Were you a gifted child? How are you seen as adult?

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In school when I was a child I was seen as "gifted" but not off the charts. I was considered strong in math and VERY strong in anything language related, and basically above average in everything else. But my parents thought I was some kind of supreme genius due to my hyperlexia. I could read by the time I turned 2 years old and could "read" pretty much anything put in front of me before I was 4, and my parents took that as an indicator of my overall capabilities. My parents are and always have been awesome and supportive in every way, but I've always felt like a perpetual underachiever in their eyes.

The following was a more or less verbatim conversation snippet I had with my mom like 2 years ago that encapsulates the issue pretty well, she always brings up a time that I wandered into the kitchen and read a CPR chart at a restaurant when I was 2 years old and like astonished all the staff there.

Me: "Yeah I could sound out the words on the chart, that doesn't mean I understood what was going on."
Mom: "No you definitely understood, you were clearly scared by it."
Me: "Mom, I understood and was scared because there were step-by-step pictures of a person basically choking to death on the chart."
Mom: "Oh. Yeah, maybe so."

What did they think, I was going to change the world or something? I have a masters degree and basically an average job for somebody with a masters degree in my field, all things considered I feel like that's acceptable, right?

It's all good, it's not something that weighs on me that much, it just is what it is. In a way it's much better as an adult, dealing with people who haven't known me my entire life. At my job, the impression I get is that I'm seen as unorthodox in a way that is sometimes bizarre but rarely if ever incorrect, and my contributions and quality of work are typically slightly above average and occasionally exceptional. That's a completely fair assessment, and fairness suggests general fundamental understanding, which is exactly what I hope for.

There were a couple subjects in school that I really excelled at but overall nobody except my parents would have called me gifted. What I did manage to do as a child was get in the habit of thinking rigorously about things. I don't know why I recognized the need for this and got so much right but it has served me well. If I had to guess I would say that it probably had something to do with being interested in dinosaurs and astronomy while going to a catholic school. These things do not mix and you are sort of forced to choose between them. As an adult I have a professional career, I'm in the top 10% of wage earners but this isn't really that exceptional I was just lucky that the kind of things I'm good at overlap with the needs of the modern economy.

That is exceptional any way you slice it. Between my girlfriend and I, as a household we are right smack in the center of middle class, own a house that's small and kind of sh***y but fully functional, and at 30 years old I couldn't be more content with that.

What's the low end of "top 10% of wage earners"? 100K-ish a year? I'm just blind guessing, I have no idea.

We're under that between the two of us, although not by a wide margin. We intuitively want to keep things tight-ish because we acknowledge that we don't have the best fundamental grasp on finance, but we're also dipshit kids with no children and grownup paychecks working long hours (she's 24 and I'm emotionally 5 years behind the curve at minimum) so there are a fair amount of takeout meals during the week and alcohol and meats every weekend.

She has zero student loans and I only have like 10K (we were both fortunate enough to have our parents fund our undergrad, and got tuition covered in graduate school thru assistantships) so there's a little wiggle room to be extravagant as*holes.

I'm doing well for myself but I can't imagine having true monster "top 10%" money. If I made double what I do now I'd take an international vacation every year

Household income is another story, I'm definitely not in the top 10% there. For individual income you have to make around 70k a year to be in the top 10%. If you only look at earned income I'm not sure where that moves it to but I would guess it's around 65k a year. Bonuses affect my income a lot but I expect to make between 80 and 90 this year, If only one out of 50 people did better than this I would say that I was exceptionally well paid but when 1 out of 12 or 13 people do that's just good but not exceptional. I know what financial stress is like and I'm glad I don't have to deal with it anymore but I'm just as miserable now as I was when I was broke,

Fair enough man, I just want to be clear I wasn't talking s**t but if you're making $80-90K that is big time.

