellence. Started a tech firm in fall of senior year. Ran it for one year but realized that it was morphing into a software services company rather than a software company, brought in a senior manager, and got an MS in Computational and Mathematical Engineering and an MBA from Stanford. Started a fintech company in his last year there. Forbes 30 under 30. It is doing very well (30% quarter over quarter growth). He’s been with that for a while and is starting to get burned out.
ShawD: Very anxious child and serious ADHD. Diagnosed at age 9 with a congenital retinal disease (juvenile onset macular degeneration). We figured out at age 11 that the diagnosis was wrong and at age 12 how to treat it and a year of treatment. But was wearing heavy glasses during that period. Was very bright but much more concrete than ShawSon. Always felt inferior to ShawSon (easy to do) and her work seemed pretty erratic – sometimes great but often she’d just put stuff on paper to finish it. Very insecure. She surprised her teachers and us in being a very strong performer at probably the best private middle school in our metropolitan area. She got in to a very competitive private HS and was often stressed and erratic but surprised us again by being in the top 25%. The only two courses she liked in HS were human biology and statistics (and she was good but not great in math). She wanted to avoid US holistic admissions and started college in Canada (she’s a dual citizen) studying biology but in her orientation week, met someone who was going to be studying to be a nurse. ShawD decided that was a better field for her than biology and asked to switch. The school would not let her transfer (she was admitted in the Faculty of Science rather than the Faculty of Nursing) and told her she would have to reapply the following fall as a first year. So, she was getting ready to apply as a first year student in Canada but shadowed a nurse I met on CC who suggested that she apply in the US to the three schools that her Boston hospital hired from. ShawD emailed one school over Christmas break and explained that she had the following GPA from her private Boston-area HS and the following ACT score to ask whether she would be applying as a transfer or a first year student and the school immediately got back to her and said, if you can get your first semester grades to us within 10 days, we will admit you to an accelerated BSN/MSN program. She did and graduated as an MSN at age 23. She has been doing primary care and recently became the medical director of the clinic where she works before she turned 30 – she is the youngest medical director among the 180 to 200 clinics in the company. Loves her work. Has been admitted for a second Masters degree, this time online, to become a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, which she thinks will be a better job for when she has kids (higher income, flexible hours).
Both kids and ShawWife have had to deal with real challenges (learning disabilities and serious health issues) which have made them more resilient.
