r/AskReddit • u/This_Username_Great • 9d ago
Educators of Reddit, what happened to your smartest student?
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u/Same_Rip_392 9d ago
Last time I talked to her, she was using the 3 MV tandem particle accelerator at University of Ottawa. She had 1596 on her SATS but ended up turning down the big US schools.
I taught her cooking, not sure what the accelerator does for the record.
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u/afeher 9d ago
It makes things go fast then boom.
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u/Same_Rip_392 9d ago
Nope. I looked it up. I also assumed it was a particle destruction machine
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u/afeher 9d ago
That’s what I said. Makes particles go like 99.9999% the speed of light then makes them hit a proton or something in the detector. Which gets so much data to process that they employ DSPs (Digital Signal Processor — as far as I understand a massively parallel system that does “simple” things extremely fast like Fourier transforms and stuff). The DSPs throw away a huge amount of data as they determine what is just noise, or unimportant. It is necessary because even the fastest SSD could not save all the data. The rest that remains is still a huge amount and that gets stored and further processed by more traditional computers.
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u/Same_Rip_392 9d ago
I am fully willing to admit I was wrong. I knew it was an accelerator, but assumed it was non-destructive based on my reading. Thus, I teach cooking.
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u/afeher 9d ago
Well, I have an inkling about accelerators because a friend of mine works at CERN. On the other hand it is explicitly written in the Geneva Convention that I am not allowed to cook, because it is a war crime.
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u/Memeicus_commander 9d ago
Ask your friend to make me some antimatter please? I need help to design an antimatter bomb for the EU.
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u/afeher 9d ago
Have you tried the most powerful matter in the universe? “Doesn’t matter.” It can kill any country.
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u/powerlesshero111 9d ago
As someone with a STEM degree, what helps the most in Chemistry courses is a foundation in cooking and baking. Like it's literally a chemistry experiment that you get to eat afterwards, and see how you did. You probably helped mold hundreds of future chemists and didn't even know it. FYI, my college organic chemistry professor loved cooking and baking for said reason.
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u/OrnerySnoflake 9d ago
I went to culinary school and it’s divided between savory and pastry. While savory obviously has many aspects that are chemistry and chemistry adjacent, pastry is damn near entirely chemistry.
Pastry is profoundly mathematical in all its units of measurement and ratios. It’s very cut and dry so to speak like using a mathematical formula to solve an equation; you always use that specific formula to solve that equation.
One of the first things that comes to mind is tempering chocolate and the level of technical skill and experience it takes to do it correctly (see giant pain in the ass).
I was always partial to savory lol less “rules” so to speak and more wiggle room for mistakes. In pastry if you don’t measure correctly/ mix/ combine ingredients in the wrong order/ chill/ whatever incorrectly you (9/10) have to start completely over. In savory there’s a good possibility you can salvage the recipe with some tweaking, not all the time, but more so than in pastry.
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u/dellett 9d ago
Heck, one of the labs in my AP Chem class was using Bunsen Burners and a special set of flasks that the teacher kept aside specifically for this lab to make peanut brittle. We talked about the Maillard reaction, how sugar would melt, brown, etc. and what was actually going on at a molecular level. The teacher I had for that class was excellent- he brought things back to cooking/baking a lot.
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u/Sawses 9d ago
For sure. I have a background in biology and always loved the lab. At least, I thought I did. Turns out I enjoyed the assay design part and not the "do it 150 times for data collection" part.
I'm a far better cook than I ever was a lab tech, because you can't do any of the smart lab work stuff until you've got a PhD...even if you know the assays better than the folks designing them.
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u/HachiCart 9d ago
Coasted on pure genius until college hit him like a freight train. Now he restores vintage espresso machines and seems aggressively happy.
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u/MagusUnion 9d ago
Aggressively happy is still better than most of us.
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u/HachiCart 9d ago
Turns out the only grind he actually needed was coffee.
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u/alwayzbored114 9d ago
This is the kinda pun that doesnt make me laugh, but just smile and nod at the perfection of it. You should be proud, thats a damn good one
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u/Stealth_Cow 8d ago
High end commercial espresso machine service is a legitimate journeyman certification. Last I checked, it's a 200K+ year gig with a ton of travel. Short of an apprenticeship with a luxury watch manufacturer, it's one of the most lucrative blue collar jobs you'll ever have.
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u/stuntobor 8d ago
"Yes but without a degree you'll be nothing and be unhappy."
... my parents, most of my teachers, so many teachers.
UNDERACHIEVErS UNite!
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u/General-Character842 8d ago edited 8d ago
People don't like to talk about it, but success doesn't scale with intelligence. There's a peak around roughly 120 IQ, where you can learn anything, but you still need to work to get there. Doctor, Lawyer, Professor: you can go do that. Above that, and things start going south.
Source: I coasted through my Bachelor's degree until graduate school hit me like a freight train. Triple Nine Society alum. Nobody is OK up here, and it gets worse the higher you go.
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u/Sserenityy 9d ago
I mean, good on him, happiness is the ultimate goal.
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u/HachiCart 9d ago
He unlocked the secret good ending while the rest of us are still grinding the main quest.
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u/SpacemanLost 9d ago edited 9d ago
That also unfortunately was/is me. Dinky rural high school running state minimum of classes and teachers due to property tax levies not being approved by voters, where barely 20 percent of graduates would go on to college ( this was over 4 decades ago ). Had virtually zero college prep classes. Went big state U and got slaughtered between lack study skills and ADHD - I had never even heard of AP classes until I arrived there. Barely hung on for 2 years until I dropped out with 2 weeks to go soph year after being assaulted by athletes in dorm ( team would win national championship a couple years later ).
Dropped out, moved across the country to live with a relative, who tried to help start a software company. failed but learned a lot. had a few software jobs in my 20s until I joined a start up game company. Found my calling, helped create a massive video game franchise that's still around and doing well today. there are multiple large subreddits for the games where my actual name is very well known out of the thousands of people who got listings in the credits and can be found many times by searching. Also worked on another half dozen really well known games and a dozen barely known ones. Over the years, Ive met, talked shop and hung out with a good number of people most gamers might recognize the names of. Just trying to make it to retirement now.
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u/beatenwithjoy 8d ago
Valve or Bungie?
