why not both? I’m a formerly “gifted” child who is now an anxious adult with dozens of abandoned hobbies and unfinished projects. I’m also a doctor.

I am the former. “You’re so smart, you just don’t apply yourself” is a sentence I have heard my whole damn life.

Oh, can definitely confirm. Also ADHD is often misdiagnosed by school faculty as “gifted but not reaching potential.”

I was “academically gifted.” Straight A student until middle school, put in a special “smart kid” class in elementary, and throughout high school breezed through without needing to, or ever learning how, to study properly. It bit me in the ass in college, nearly failed out my first semester.

Parentally, it meant nothing I ever did was good enough (“you’re so smart you’re stupid”), while my sister was cheered on and celebrated for barely making B and C grades. Led to pretty bad neurosis and a paralyzing obsession with doing things perfectly, which led for a long time to not doing them at all.

Nowadays I’m an IT engineer, consider myself smart enough (though not a genius), and my only real hobbies are reading, music (audiophile on a budget), gaming, and exercising. I occasionally watch anime or movies/TV, but rarely and wouldn’t consider that a hobby. Haven’t really abandoned any them, since they’re the main things I enjoy (except some of the exercise can go to hell, but I need to do it for my health).

Turns out I was “gifted” with mild autism. Go figure. 😅

The most autistic professional I’ve ever encountered was an anesthesiologist. He explained in an excited monotone every detail about how anesthesia works before a surgery I was scheduled to have. I cracked some dumb dad joke about counting backwards from 10 I think and he stood up and said “you’re not taking this seriously, I’ll return” and left. He eventually came back and asked if I was ready to continue. The nurse said “Yeah, he’s serious”.

I think a big divide for those that were listed as academically gifted were how their parents treated them.

I was basically “tier 2” gifted in that I was in the gifted programs, AP classes, honors, etc. I was a pretty solid B student and couldn’t just cruise through class and get As, that took some effort.

I have what most people would see as a prestigious career in STEM, I know people that I went to HS with that doctors, researchers, etc. The key difference is that there was way less parental pressure. My parents (and the others I know that are successful) didn’t get rewarded or punished for good grades. It was a more of a what you make of it situation. “You know you can do better than this B if you applied yourself, but we won’t punish you for it”. My parents gave me more freedom as I demonstrated responsibility. I never had video games taken away as a punishment. Never given money for good grades either.

In contrast, all those kids who had their parents up their ass (often out performing me) mostly went nowhere. Burnt out before hitting college, selecting “middle of the road” careers.

I think it boils down to motivation. All those parents suffocating those kids. The kids never build any intrinsic motivation. It’s always driven by fear and reward for them. You need your own motivation to push through the “more challenging” career choices.

I see an anti-correlation amoung the ~20 PhDs I trained over the years. I now only accept B students after a careful interview.

My biggest problem with Med students is how they lie, manipulate and game the system. Is this really who we want treating us or disease?

This was written by a doctor making assumptions about people who didn’t become doctors. I grew up in gifted classes all through elementary and high school, and have a challenging and rewarding career. I have a handful of hobbies that I keep up with until I lose interest and find new ones.

This is a stereotype which tries to find people living on the niche extremes to make fun of what the author feels is their inadequacy compared to his own circumstances.

In the trans community this can manifest in the “gifted kid burnout to trans girl with a praise kink pipeline,” which is where a lot of the Programmer Socks community posts come from.

…I don’t use Arch btw. I’m too scared of mutable OS’s for that.

hobbies aren’t abandoned, just done in cycles as there isn’t enough time for them all all of the time

I don’t go crazy over mistakes, but they do bother me quite a bit

solidly in between, I’d say

I got upset earlier today because some of my friends were better at sodokus than me. I’m supposed to be the smart socially inept one. Don’t take my smarts away. ;_;

I think we’d have more doctors.

Can disconfirm. I dive in completely, obsessing over a hobby until I meet my desired skill level, then drop it almost completely and move to the next thing. Some stuff gets rolled into my routine but I stop thinking about it at all, just following whatever skill/method I learned when I was obsessed.

I have also figured out how to use this superpower at work to root cause problems, implement solutions that sustain themselves, and never think about it again.

I do have a long list of hobbies I want to try, but I don’t actually try them until I finish obsessing over the last one.

Well this describes me to a tee.

I was and now am both. Confirmed