When I was in second grade, I walked into my favorite classroom at the end of the hall and saw a little green tri-fold pamphlet on my desk. I brought it home and showed it to my mom because it had a lot of words I understood, but not in the context in which they were presented. She told me that I had been invited to join a Gifted & Talented program at my school, but the one they’d offered me convened on Saturdays. I played soccer, so Saturdays were out of the question.
“You’re doing well in school without it,” Mom said. “You don’t need someone to tell you that you’re gifted and talented. You just are.”
Yeah, well. Not enough for me.
I got pulled out of class on the last day of 3rd grade with my best friend–whose name was also Kate–for what seemed to be some kind of meeting. While the rest of our class had a “last day of school” party, I thought I was getting in trouble.
The teacher explained to me and Kate that they’d been monitoring our test scores, grades, and schoolwork, and if we wanted, we could be part of the GT program in 4th grade. They were going to send a letter home to our parents at our respective houses, but they wanted us to hear it for ourselves: we were doing great and were going to, one day, go on to great things. They couldn’t wait to have us in the program. I was sort of in shock, and when Kate and I stepped back into our classroom for the rest of our party, she had to repeat the whole thing back to me.
Now, here’s the deal. Our Gifted and Talented programs were not exactly just “higher level” versions of our regular classes. It was special projects, like dissecting owl pellets for animal bones or studying fingerprints and the things that make us unique. Sometimes, it was building a car out of Knex toys, which I guess was supposed to teach us something about physics. Other times, it was Civil War Day (yikes,) where we dressed up in Civil War era clothes and had to learn some sort of recitation of history that probably didn’t have anything to do with racism (double yikes.) One day, we rode down an empty hallway on a “hoverboard.”
Twice a week, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays if memory serves me correctly, we would be pulled from class to attend GT. It was not during some sort of study hall period or “tutorial,” as we called it in middle school. We were almost always pulled from science and social studies classes.
While we were not in class because we were busy studying for one of 5 spelling bees my colleagues and I participated in–learning spelling bee etiquette, understanding the benefits of asking for a country of origin–we were obviously expected to complete any assigned homework that may have been written on the board when we returned, copy down any extraneous (Author’s note: this is the word that knocked me out of the spelling bee in 6th grade. I tied for 3rd.) notes. We had to take any tests on their scheduled dates. There was rightfully no special treatment.
So, rather than sit in a room of our peers and be able to ask questions and learn the foundations and fundamental concepts of science and social studies, we were brought out of class for something completely different because we were “special,” or something.
6th grade was the last year of G/T in our school district, and the participating students were grouped into the same classes, meaning there would be about seven of us in a class of twenty one or twenty two. Our teacher, who we’ll call Mrs. G, then had the most wonderful of intentions. That’s not something I would ever be able to begrudge her. I do think she meant well for all of us in every opportunity she presented us and in every lesson she taught. She had this little classroom off of the main hallway, and on the day that everyone in our math class failed a test on fractions and decimals, we trudged down the cream tiled hall to G/T.
We were these sniffling messes, swollen eyes shining after our teacher reamed a room full of 6th graders out for not getting A’s the way he expected. Mrs. G noticed this immediately, since we were all pretty out of it, not exactly our most jovial selves, the kids she was always excited to see and teach right before lunch.
We told her what was going on, that none of us had ever failed a test before and we had all done really poorly on the exact same test. Nobody was safe (even though we were all going to be allowed to retake the test at the end of the week.)
“You know what?” Mrs. G said, barely audible over our 12 year old weeps. “Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing.”
Mrs. G, my school-imposed and self-enforced standards for academic excellence are telling me otherwise. Getting less than an A in anything at this point in my life was certainly not an option. Sometimes I still feel that way. You can imagine my shock at that moment.
“You’re going to have to fail some time in your life, so it’s a good thing to learn that now. Not everything is going to be perfect. You’re not going to know everything. Not every single day is going to be your day, whether it be a math test like this or one day when you have a real job.”
So, yeah, I think she always had good intentions. Then, we went back to preparing for Marsville, a huge activity involving big plastic bubbles and food rations and … I won’t even lie. I don’t remember why we did this.
Another time, we were being taken out of class every single day for about a week and a half to prepare for our mock trials, during which we were pitted against each other in a series of 3 different cases–one criminal, one civil, one family–and required to present pretty much all of the different aspects of a real trial. It pitted me against my best friend for a few weeks (we talk about it still,) but it also took us away from our studies. Our homeroom teacher pulled us out of class because he was worried about our grades slipping because of all the missed time. We were going to go play lawyer dress up, but we were all on the verge of bombing an important social studies test. Good intentions, though.
She probably had good intentions on a very cold day in November too, when all of the G/T students between the two middle schools in our district piled into a luxury bus. Akeelah and the Bee played on the little DVD screens above our seats, and we all travelled to Princeton University.
We weren’t going for a science fair or presentation. It wasn’t like we were visiting a planetarium or that one building that had a cannon ball go through it during the Revolutionary War.
We were on a college visit. We were 12.
The oohs and ahhs of the Ivy League were touted to this big group of children and their parents, myself included. We were given an official tour by a cool girl majoring in astrophysics. I was devastated to learn that Princeton didn’t have a law school (I was dead set on becoming a lawyer back then,) but I quickly fell in love with the idea of attending the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. This was in part because Mia graduates from this school in Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, but nevertheless, I was already ready to go to college. I bought a white Princeton University sweatshirt that I wore almost every day for a year and refused to let go of until I was filling out college applications my senior year of high school. It was filthy and ratty, but it was part of a dream I was having trouble reconciling that I was most likely never going to achieve.
I think that’s where this all starts to get jumbled up with me. I loved the time we spent out of class, and in the moment, mock trial was fun. That hoverboard ride down the hall was exhilarating. The hours we spent fashioning a tin foil boat that could hold 100 pennies were some of the most fun I had as a kid in school. I don’t know what it really taught me that didn’t make me feel worse about myself.
As much as we all loved it, what were we really doing other than having a little bit of fun just because we were “gifted?” We spent all this time thinking that we were better than everyone else, that we were on pace to be the best of the best until the end. Oh, cool, you’re playing science jeopardy? We’re getting ready to argue the case of a little boy and his divorced parents in front of 50 other 6th graders.
Where did that get me? I’m a media and communications major. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not going to be a physicist. I’m not going to look at fingerprints forever or dissect owl pellets or build tin foil boats. I didn’t get to sit in class and study with my friends.
I also gained this almost debilitating sense that my best was never going to be good enough. That I needed to spend every single day battling with any instinct I had to go off and have fun because not only did my grades need to be perfect to stay in G/T, but they needed to be perfect if I ever wanted to go to Princeton. I was 12 years old and already afraid that I wasn’t going to get into college.
I carry that with me every day. It’s the weight of expectations others set for me, sure, but that’s only the half of it considering the weight of the expectations I have clung to for myself. Instead of getting to high school and knowing how to study for my social studies tests (you know, the things that might’ve sent me to Princeton if I’d really tried,) I know the perfect design for a tinfoil boat or science experiment where you can grow grass to the sound of classical music. I know the exact amount of AP classes that a student is allowed to take at one time at my high school (and I know the number that gets you mocked by your other upper level classmates because they don’t think you’re doing enough.)
From a former gifted kid who worries every hour of every day that she didn’t amount to her potential and never will, I don’t know what else to say. Maybe those “gifted” kids can have all their fun, but don’t crush them. I’m begging. The stress, the sleepless nights? Yeah, thanks for the Princeton sweatshirt and the fun, but thanks for just about nothing else.