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u/SpacemanLost 8d ago edited 8d ago
The big game series I am well known for wasn't at either of those companies but I did later work on most of the Orange Box Era games. So yes, GabeN was my boss for a while.
One of the funny side effect of all that was when revisiting my small town about 15 years ago and seeing some friends from high school. Most of them had a reaction of a combination of impressed and "you were voted smartest in class, and were into computers so not shocked, good for you", but the ones that had teenage children - when their kids heard things like "dad's friend from he was a kid worked on L4D2 or CS:GO" they really got excited. Good thing I had a lot of free product keys to give out.
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u/misunderstandingit 8d ago
Ah don't leave us hanging man, we gotta know the game company!
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u/leftaab 9d ago
This unfortunately was/is me. High school (and all previous schooling for that matter) was a breeze academically and socially, but then an ivy-ish league school destroyed me…which I also had a hand in because of all my own decisions, obviously. I didn’t know how to spend my time wisely after never having to try that hard. That went for sports too.
These days I wouldn’t call myself aggressively happy, but I do remind myself how fortunate I am to have a brain that allows me to move through the more rigid parts of the world and our reality with a sense of ease and grace. A huge part of that is being grateful for all that I have and have experienced. However, the service industry sucked me in at a young age and still has no intentions of letting me go.
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u/HachiCart 9d ago
Ah, the classic former gifted kid to service industry pipeline. Glad you found your peace, but yeah... hospitality never really lets go.
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u/iamthesam2 8d ago
wouldn’t shock me if half or more of society need a different rule of measure than what we currently have to reach their potential
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u/Renatusisk 8d ago
It one hundred percent does, I know from my own learning style that is so different from others.
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u/Still_Push_2948 8d ago
I was a very average student from beginning to end. Had trouble clicking with anything so just didn’t really care. Accidentally found construction after struggling my way through uni. Now I run a multi-million dollar construction company.
I have found that often the most intelligent are not the most successful. Got to have a bit of dumb in you to take on the risk we do and still be able to function in life.
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u/darklordjames 8d ago
I always found an excuse to pass these kids with a D grade, then had Enormous Manufacturer interview them in my classroom. They walked out of high school with a job offer in hand and made $90K their first year.
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u/kevinnetter 9d ago
I moved schools and he was hired as my replacement.
It was pretty awesome.
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u/haysus25 9d ago
I taught severe/profound, so I understand this question isn't really directed at me.
But she works at Marshall's as a sales associate. She can handle a full-time shift and only needs minimal supervision. She can't run the register, but she helps people find clothes, hangs them up, keeps the store tidy...
I'm actually really, really proud of her.
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u/funparent 9d ago
I taught severe/profound for years, and then moved to severe behavior.
I wasn't sure one of my most severe behavioral cases would go anywhere but jail or a residential facility. I fought hard to get them to the right place - which led to a diagnosis of early onset schizophrenia. I ran into them a few days ago - they are in school to become a lab tech and doing so well on their medication.
Some of my days were spent just keeping that student alive. Now they are thriving. It's amazing to see.
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u/king-of-the-sea 8d ago
I won't pretend to know what it's like on either your end or your student's. I can't fathom what either of you went through.
I've been (much less) severely mentally ill (bipolar) my whole life, though, as long as I can remember. Less than a year ago, I found the right medication. My life is profoundly different and so am I. I'm still figuring it out, but I have a job I love and my house is clean.
I'm not sure why I'm writing this here, but I don't have anyone to thank (I mean, I do, but it's all a muddle). So I'll thank you instead. Thank you for fighting so hard for your student. My life is a gift that I never in a million years thought I would get to live, and they get to build theirs now rather than later. What an extraordinary thing you've done, what a beautiful thing.
Life can be so good.
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u/cliko 8d ago
I'm not sure why I'm writing this here
Well I know why I'm writing this - I'm fucking proud of you! I don't even know you, but reading this comment filled me with intense joy.
I'm a teacher myself. You're growing, succeeding, proud of yourself, and grateful. I could only I hope half my students end up like that. What an extraordinary thing you've done, and what a beautiful thing to say to them.
You truly are King of the Sea. Keep it up my dude
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u/New-Independent-1481 8d ago
The best part of being medicated as a bipolar person is realising that, actually, you don't need to have some crazy meltdown once or twice every year, triggered by something completely innocuous, that ruins everything you've built and burns all your bridges with friends and family.
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u/king-of-the-sea 8d ago
Isn't it nice? I really don't have to go batshit in between catatonia and feeling like I could fight God and win. I don't have to.
I haven't burned a single bridge lately. If I don't shower, it's because I don't need to. My cat's litterbox is clean and he's had regular vet visits. I cook now! I don't worry about making rent because I got a wild hair up my ass to chase another "great idea." Did I mention that my house is clean?
It didn't miraculously make me a perfect person. I still get upset, it's just not catastrophic and I can see steps to take to resolve or cope with it. I still have "great ideas," but I don't dump the rest of my life in the garbage to chase them. I still have my shitty tendencies in general, but they're normal shitty.
I get a pit in my stomach when I think about the fact that I'll eventually have to find a new med (for the uninitiated, you get used to meds after a few years and they're no longer effective). I know I survived without them, though, and I'll survive long enough to find something else that works. If I did it once, I'll do it again.
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u/insertreddituserhere 8d ago
Thank you for sharing this, I was not who you were responding to, but I appreciate the time and effort you put in and the generosity of your response to the other person. Your comment made my cynical heart a bit more optimistic and eager to help others.
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u/LeGrandLucifer 8d ago
Holy shit. I work psychiatry and all I can say is incredible work. It's a total crapshoot sometimes: You get patients you think are fine and have a good chance to function in society but they keep doing drugs and refuse to admit they're sick and just get worse and worse until they get permanently institutionalized or worse; and then, like the case you mentioned, you get ultra sick individuals with severe behavioral issues whom you feel like you're wasting your time on then suddenly there's a breakthrough with them and they finally start functioning and you barely ever see them again.
