old_comedywriter wrote:
I was a gifted kid, but I made a conscious effort to diversify my interests to avoid the "savant" path. Now I'm under 3 years from retirement with a guarantee I'll never be bored.
There's no reason to do that. It used to be believed that savant skills came at a social cost, but the reality is that they're independent, unless somebody is spending so much time on the skills that they aren't interacting with others, there's no basis for that belief. Spending time socializing others tends to eliminate that issue.
Likewise, the drive and need to develop that stuff doesn't just go away because you turn away from it any more than it does with stimming. Engaging in the area tends to make the other issues lesson.
Personally, I wish something was known about how ADHD impacts that as I've definitely got savant skill, it's just has been put into developing interests as quickly as humanly possible and I've got a massive archive of thoughts and ideas in my head at all times.
jamie0.0 wrote:
I was very far from gifted
I was ahead of my class in mathematics and technology as those were my interests at the time. I used to help the IT teacher when he was stuck.
I don't know when, but I fell behind in these areas, I know simple maths really well, but never got the hang of trigonometry.
I guess I got lazy, as I excelled for a few years I didn't really put in the effort needed for learning at a higher level.
If I could go back, I still probably wouldn't have honed those skills, as they are not needed in my adult day to day life.
I probably would have paid more attention in English, as a deficit in English is debilitating in today's language based world.
That's rather common. Early on in education you can get away with memorizing things and just doing what you were told to do, but as you get older, there's a lot more abstract things that are typically expected. It's one of the reasons why trying to identify the gifted students before the 8-10 year age range is bound to fail miserably. The most gifted tend to be just getting started whereas the ones that are "gifted" at that point tend to be just above average in adulthood.