I didn't want to bring monetary figures into it, but since it's come up I make about 48K a year and my girlfriend makes around 45 (though we live in Illinois where taxes are outrageous, after all that it's maybe 65K a year combined). IMO that's pretty legitimate cheese though straight out of grad school and 30 years old, if you're 26 and making 80K that's balling out of control.

If you're miserable that's another subject, and I'm genuinely sorry for that. If you don't mind me asking, what do you do for a living?

I'm a manufacturing engineer. Illinois is only going to get worse. I turned down offers from companies based there because of the already high taxes and the near certainty that they will go up in the future.

I was labeled as a gifted freak from a freak family as a child. My IQ is very high and I was reading science fiction novels and doing math before I entered school. I was a teachers' pet for being extremely quiet and following rules to the letter but also for providing freak show entertainments on cue.

As an adult I'm viewed as a slightly dim weirdo.

Reading at a near adult level within my first year of school. Wrote stories, poetry like mad - almost hypergraphia - and illustrated them too. Can't do it any more - the reading and writing that is. Only reason I would ever consider going back on ADHD meds.

Not too bad with maths either but honestly would rather let the calculator do my work for me if it's doable.

I'm kind of fascinated with precocious children who have unspectacular adult lives. Why weren't you able to parlay your talents into some kind of career? What happened with college?

I didn't go to college because when my parents ran away from home I became homeless. I stayed homeless for a while because after that first rape I was in near permanent meltdown, getting stabbed solidified my low-functioning state, and PTSD doesn't combine well with Aspergers. My scholarships were no good by the time I finally pulled out of homelessness. I had a career as a florist. I have a career as a freelance writer. Just because people around me think I'm stupid and uninteresting it doesn't mean I've done nothing with my life.

Edited to add: I didn't get to go to college on my scholarships, I should say. I managed to pull two years and one semester out of my ass as an adult but I just couldn't afford more or handle working and college at the same time.

Realize this is directed at someone else, am answering anyway 'cause people ask this of me a lot (when they first meet me, or see my artwork).

Lack the ability to develop marketing/promotion skills, so my nifty artwork moulders on the vine, so to speak.
I dropped out of college for many reasons combined:
transportation problems, harassment by dorm-mates, and the classes were increasingly difficult yet my capacity to cope was dwindling.
Maybe it could've gone better, had my ASD been identified back then,
but Asperger's had only just been added to DSM the year I dropped out, and I wasn't dx'd until 10 years later.

Yeah Illinois is horrible, especially if you live in the southern tip of the state 250 miles outside of the Chicago money zone. I don't know if I mentioned it before but I work for the state, and I'm under pretty constant threat of losing my job due to budget cuts these days. I could likely transfer to another comparable job within the system without too much trouble, but I figure if it comes to that I'm better off rolling the dice starting fresh out of the state entirely.

I'm staying positive about it, my resume is not outstanding but it's legit (sort of like everything else in my life to this point ) so worst case would likely be taking a similar but slightly lower level position in an area that would most likely be a lot more fun than my present s**t town.

I could live with that I think.

I know what I would have done in that situation. You're a much more resilient person than I am for sure. I hope things get better for you.

That sounds like a good plan. I would assume seniority is important at a government job and if you get enough than you shouldn't have much to worry about.

If the facility I work at closes (which is the reason I might lose my job) and I get laid off, I would apparently have priority over other applicants for the EXACT same position elsewhere within the state regardless of seniority, but it would only apply to one specific job title and even if I did get such a position, I'd still almost certainly have to move within the state for it.

But yeah, aside from that, seniority is huge in the state system (it somehow supersedes any measures of actual job performance, which is pretty jacked up) and that's bad news for me because I've only worked for the state for a year and a half. I have seniority on basically nobody

People saw me as a gifted child who never lived up to his potential. I never did well in school from junior high on. Now, over 40 and diagnosed with Apergers, I've gone back to college and have maintained a 4.0 GPA for over two years. Understanding my own special requirements has made all the difference.