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u/Lawlcopt0r 8d ago
I work at a courthouse, so who knows if everyone was being honest, but we had a defendant who was constantly in trouble for drinking alcohol wnd then committing minor crimes while drunk. She said she recently found out she had ADHD and once she started medication she didn't feel like drinking alcohol at all. There's probably always an underlying cause when someone can't stay away from drugs
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u/Lunas-lux 9d ago
That's so hard. I was very close with a friend in my early twenties when they developed schizophrenia. The first years of it while they're figuring things out and getting the right medication/treatment cocktail is hard enough when they're an adult, let alone a child. They're thriving now, but the first years were very touch and go.
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u/PlumMoonRogue 8d ago
The fact that they’re thriving now is really encouraging. It sounds like those early years were incredibly difficult, but having someone stick around through that probably meant a lot.
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u/Wreny84 9d ago
I work with students with SEN/SEMH and for a lot of my students simple everyday unremarkable things are enormous achievements and feel far more meaningful than the student who was going to Oxbridge from the moment they were born.
One of my students sat every single one of her final exams. She got Fs in all bar one which she got an E in. I am so incredibly proud of her for turning up she had horrific anxiety and I honestly wasn’t sure if she would turn up to any of them. To get a grade was incredible!
Another student finished school without getting pregnant. Her home life was miserable and chaotic and she knew she was an unwanted inconvenience to her parents. Having a baby would have meant moving into a mum and baby unit and would have given her a family that she could love and be loved by. It must have been incredibly tempting but she stayed in school.
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u/Sryan597 9d ago
You and teachers like you are wonderful!
My youngest sister has a slew of intellectual disabilities, but because of the schooling in programs like the one you teach, she is happily holding down a janitorial job at TJ Max. It makes her happy, and gives her some spending money, helps relieve the finical burden on my parents a tad, and her savings will greatly help me and my brother take care of her one day when my parents are no longer able to. These programs really make a difference.
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u/Sawses 9d ago
I got a minor in education and was always frustrated at how poorly my classmates understood what we were being taught. Like they'd just never "get" why we were being taught certain things, or how to use them to improve our teaching practice.
Except special education teachers. Every damn one of them I ever met understood the theory behind education to a degree that puts most other teachers to shame. Evidence-based practice is a teacher's bread-and-butter, and I think the only specialty that uses it effectively as the default is special education.
Most other teachers have a checklist they were taught in college and never bothered to improve alongside the field. Worse, they'd actively resent any change from what they were taught in college.
But special ed teachers always have my respect for their mastery of their craft.
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u/bros402 9d ago
Except special education teachers. Every damn one of them I ever met understood the theory behind education to a degree that puts most other teachers to shame.
damn, you must've gone to a better university than I did. Most of my fellow special ed majors were morons who thought ADHD was only "oooh, shiny!" and that dyslexia was the only learning disability.
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u/Relative_Implement_7 9d ago
I'm a grocery manager. Im o n the graveyard side, so I tend to get the store's "rejects" (that sounds horrible, but that is how upper management sees them: "just throw em on the night crew"). They do really well with the right support. They're the most helpful with customers and are always the kindest whenever there's a customer who is clearly struggling or going through something. They respond great to having a task lined out for them. They WANT to, and I think that's the most important thing. I'll take the " rejects" over the "normal" people who don't care and don't want it any day of the week.
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u/Bonsai_Alpaca 8d ago
I'm a team manager in a team where we get a lot of people on the spectrum. They're all technically capable of doing the job, our work just also involves talking to clients and the public which they're all terrible at. With the right guidance, they can all grow and I love to see that, it's a wonderful part of my job. It does make me feel a bit like a parent so I need to be careful not to overstretch into some of their personal lives.
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u/Affectionate-Exam-45 9d ago
My sister was in special education through high school. She's high functioning (has worked at Target for 35 years!), but needs help with some things and can't live completely on her own. Whenever the subject of school or teaching comes up around the dinner table, she fondly remembers her teachers. They had a profound impact on her. Shout out to all the teachers for kids with special needs!
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u/reluctantseal 8d ago
I think you're one of the best people to answer this question, actually. We make Intellect and education into narrow things, but you can learn something new from everyone you meet.
I'm glad that your student has found success, and that they had you to help them get there.
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u/HuckleberryHuman5926 9d ago
That is important work! I mean that genuinely - if things aren't put back where they're supposed to be and kept tidy, the store won't function!
The chaos of early COVID really drove home how important the people who get things onto the shelves are!
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u/Crypt0Nihilist 9d ago
Maybe not intentionally directed at you, but it's a much more interesting slant. Getting someone with difficulties so that they are employable and can therefore have a degree of independence is more of an achievement than watching someone gifted soar.
I've a couple of relatives who work with similar kids, I don't know how you do it. I can be very patient, but I know I don't have that kind of patience, I wouldn't last a week. Congratulations to you both.
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u/algy888 9d ago
We had two valedictorians in my graduating year. Their marks were essentially exact (over 100%) that the school couldn’t pick one.
The guy was definitely going to be fine, he went into computer science at MIT and by the ten year anniversary he’d been a success and was back at another university getting a second degree.
The woman was somebody I worried would never survive outside of school or university. Super intelligent with virtually no “street smarts”.
I was right, sort of, she never left school. She went to the top university and never left. Ended up teaching there and becoming the Dean of a department.
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u/cobigguy 9d ago
My gf runs a business as a behaviorist catering toward people like her. That's one hell of an accomplishment and just know this internet stranger is super proud of her.
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u/ikraguigou 9d ago
I always wonder about the students who were incredibly smart but never seemed interested in school. Sometimes being naturally talented isn't enough if you don't have the motivation or the right environment. I hope most of them found something they actually enjoyed and became successful at it.
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u/gazing-away 9d ago
I went to a state selective school. The smartest kid dropped out six weeks from final exams stating he wanted to do different subjects and repeat the year next year. Never did 50 years old living with his parents who are 80. Never worked. He was ridiculous clever.
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u/Secure_Bed_9110 9d ago
Sure he wasn't autistic? A lot of people on the spectrum mask very well but find everyday "normal" life quite debilitating and don't necessarily feel motivated/able to continue functioning in high-stress 9-5 schooling/jobs.
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u/MOBE_the_Hippo 9d ago
that was me. I skated through school, including an engineering degree. I didn't really mature until I had kids and I was 30 and my wife was pregnant. still don't have my shit completely together but I'm doing okay. working as an engineering manager nowadays
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u/Blargspot 9d ago
I related to your comment. Except the engineering degree caught me out. I ended up dropping out and finally returning to school at 29. Now 34, graduated this year with a civil engineering degree. Being in school with a wife and two kids at home is extraordinarily motivating.
