I know, not that anyone knows……. but I’m still trying to figure this out. Did I set my expectations too high? Was I high on some of the drugs they gave me when I got the results from my cognative assessments? Or have people been telling me I was uncommonly bright for most of my life?! FYI, what to say to a kid to screw them up. Tell a kid they’re a screw up…. well aren’t we all. Geez I feel like that on a daily basis, that’s just life as not the richest person in capitalism.
Uncommonly bright. You should be a professor. You should be a rock singer. You should be in a band. You should be a teacher. Getting the theme? No one said “you should have a stagnant career.”
So was I wrong? Also, I’m not particularly poor, so I can’t blame poverty. I had every damn oppertunity. Well, not Harvard, but Harvard isn’t even what it was apparently.
That’s another thing, it seems realistic to expect to do as well as your parents, but I’m not.
The whole time it’s being treated like I asked too big, I expected too much. Geez I didn’t think it was that much of an ask. You assess me as astute, you find something to DO with it. You should have called me stupid if you wanted to treat me like that.
I’m a published researcher, as an undergrad. How is that not enough?! I presented at national conference.
All the handicaps I had in childhood I have more than covered up, but still I’m treated like a step child or a stray cat.
I wanted better, frankly I think I deserve better. Or am I asking too much?
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Your experience is so different to mine and I find it endlessly fascinating. That thing, that certain people are told, ‘The world is your oyster! You can be whatever you want to be!’ That only happens to people born of a certain class or demographic. Nobody is saying those things to little girls of colour with not much money. Instead, they tell you to aim low, hedge your bets, and prepare for failure, no matter how bright and gifted you are. So I was driven, not by ambition or greed, but simply a stubborn desire to prove the haters wrong.
We have opposite experiences of social conditioning, and yet, we both wound up here. So, there is no ‘right’ way to indoctrinate a kid. Sometimes we just get screwed up anyway. Even looking at my siblings, 3 girls, all raised in the same household, all reacted in totally different ways.
I think its perfectly reasonable to want better for yourself. However, I think it’s a little entitled to think you ‘deserve’ better. I don’t think anyone deserves anything. The world is chaos and it doesn’t play out in a fair way. Who gets what is completely unorchestrated. So… you’e not asking for too much, in wanting better. But maybe it’s more constructive to see ‘better’ as a privilege instead of a right.
heh, not often that particular point gets a voice with me. What a day, what a week. There’s some racial and gender guilt in there too, I didn’t even think about that while writing this. Honestly I wouldn’t have been able to… it’s such a hard thing to talk about. As a white man, I’m supposed to have had such a great start. it feels incredibly shameful to complain in that context. Quite a lot of shame around that.
I was more framing around as a neurodivergent individual, it’s been an invisible chain around my neck as long as I can remember. Whether it be the things I can’t do, because of my illness, or the people who expect things out of me. There’s a lot that goes into it.
and I’m saying isn’t it fair I expect something back? If I served well, which is the claim. No one is saying I failed at my tasks. I’m feeling underappreciated is the crux of my thesis.
That other people are underappreciated is neither an argument for or against my thesis. It just is. All people deserve recompense for hard work. You do the work under an agreement assuming there’s going to be a return on it, the decent thing for the person who recieves value from that work is to pay out.
But that’s not how it works? The owning class gets free labor and the rest of us are expected to just shrug and keep moving?! WTF?! I’m not getting younger, I gave my best years away for free.
I’m not at all suggesting that you had it easier as a white man. I’m just pointing out the difference in perspective. You expect the world to be fair – and I expect and accept that it is unfair. In fact, I accept so wholey that it is unfair, that I’m constantly amazed at any small win I can catch.
I think it’s understandable to expect something back for what you’ve put in. I would feel the same way. But like I said – the world is chaos. It often doesn’t give you what you deserve. So, I empathize with your situation, but I can’t say I’m surprised by it. That’s why I escape to the world of books and movies, where morality is consistent and people get what they deserve. The real world is much messier than that.
The pressure of high expectations. I’d say you deserve to not be treated like a failure, if you fall short. If you’re self-sufficient and pulling your own weight, that should be enough as far as anyone else is concerned.
Maybe you could’ve done better, with a different brain, or in a different environment. If things were otherwise… but they’re not. Smart isn’t enough. You have to have the mentality to apply it consistently, and the luck to have those opportunities.
In terms of “shoulds”, you should do whatever allows you to continue to exist in the world without wanting to end yourself. That’s about it. You might owe your family some level of concern, but you don’t owe them excellence, or achievement. If they couldn’t be content with a son who’s happy living off the land, that’s their issue.
You too huh?
I was called a genius as a kid, expected to do big things academically.
I did well in school and everything, but life isn’t like school.
That may have set me up to fail unintentionally. I flunked out of college, went back home, felt like shit, and spiraled. I’m a shell of my former self.
The pressure of expectations was in the air, whether I realized it at the time or not. I was supposed to be the first to graduate from college in the family, the one who stuck to the books and became successful that way. But that’s not what life is.
It’s something that bugs me to no end. Too many stop starts. “If I was as smart as they said, I wouldn’t have done x,y, and z.”
I can see why a lot of kids who show promise at an early age can wind up burned out as adults.
It tends to be the ones who aren’t given attention, the ones who are out to prove people wrong, the ones without the opportunities who more often than not, work harder, are scrapper, and can adjust more to shit, since shit was a sort of “default” mode for people like that.
I say this regardless of ethnicity, gender, sex, etc. I wasn’t rich, far from it but I had a good childhood all things considered and a loving family, and yet here I am.
Sorry if this comes off as self centered but I use myself to try to relate in a lot of situations.
hey no, I 100% get it. My first three years of college was like that, a drag
then I came back after my break down, when I had nowhere else to go. Single minded, I did it, not only I did it, it was a return to form of my childhood. But that might not have been a good thing. Because people started praising me again. I published research. I got an astonishing GPA, a lot of the work just came really easy to me.
and it just didn’t mean beans. Nothing means anything. That’s my issue right now is that the few times I’ve conquered, I’ve actually come out on top………. so the fuck what.
nothing matters. You can achieve. sure. why bother though?
It’s bugging the hell out of me right now, all the work I’ve ever done has been such a collossal waste.
I had wash out friends. Friends who decided to sit on their buts and do nothing. They’re still doing nothing, never did anything to try and change, they’re still doing the exact same thing they were doing after high school; getting high, play video games……
and I thought I was different, I thought I was making more of my life
boy, I owe some BIG apologies. they had the right idea the whole fucking time.