If you knew then what you know now

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Me, too. Only I did not understand until I was a couple decades older. You are way ahead of me.

I wish I had known my IQ relative to others; the vast majority of people I know do not understand or make the connections that are easy for me to see. Because my parents were determined that I not know how smart I was, in fact telling me I was "just average" after an IQ test, I assumed that others were being deliberately dense when unable to acknowledge the elegance of obvious solutions. This reinforced my isolation when younger. I was in my 50s before I found out about my IQ.

I think about this a lot and would love to get a do-over. I made so many dumb mistakes over the years.
Primarily I could avoid a lot of stress and pointless suffering by not trying so hard to be normal, and realizing earlier that I'm much happier with not being normal. That would save me so many wasted years.
I could undo all the petty drama and feuds that occurred in my family and have the needed insight into my own strengths and limits at a much earlier point so I wouldn't screw up my relationships in the way I did.

If someone finds a way to time travel, go back to about ten seconds from now and let me know how, please.

What is GATE?

I wish I had learned how to study to remember things deliberately. I didn't understand the need for repetition to form permanent memories. I have a good memory for facts I expect to use repeatedly, but ignored or forgot whole subjects I wish I were adept in. Perhaps there was not enough room in my head for more, though. I have gotten an amazing amount of use from the bits I did remember. Perhaps most engineers are lost in extraneous details.

Also, I would be tempted to freak people out with my "psychic predictions"

"Just so you know, George W. Bush is going to crash some planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon tomorrow."

Hmm, the Columbine massacre happened when I was 15.

Would be nice to go back a few months before my 15th birthday and stop myself from acting like an idiot and getting expelled for a month...but that wasn't part of the deal

Retro Gamer

GATE is gifted and talented education

Middle school phoned my house. And I anwered. It asked if I wanted GATE instead of Computer science. I made the mistake of asking my precious lil "parents". They said yes.

GATE sounds great, but all we did was read books like "To kill a mockingbird". And have discussions. Math puzzles.

Computer science is much better for job skills and practical for outside of work too

Now my brain is so weak, slow and stupid that I could not get computer science

Wow I would have thought that gifted education would be serious stuff, not just solving puzzles. I read To Kill a Mockingbird on my own time. I didn't need to go to a special class to find that book.

They don't hire gifted teachers to really help the gifted students; they just want to forestall independent thinking with "special" perks and plenty of diversions.

Maybe the most useful thing I've learned recently is the existence of the Dunning-Kruger syndrome. This leads to self-proclaimed experts full of confidence with zero competence, and their confidence is very misleading. When I was younger, we only had the Peter Principle, and other special cases in the spotlight. Various institutions become populated exclusively by people whose top priority is not being seen as foolish, and so they all cover for each other and unite in attacking anyone who notices that "the Emperor lacks clothes." People will cheat their way through school, and then through life by trading favours.

I planned my whole life on the false assumption that the reason I saw so much shoddy engineering and product design was that there were no better options yet. Actually, it is the second-rate designers who have enough other talents to persuade others to produce them. Excellence is not even close to self-evident to the people in charge - everything has to be "sold." This produces another glitch - the best salesmen will not want to sell the best product. It does not offer them any challenge to demonstrate their own superiority on. It is no fun buying drinks for their peers if they keep hearing "Well ANYBODY could sell that."

Take woodshop, auto shop, computer science, art, home ec

Not french, Japanese, or even calculus

No physics

Just trades. Practical crap for daily living




Community college, not ucsd


Join the military

Belong somewhere


Purpose, meaning, goals, brotherhood, belonging

^^I built my vocation on gr. 11 physics. That and a bit of math made my shop work very successful and original. My last paid work was exposing frauds just by using it, which was amazingly easy. Particle physics is probably OK to ignore.

I hear ya. Some the consumer electronics seems to have been designed by monkeys and the most popular brands are seldom the best.

Don't just blame the designer and the salesman. I think the consumer should bear some of the responsibility for actually buying that trash.

I would have advised myself to join a Buddhist monastery.

No money, no kids, no complex social structures.
Simple tasks, mindful routine, and plenty of quiet time to contemplate the vastness of time, space, existence etc.

Come to think of it..... that high school career quiz did come up with "religious minister" as #1 career choice for me......

If I knew I was autistic I would have studied physics at uni.

I am exceptionally gifted with maths and science. But everyone kept going on about how clever people who study physics are and how hard it is.

I was going through crap with dyslexia then and didn't feel that smart so I bailed.

If I'd known I was autistic I would have been more confident in my abilities. Knowing that I can be super skilled at that and crap at other stuff.

I don't want to invoke precognition here, or this just turns into SF novellas. However, Goebels was right when he said that it was easier to push a big lie than a small one, since most people don't think you'd dare. Two big ones got me. The first was thinking that after two wars to end all wars, we were really going to beat swords into plowshares and get along. The second was believing that Feminism was about equality, not an alternate sexism.

I now remember, via another thread, that my mother was a musician and I was exposed to and played some (read: forced to play.) Now, I wish I had been able to appreciate that more. Of course, most of that was before I was 15.

Dear_one, I don't know what you mean by feminism, but I was part of it early on and I have never felt that it was about women at the expense of men. Of course, I am weird and may be an outlier.

It'd be absolutely amazing to be 15 again - and knowing what I know now! Get to experience it all all over again. Spend time with my turtles, dogs and grandfather all over again.
Avoid some pitfalls. Not do some things I'm ashamed of. Avoid doing something that was less than healthy and would have a good health effect on me now. Avoid some really moronic obsessions, a toxic milieu and a waste of money.

I don't know if knowing now how my high school attempts would turn out would make me not attend those schools at all, or try harder to get through them.

So the things I would change would be good for my loved ones, good for my health, and knowing that I didn't waste time and money on an obsession I came to regret getting into.

I would also have gotten into one of my current special interests sooner.