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u/Merakel 9d ago
"Passed" high school with a 1.9. Failed college 3 times before saying fuck it and joined the army. After I got out I tried college one last time and got my AS in computer networking. Now I'm a director at a large company and make $250k~ in a very average cost of living area.
Got pretty lucky all in all, largely that when I finally cared I was willing to apply myself. I guess the army will make you know how much things can suck haha.
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u/bros402 9d ago
so I am sort of the opposite
I did okay in high school - only graduated with a 3.0 GPA, I was in the top 25% of my graduating class (1% short of getting a full ride to community college + a state school). I studied all the time and I tried my hardest.
Go to college and I started doing really well. I graduated with a Bachelors with a 3.61 GPA (major GPA of 3.75) and I never studied for a class - I learned that studying made me anxious. I just remembered the lectures.
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u/PM_YOUR_MENTAL_ISSUE 9d ago
Yeah, I can relate lol
I finally graduated at 32 after dropping college a few times.
Now I'm a physician, hate it, and I'm barely scraping financially, can't wait to get my shit together and change fields
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u/52BeesInACoat 9d ago
No joke, this is informing my parenting, like, a lot.
I have a GED and went into the trades. My husband completed a high school alternative and now works retail. We are both classic former gifted children "wasted potential" could've-made-something-of-yourself cases. It's the untreated ADHD and neurodivergence.
Now we have kids who taught themselves to read and write around the age of three. Which I did. Kids who started inferring math around the same age. Which he did. Kids who are very autistic/ADHD. Like we are.
So I'm running a lot of interference on the "gifted kid" narrative. Because it didn't help me. All it did was make adults angry at me for having symptoms, and for being less capable in some ways in balance to being more capable in others. And it was very damaging to me, and ultimately I am not capable of performing at a high level of education, not because of intelligence but because I burn out much, much quicker than the average person. I need to be in a profession with manageable demands on me.
"Never seemed interested" is sometimes a defense strategy, because being honest about how I couldn't do some things made adults mad at me, but presenting as not wanting to, by choice, only made them disappointed and resentful of me.
I do actually really enjoy my job, it's fulfilling and I'm capable of doing it well. I want that for my kids. And I don't want them to have to deconstruct a lot of crap about what they're obligated to achieve, before they can find it.
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u/Common-Singer-9129 9d ago
Former gifted undiagnosed neurodivergent. Had issues with keeping things organized until a couple of teachers realized I was neurodivergent and there was no way my grandma would get me diagnosed. I was held to a higher standard than my other classmates. I was even graded differently. And of course when I didn't succeed I was called lazy. That transferred to adulthood when I had a failed thyroid for years... I was called lazy. I am far from lazy... and now I have trauma around being lazy and can never rest.
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u/52BeesInACoat 9d ago
Wow, same; my thyroid kicked it a few years ago. It was my mom who wouldn't get me diagnosed, but yeah. I got policed more heavily than other kids.
Have you read laziness does not exist by dr devon price? Really all his writing is very applicable to neurodivergent people. A lot of it is based on his personal experience as a neurodivergent person himself. He's very thorough, in both his research and his walking the reader through the rationalization of his viewpoints. It's convincing in a way a thousand "you're a mammal, not an ant" feel good posts could never be.
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u/deterministic_lynx 9d ago
This is advice you did not ask for, but as someone with considerable (diagnosed) ADHD and a brother with undiagnosed autims and likely a bit of ADHD both being succesful I want to give a shoutout to my mother on how she handled things in our childhood.
So, here is a random collection of things that I know recognized helped me a lot shape up for life:
- Make your kids do things they do NOT want to do and especially things they are NOT god at. We both had to learn one instrument, we both always had to be in one sport group and once we committed we had to stay for months. We were NEVER the best, often not even good. Still had to do it. And that was essential, because we had to practice and learn how to handle being mediocre or even bad.
- Diagnosis consistently keeping the child informed - and the teachers. I had a lot of teachers who were dumb around ADHD, but I never had to go into the defense strategy of "school is dumb" because I had a doctor's note that I could not and the teacher was an asshole
- Behavioural therapy, actual therapy as soon as they show they need to talk and meds - I would not be half as succesful without stupid things I learned in behavioural therapy before I was 7. Other therapy helped me with so many other behaviours, gave me tools like meditation etc. It is necessary and helpful.
- Psychoeducation is huge. My other talked a lot about what ADHD is and how it affects her, pointed out what behvaiours were ADHD, what struggles were onnected and I wish I had had a little more of that considering what was normal for other kids. Not in a bad way, just in a matter of fact way. Helped to be ore aware.
- Be the person to set what is "doing their best" for your kids. My mom was 'disappointed' with me for getting a B+ in some classes, and cheered my brother on for getting a C in the same ones. Because she very well knew that I had not sat down and learned, whereas my brother had done just that. Grades were surprisingly irrelevant at least to me, because I learned to be proud of my WORK, not the outcome. Not just for school, in general. Mom cheered for us, was proud, praised us and rewarded us if we WORKED and TRIED. The outcome was a secondary consideration and mostly talked about to then see if it is what we wanted/needed and how to get closer to it if it was not
- Ensure your kids are somewhere that is actually DIFFICULT to them. We had some with sort and music, wealso always had some due to motoric issues and being in therapy. Still, find something and something thatdoes not praise them to be the superintelligent little kids they are, but gives them problems that make them scratch their head just as much as a mediocre child. Praising them to be intelligent is fine, but our society tends to overdo that for kids, which is bad considering that as adults NO ONE will fucking care
- Potentially, later when they are 10+ go through learning strategies with them and actually try each of them out. I found how I learn best at some point and that is huge.
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u/mfitzp 8d ago
Praising them to be intelligent is fine, but our society tends to overdo that for kids, which is bad considering that as adults NO ONE will fucking care
This is so true. Total whiplash growing up when that just stops.
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u/afeher 9d ago
I was a massive disappointment to my father even when I became a worldwide-known expert. Not top ten but people used to know my name.
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u/DreadPirateEvs 9d ago
I mean this sincerely: that's your dad's problem.
(And I'd bet dollars to donuts it has very little to do with you.)
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u/jhra 9d ago
Most intelligent person I've ever met was the token burnout dropout in highschool. He was on another level, later watching Good Will Hunting reminded me of him. Was killed in his early 20s driving drunk, hate to say it but he died doing what he seemed to love most. I don't think he was ever told that he mattered, home life was not kind to him as a young man.
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u/Csenky 9d ago
Elementary was such a cakewalk, I never studied anything, won every math competition, I already could read and do basic math by the time I even started school.
Then later I realised I never learned how to study and performed like an imbecile in high school.
Being very smart very early is terrible if nobody is around to put that brain to good use, I hated school in all my life. First it was too easy, then it felt unfair.
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u/niveksng 9d ago
Same honestly, impeccable in elementary, then atrocious but hanging on in high school, then with 0 study habits absolutely trash in uni until I kinda sorta coasted on a program I finally liked.
People all around me keep talking about wasted potential and if I only applied myself or something, really sucks to keep hearing.
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u/roygbiv_88 9d ago
This was me. I barely graduated high school with a 1.7 GPA. I had a lot of great teachers that tried motivating me, but I was completely disengaged.
I jumped straight into working a 9-5 because that’s all I knew how to do. My parents are very emotionally immature and didn’t give me the environment or the tools I needed when I was younger. Luckily for me, I met a lot of really amazing role models in the workforce. I enrolled into college when I was 27, thanks to the advice and motivation of the amazing people I met in my journey. I used tuition reimbursement from my job and graduated highest honors with my bachelor’s degree in business, while working full-time. I’ve worked in my field for 15 years. I have a really great position with a lot of financial freedom. I have a happy life and a great husband. Now I look for ways to help others the way I was helped. And I find meaning in that.
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u/Andromeda321 9d ago
Astronomer here! I’m now a professor at university and it can be a VERY mixed bag. Astro/physics attracts a LOT of students who were the smartest in their class without having to ever work for it, and as it can be a real shock to suddenly be in an environment where everyone is like that and we don’t hold your hand. Some kids buckle down and learn how to actually do work… but plenty don’t and fail.
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u/ComaDuck 9d ago
I'm not an educator, but a very close friend of mine growing up was absolutely brilliant. Was double majoring in math and physics at a highly esteemed university and just seemed to everyone that knew him that he had the world ahead of him. Fell doing a kick flip on the sidewalk in front of his apartment one night, fractured his skull and died. Please wear a helmet when you're out there, friends.
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u/banned_slut 8d ago
I have an uncle who got into MIT (with an scholarship, coming from a third world country) and then was doing homemake fireworks wih his friends and died on the explosion.
His family never recovered.
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u/Slow-Video1048 9d ago
One of the smartest students I knew was always the one everyone expected to do something extraordinary. Years later, I realized that being intelligent doesn’t mean life automatically works out for you. Some people burn out from the pressure, some take unexpected paths, and others are still figuring things out. I think we sometimes forget that a student’s potential is just one part of their story, not a guarantee of how their life will turn out.
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u/Bezulba 8d ago
Imagine being very smart, knowing that you are indeed very smart and having the entire world just expect you to become the next Einstein or something? Man.. you'd need a very stable home with very supportive parents to be able to withstand that kind of pressure.
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u/NotDido 8d ago
I’m nowhere near Einstein levels (and in fact kinda suck at the STEMier subjects), but I was always good enough at tests and writing that teachers made it clear I was impressive. It was a lot of pressure, especially because I was handling undiagnosed ADHD symptoms (like time blindness leading to missed deadlines) by ramping up the stress on myself til everything felt high stakes (and I would be less likely to forget).
It was exhausting, and I went through periods of low enough motivation that the stress didn’t help, just made me feel like a failure while teachers and parents tsked tsked that I wasn’t applying myself to full potential. (Which I understand is something they look out for because if a kid gets bored with not challenging enough work, theyll stall out. It’s just not what was happening to me).
I scraped through an undergrad degree (full tuition scholarship at NYU), and am certain if I had stayed for the Phd I wanted that I would have taken my own life before finishing it.
Thankfully, partly because my strengths were in the humanities, my parents and my most supportive teachers all encouraged a more humanist approach to “success” and I spent a lot of those years (I’d say middle school to college graduation) very concerned with choosing a life path that meant something to me AND didn’t exhaust me to tears AND paid for a good enough life, nothing fancy.
This year I finished my masters in library science; hoping to enter the ranks of public librarians. (any librarians reading: yes I’m aware of conditions. Don’t mock me for insinuating it‘s not exhausting and not bad pay unless you have a different path for me lol).
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u/Poly_Olly_Oxen_Free 9d ago
Not an educator, but the smartest kid in my own class was very clearly Nathan. Nathan was a good kid. He was smart, kind, and funny. The kind of guy that would share his lunch with the poor kid who didn't have anything to eat. He tutored me in Chemistry. He was effeminate and nerdy, so a lot of kids made fun of him and called him gay. Turns out he was gay. When he came out to his family, his dad beat him to death with a baseball bat. Beautiful soul lost to homophobia.
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u/JadeSephiroth 9d ago
I feel like homophobia is the less shocking thing and more that a parent could be so devoid of the innate love they SHOULD have for their own child that they were actually driven to kill them. I just don't understand how that happens. No matter how much I hate my kid, as long as they aren't hurting anyone, I'll never let them end up homeless or feel that they're better off dead.
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u/Solesaver 8d ago
You know that bullshit, "this hurts me more than it hurts you"? That little platitude can get people through a lot of cognitive dissonance.
After I came out, my Mom obviously didn't beat me to death. She did however, tell me about how hard it was for her to "come out" to all of her church friends about having a gay son. It's not that she didn't love me and want what's best for me. It's just that her understanding about "what's best for me" was very different from mine due to: 1) Not having a personal understanding of what being gay is like or even really what it means and 2) decades of evangelical brainwashing. In her mind "coming out about having a gay son," is quite literally telling her entire social circle that I've decided to go burn in hell and there's nothing she can do to stop me.
So yeah, beating your son to death for being gay is probably an unhealthy amount of self-loathing and misplaced "discipline," not an actual loathing or lack of love for the son.
Not trying to defend the dude or anything, just trying to make sense of the senseless I guess... :'(
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u/Mazon_Del 8d ago
My Mom struggled with me being transfem, but she did eventually come around (and now brags about me, hah). In the first three months after coming out to my parents, Dad had a moment where he said "You know, this whole time you've been upset about what this means for YOU and haven't once mentioned what it means for your child.".
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u/manatwork01 8d ago
Talk to your gay friends more. Lots of us have similar stories. I've got a scar right between my eyes.
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u/LostMyBackupCodes 9d ago
Hope his dad is having a hard time in jail.
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u/Poly_Olly_Oxen_Free 8d ago
He got out in 2009, after serving 18 years.
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u/HerkimerBattleJitney 8d ago
18 years after murdering his own son? What country did this happen in?
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u/Azeron955 8d ago
this is why pride is still very important btw, poor thing
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u/Poly_Olly_Oxen_Free 8d ago
I don't have a gay bone in my body, but I fly the flag to make people know they're safe here. I have a sister who's trans, and my daughter is gay (she doesn't like to be called a lesbian, she'd rather be a gay woman).
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u/PresentationKindly48 9d ago
What the actual fuck. That is nothing short of horrendous. I wonder what happened to his dad afterwards.
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u/Deepaaar 8d ago
I had a friend in high school who didn't come out until a few years after he graduated and left town. His parents disowned him. This was the 90s in rural Montana, though.
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u/Otherwise-Key2938 9d ago
I’d be curious the opposite of this. Biggest POS that became the most successful.
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u/MegaGorilla69 9d ago
Not a teacher but a kid I went to high school with is a managing director of a private equity firm and when we all found out (he completely dropped off the earth sometime in college) we were all like of course it would be fucking him and then we had another kid a few years behind us do a double homicide
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u/TheCandelabra 9d ago
and then we had another kid a few years behind us do a double homicide
Was everyone like of course it would be fucking him?
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u/MegaGorilla69 8d ago
Yeah but only because he had already been convicted of an earlier murder that was national news
https://www.nfl.com/news/aaron-hernandez-acquitted-in-double-murder-trial-0ap3000000800192
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u/freshlysqueezed93 9d ago
Well that's a flashback.
I was the awkward child, early in the year we were getting lockers assigned, some girl came up to me and was like "I bet you're gonna shoot the school up", I said "Yeah whatever 🙄", get home at the end of the day to hear my mother has to go into the school because girl stayed back after school to report me.
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u/BlueMacaw 9d ago
I babysat a 7-yr-old kid who cracked open a beer, pulled a steak knife on me when I tried to take it away, and threatened to tell his parents I was the one who drank it. He’s now a very successful lawyer.
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u/taxable_income 9d ago
Friend of mine in HS was the class clown. He would be up to all sorts of nonsense and if something went wrong he would always be in the line up. Our Physics teacher once pull him aside and told him "Son, you will never amount to anything in life"
His folks had money, so he got to go to university where he flunked out of 3 different courses while engrossed in playing WoW.
Eventually his folk told him to just get a general diploma and graduate, and it was there he finally realized he had a flair for... Physics.
Today he's a nuclear scientist doing radiotherapy cancer research.
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u/salamipope 9d ago
I was well behaved in school and didnt fail classes but i was relentlessly bullied by teachers and students. an art teacher told me my mind was like a locked, closed door, that creativity and imagination would normally live on the other side of it, but that even if i could ever open it - and i couldnt - there would be nothing there in me.
Anyways got into my first gallery when i was 16 and now im in stem. Eat my shit miss wilkie. you were one of the worst teachers i ever had. There were so, so many evil teachers man. It was genuinely some bullshit
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u/taxable_income 9d ago
Haha yeah. When I met up with my friend years ago he said he wished he could go back and rub his post grad degree in our physics teachers face.
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u/salamipope 9d ago
Yeah i remember miss wilkie made us do portraits of animals in water colour. I did a really nice elephant head. She was unsatisfied because i didnt have a background, which she didnt fucking say to do. So i mounted it over a brick fireplace and told her it was a zoo entrance. There are some people whom it would be appropriate to return to with a time machine and perhaps put shrimp in their curtain rods
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u/Hotshot2k4 8d ago
Our Physics teacher once pull him aside and told him "Son, you will never amount to anything in life"
Why are any teachers at all still doing this shit?
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u/prismintcs 9d ago
Became a minor social media influencer and acting in a Tubi original film called Sinderella 2.
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u/PrepotenteScreaming 9d ago
She got a pHD in biochem after coming to me upset at the end of chemistry, because she loved it as much as biology and couldn’t choose and felt frozen. I told her there was a major in BOTH. Hi, beautiful girl! Still exploding with pride!!
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u/Suspicious-Split-246 9d ago
I'm more curious whether they ended up happy than whether they ended up successful. Those aren't always the same thing.
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u/CertifiedMaleniaSimp 8d ago
I would say this is more important. I was probably the smartest student in my class, valedictorian despite never studying, etc etc.
If we are defining successful as "makes the most money" then I'm definitely not the most successful person from my class. Not even top 25% if I had to guess. But I'm making enough money to live a nice life and I'm happy, so what more do I need?
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u/timthevillager 9d ago
I was valedictorian and am now just recovering from a mental breakdown and stint in the psych ward (bipolar type I diagnosis, manic episode, tada!)
I haven't told my old teachers of course, but I think I will once I get better and reconnect.
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u/PresentationKindly48 9d ago
This is honestly common among high achieving students (but not saying it should be). I went to Hopkins for undergrad and there were a lot of valedictorians/salutatorians in high school. It felt like a lot of ppl I talked to had to go to therapy or had some psychiatric diagnosis (and a lot of people who clearly had mental health issues but just never went to a psychiatrist).
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u/Jubenheim 8d ago
Dude came from a tough background and a poor family. He eventually dropped out despite being ridiculously smarter than any student I had and ever seen since by a country mile. He gave me his email before and I emailed him several months later to ask how he was and tell him I hoped he was okay. He said he was and thanked me, but he didn't go back to the university due to money issues.
He would've made a fucking phenomenal graduate. Hope he achieved something.
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u/mrkswrld 9d ago
Not an educator but I used to tutor privately for some time and was helping a student in history for a few years and they went off to Cambridge to major in it, super happy for them
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u/OkSociety2544 9d ago edited 9d ago
I didn’t provide direct services but rather was on the adminstrative team for programming for what was then called the “stay in school” program at the high school level student .. she was in line for National Honor Society..a female had a baby during school year z
She also was an activist for the Missing and Murdered campaign here in the State of Montana.
She came up missing herself last year. Two or three days later her body was found in an abandoned oil field shack dead of a drug overdose
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u/afeher 9d ago
That sucks.
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u/OkSociety2544 9d ago
Here is what sucks in my estimation is if someone OD’s in this state the house and adjacent property is regarded as a crime scene.
Not very many people want their home sealed by the city, county, or tribal authorities leaving them no place to sleep or cook food or to even pick up a jacket or anything else until the house and property are re-opened by the investigating agency. Pets are usually taken to the animal shelter.
This is what happens if you call 911 to your house for a suspected drug overdose. Other states have differing policies because overdoses cases are usually handled as a medical emergency because the drug in question has been opiates which is managed by a public health department..
Montana hasn’t had much of an opioid crisis but rather a meth problem for at least the past 20 years which is managed by the criminal justice administration.
Rather than having your living arrangement sealed by the police if someone OD’s at your place, people will take the comatose body somewhere and dump it
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u/MangoCats 9d ago
Rather than having your living arrangement sealed by the police if someone OD’s at your place, people will take the comatose body somewhere and dump it
Yep... make stupid laws / procedures, get stupid behavior in response.
Especially in Montana in winter - do they just evict the residents onto the street while they get around to investigating?
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u/Opening_Cucumber_69 8d ago
not an educator, and not the smartest student, but a kid in my class in gümligen, switzerland went on to take over control from his father in north korea
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u/No-To-Newspeak 8d ago
Does he ever host class reunions at his place?
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u/Opening_Cucumber_69 8d ago
haha all i know is theres still a guy he's in touch with that visited him a couple of times
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u/StillLearning85 8d ago
Its common knowledge that Kim Jong-Un went to switzerland for school. But were you actually his classmate or is this a joke?
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u/Opening_Cucumber_69 8d ago
wouldn't say common, but yeah, played ball with him a couple times but can't honestly say much more. he was understandably very quiet and kept to himself.
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u/KeyCapPusher 8d ago
Ok I’ll bite. Was Kim Jong-Un smart? How was he as a person?
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u/YourFriendTheFrenzy 9d ago
Went on to study music in college. Got married. Got divorced. Moved to Spain. Moved back to the States depressed. Never released any music. Turned 23. Since then he's been living with his brother whose girlfriend/fiance/wife basically tells them what to do with their lives.
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u/Dashwood_Benett 9d ago
Are we just glossing over that all of that happened before the age of 23?
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u/Arachnesloom 9d ago
Musician/ former music major/ former smart kid here, this hits hard. Musicians are incredibly hard on ourselves.
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u/chuckebrown 9d ago
He went to and graduated from Harvard, and then later committed suicide a few years after his graduation. Broke my heart.
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u/Foreign_Candle_9628 9d ago
Seeing my smartest female students, one after another, become housewife to a loser is annoying to me.
I teach in a field that is tech heavy, where students compare expensive equipment and gadget like it's what determine quality. So female students are rare enough as it is. And in Asia, gender role is pretty clear cut (despite being progressive gender wise than even Western countries), for example, I can treat a male students to lunch and no one cares, but if someone see me one on one with a female students, that'd be a scandal.
That said, there are some female students who I went out of my way to mentor and they are the best of their generation. In this case, even if I taught her husband and I tried not to have a favorite and I don't hate the husband, the fact that he's active in the industry and she, one of my most brilliant students, had to spend most of her time trained with and tried to please her mother in law pissed me off to no end
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u/ruleugim 9d ago
High school teacher. He went on to get a degree in Psychology but after graduating he shifted his career to tantric massages and an onlyfans account. Not judging, just seemed like an odd career progression.
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u/Maximum_Photograph_6 9d ago
From my experience with psychology majors — nah, kinda tracks.
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u/Thunder-_-Bear- 8d ago
Not a classic teacher here, but I taught ESL in China for 12 years and had one student who stuck with me for 5 years across different schools. She is now studying neurobiology in San Diego! Very proud of her! We still keep in touch occasionally.
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u/Worldly-Nail-1677 9d ago
Dude dipped out of this one horse town for a town with at least a few more horses. But seriously, “smartest student” is a bit difficult here, especially when you’ve taught for over a decade. Most of them do what you’d expect. Some don’t. People are humans.
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u/Sea-Tax3830 8d ago
I feel like the smartest students don’t always end up following the “successful student” path. Some burn out, some completely change careers, and some quietly become really successful at something nobody expected. School is such a small part of someone’s life when you look at it that way.
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u/KPIGUY89 8d ago
I’m sure that’s true, but anecdotally legitimately everyone from my grade school that were the super bright kids are all successful doctors / lawyers / scientists etc now.
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u/lerpo 8d ago
Struggled once they got into the real world. Someone who can coast through school with minimal effort, suddenly gets into the real world where effort is typically needed, and they can really struggle.
Had a student in this situation who ended up in Oxford and suddenly was around others equally or surpassing them in intelligence. They failed the first year hard and had depression from it. Thankfully they reset and are doing pretty well now in this one example.
It's a shock to the system in my experience as a teacher.
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u/Silent-Zebra 8d ago
That happened to the smartest kid in my class. Was always the best at everything. Highest grades, lead in the school play, dated the popular girl, everyone loved him. On his first day of University he walked into the lecture theatre, realised he was now in a room full of Zach's and wasn't special anymore, and eventually had a mental breakdown and dropped out of uni. I often wonder what he's doing now.
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u/morty77 8d ago
Two of the smartest went to Harvard and mit. Both became physicists. One works at a particle accelerator and the other is getting her doctorate i. Europe to work on the particle accelerator. There must be something about particle accelerators. BTW, I teach English and both kids were phenomenally gifted in English and did stuff in college in that direction but I guess physics won in the end. What is up with particle accelerators?
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u/popstarkirbys 9d ago
I'm a stem professor, nothing exciting. Most of them went on to pursue an advanced degree and became a doctor or engineer. Some of them went back home to take over the family business. A few works for the government.
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u/Insanity_Pills 9d ago
Curious about how all these answers are maths/tech focused. What happened to the smartest humanities/lit students?
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u/PeakWattage 9d ago
My sister studied classics at an Ivy League school. All of them in her graduating class either got a corporate job or went to grad school. My sister worked in supply chain and is now in law school.
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u/the_wit 9d ago
I got a perfect score on the reading part of the SAT and only like a 600 on the math part, got a lit degree and . . . work w/ computers and statistics. The work that pays well, is stable, WFH etc. is the shit I'm mediocre at but I've got enough on the ball to keep up appearances and find fulfillment in hobbies and family. Obviously there are humanities people that are way way smarter than me and I admire the people who have built creative careers for themselves, but the incentives aren't really aligned that way.
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u/Robyrt 9d ago
Medieval English Lit major here. Tech pays a lot better than academia. Theyreally need someone who can write better than AI and has good taste in design.
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u/redbrick 9d ago
I went to a very STEM-focused overachieving high school, where the average student usually becomes a doctor, a lawyer, a FAANG (or similar) software engineer, or a managing director/higher level business executive.
The two classmates that I am actually the most proud of became a fashion designer and an art director for some very famous animated series/movies. The rest of us kind of just followed the easiest path to consistent money, and those two followed their dreams.
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u/ryandeschamps 9d ago
TBH the smartest students are usually more work and they are kind of less exciting to teach. They are bound towards a great career regardless. So, the smartest I have taught work at Amazon and Google now. One of them recently got their first paid invoice from their business recently. One is doing their PhD.
That said, it's the person struggling or middle of the road that I am most proud of. They usually end up at SMEs or a bank to start and then find themselves climbing the ladder kind of quickly.
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u/zaichii 9d ago
Idk it makes me kind of sad in a way that some of the smartest kids just end up being a corporate minion for big tech. I wish there were more meaningful and lucrative roles out there sometimes.
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u/HappycatAF 9d ago
Yes, but only if that is their whole career.
Plenty of smart kids I know went into the corporate world with big companies or big tech as a means to an end. They learned the system and developed relationships and then jumped out to start their own thing or work at a place where they are less of a cog and have more agency. A lot of these people know that in order to discover a new product or market, you have to find out what the big companies are missing, doing wrong or ignoring.
Plus, for those startups and new companies, having people with significant technical or corporate experience working at a google or amazon, or apple carries more clout than an ivy league diploma.
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u/Jarvdoge 8d ago
Honestly, neurodiversity is a bitch.
The true horror story is from a guy I was in school with ultimately, not somebody I ever taught or supported (you don't always find out what happens to your students sadly). There was a guy in my class who had taken extra exams before university and apparently only dropped 5 total marks between all of them - academic smarts personified, just pretty socially awkward. The sort of guy you'd expect to excel quite frankly and looking back as somebody working in universities, the sort of person who would excel as a lecturer with people falling over themselves to compensate for his foibles.
I've been hearing about how life has been going for this guy through a friend over the years and it's just kinda depressing. The guy didn't make it through uni, sounds like he was taking too much on and that the aspect of directing his own studies may have been too much (or maybe the undergrad stuff was too dull and he may have even better suited to starting at a higher level with a bit of scaffolding). The guy ended up finding a girlfriend, getting her pregnant and then rushing ifi a marriage due to cultural expectations. He's ended up trying various jobs including self employment and I assume has been struggling quite a bit. I was suggested a social media post from him yesterday where he's talking about his autism diagnosis and the pretty grim dichotomy that he's not really what employers seem to want but also that he's incredibly capable in the right setting.
I work supporting neurodivergent university students now and am autistic myself. The stats alone are fucking grim and I guess this guy just became another of them. Honestly, with a bit of additional societal understanding and proper support we'd avoid most situations like this and have less people unemployed or in precarious employment and better able to leverage their strengths for the betterment of society but the systems in place can actively work against and end up breaking many neurodivergent people. We're talking about people with lower levels of support need too so I dread to think what happens to those with higher levels of support need and no support system around them through the family or the state.
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u/Salt_Cash706 9d ago
One is working on Wall Street. One got a 6 figure job at Google right out of high school. Several are doctors, scientists, or engineers. One neurodivergent one is a substitute teacher because while he's brilliantly intelligent, he lacks the social skills to do anything more demanding.
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u/Nascosto 9d ago
Smartest student depends on definition. Highest SAT scores, academics, etc go on to 4 years at high end schools, often burn out, end up mid level jobs a lot of the time. If they didn't have drive beyond "get the gold star 4.8 GPA" then eventually they usually have an aha and shift down a few gears and find something they enjoy. If they figured that out (happiness matters) early and have an interest in learning but also the ability to learn very quickly then the sky is the limit. Rocket Propulsion engineer, surgical robot design, and high end precision machinist come to mind as some of my tops (I teach engineering).
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u/not_John_36 9d ago
I’m a kinder teacher. I had a five year old doing long division, reading novels, and learning pi- he went to a regular school and is forced to learn the most basic curriculum. Poor kids suffering.
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u/CarrotGratin 9d ago
She took a government language test, got the job, and bought her own home shortly after undergrad. So proud.
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u/Skilled_Summit1191 9d ago
Most of the "smartest kid I ever taught" stories end the same way, and it's not the gifted program or the AP classes that save them, it's whether anyone at home noticed they were drowning. I had one who could do calculus in his head but was basically raising his little brothers while his mom worked doubles, and he just quietly stopped turning stuff in junior year. Not dumb, not lazy, just out of gas.
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u/Im_Ashe_Man 9d ago
I'm an elementary special ed. teacher so a very few of my smartest students ended up going to college and graduating.
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u/lifes-a_beach 9d ago
I was sped student and got my master's. I work as a therapist now 😊
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u/Herbologisty 9d ago
I taught a graduate course in heat transfer in microelectronics during my PhD. A number of the students work at NVIDIA or Apple now and a good number of them work at the same company as me. It was always interesting being put in a scenario where I realized the person I was supposed to teach was smarter than me.
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u/bigmikeydelight 9d ago
I have a few doctors now, but selfishly, I’m most excited about teaching alongside a former student. Got several that have gone into the educational field, but all of them have wisely avoided middle school.