From "genius" to "normal", what happened to me?

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It's just genetics and conditioning.

You have potential to gain everything back or push even further. Question isn't can you do it, rather, will you do it?
 
Let me guess: People told you you were really smart. Knowing that, you felt like you had a lot to live up to. At some point, after you couldn't get A's without some amount of work you developed a fear of failure and learned that if you didn't really "try" you could somehow avoid failure. So you slacked off.
 
damn this thread hits me hard; I was basically like you, only I lost my edge pretty much at 19 and fucking miss it
 
To be completely honest just sounds like you developed a little earlier than your peers then leveled off... that's pretty common.
 
I knew algebra before I entered kindergarten. I never thought at any point in my life that I was a "genius". If you want to learn, then learn. It seems your brain is just out of shape. Exercise it, not by using brain games, but by taking up interests and learning about them.
 
bitocoder said:
I knew algebra before I entered kindergarten. I never thought at any point in my life that I was a "genius". If you want to learn, then learn. It seems your brain is just out of shape. Exercise it, not by using brain games, but by taking up interests and learning about them.
Click to expand...

this guy gets it
 
bitocoder said:
I knew algebra before I entered kindergarten. I never thought at any point in my life that I was a "genius". If you want to learn, then learn. It seems your brain is just out of shape. Exercise it, not by using brain games, but by taking up interests and learning about them.
Click to expand...

gawt dayum @ algebra before kindergarten
 
FuuRe said:
This is my very first thread on GAF, be wary of my non native english and poor choice of correct words to express myself.

During my first years of life i was kinda advanced in terms of learning phases, i learned to read (and fluently) when i was three and before turning 4 i learned to write, i even read a speech for my kindergarten graduation and knew a lot of english words, terms and phrases (Thanks ATARI Basic).

My free time was mostly reading and learning, i didn't like very much to go outside and ride bikes like everyone else, i was happy with my Atari, books, and CNN (Yeah, the news network). I don't think i was autistic since i could spend the entire day playing with my cousins or close friends and i was really in sync with the kids trends of the time like TMNT,nintendo, pizza and whatever else.

I was rejected from several schools after kindergarden because i was deemed "too advanced" and counselors suggested my parents i would be better in a special school for advanced kids.

My mother wanted me to have a normal life, yeah, the one with debts and beer and wrong choices, and i don't hate her for that decision. After i entered a "normal" school i had the highest grades of my class for four straight years.

Then it started

I started to lose interest in studying, for three years i managed to be at least top 3 of my class without making a lot of effort to achieve it but i knew i wasn't who i was before.

Then it really happened

I was 12, and i remember shutting down studies completely, i still was smart, but girls and videogames were a lot more interesting to me, i lost all my abilities to absorb knowledge easily and became a "normal" kid, a normal fat kid bad at sports without any major or minor goal to fulfill.

And it has been like that to this day, graduated from HS with average grades, couldn't get into the top tier colleges in my country, dropped college, became a father (2 more weeks for my second baby girl) and here i am trying to regain my life. And in one of my recurrent "what if" sessions it came to me that maybe there's something wrong inside me, something that made me lose a big part of who i was and wanted to be.

And maybe that "something" can be fixed with... i dunno, sports, medicines...

What happened to me? Hopefully someone can guide or enlighten me.
Click to expand...

The idea of a genius is a myth. A person is recognized as a "genius" in two ways: their creative ability and/or their abiltiy to recognize and apply patterns. The image of the genius who barely puts forth effort and understands everything with ease is not accurate. Pretty much all the popular geniuses in history were the result of pure perspiration. In other words, they spent the majority of their time sharpening their minds by working on problems ALL DAY LONG.

The mind is like a sword and if you don't use it, it will become dull. It doesn't matter how smart you percieve yourself to be or people percieve you to be. The brain is also like a muscle. If you don't exercise those brain muscles, how will your mind grow stronger? Look at pro sports players. They are the best in the world and they still practice. The skills are always their but they need to sharpen them to play at a high level.

Here is what you do:

1. Take as many brain supplements as you can such as fish oi l(fish oil rocks)
2. Engage in creative problem solving as much as possible. Constantly use your imagination and reasoning ability to find new ways of solving problems and identifying new ones to solve. Creative problem solving teaches you how to think instead of what to think. It encourages productive thinking and teaches you how to solve problems by creating ideas from scratch. Your constantly forcing your brain to think differently. This will certainly exercise your brain a great deal. I would start by reading or watching stuff that interests you and try and use your imagination and reasoning ability to indentify problems to solve and constantly finding new ways of solving the same problem.
3. Sleep

You didn't go from "genius" to "normal." You got rusty. Think about it. You used to spend your free time reading and learning. You were spending a good deal of your time sharpening your mind. Then you stopped and your mind got out of shape. Now you just need to get your mind back in shape.
 
FuuRe said:
This is my very first thread on GAF, be wary of my non native english and poor choice of correct words to express myself.

During my first years of life i was kinda advanced in terms of learning phases, i learned to read (and fluently) when i was three and before turning 4 i learned to write, i even read a speech for my kindergarten graduation and knew a lot of english words, terms and phrases (Thanks ATARI Basic).

My free time was mostly reading and learning, i didn't like very much to go outside and ride bikes like everyone else, i was happy with my Atari, books, and CNN (Yeah, the news network). I don't think i was autistic since i could spend the entire day playing with my cousins or close friends and i was really in sync with the kids trends of the time like TMNT,nintendo, pizza and whatever else.

I was rejected from several schools after kindergarden because i was deemed "too advanced" and counselors suggested my parents i would be better in a special school for advanced kids.

My mother wanted me to have a normal life, yeah, the one with debts and beer and wrong choices, and i don't hate her for that decision. After i entered a "normal" school i had the highest grades of my class for four straight years.

Then it started

I started to lose interest in studying, for three years i managed to be at least top 3 of my class without making a lot of effort to achieve it but i knew i wasn't who i was before.

Then it really happened

I was 12, and i remember shutting down studies completely, i still was smart, but girls and videogames were a lot more interesting to me, i lost all my abilities to absorb knowledge easily and became a "normal" kid, a normal fat kid bad at sports without any major or minor goal to fulfill.

And it has been like that to this day, graduated from HS with average grades, couldn't get into the top tier colleges in my country, dropped college, became a father (2 more weeks for my second baby girl) and here i am trying to regain my life. And in one of my recurrent "what if" sessions it came to me that maybe there's something wrong inside me, something that made me lose a big part of who i was and wanted to be.

And maybe that "something" can be fixed with... i dunno, sports, medicines...

What happened to me? Hopefully someone can guide or enlighten me.
Click to expand...



yep happened to me as well.

i knew how to write at 2. went to nursery at 3, can count by then, can read the clock by the minute.

advanced one level, i was 5 at 1st grade, i was top in class until the 5th grade, dropped to 4th during my 6th grade. entered junior high at age 11.

that was about it. been mediocre ever since then, although i got into a really good university in my country at age 15 - 7k kids got in and 100k+ applied.

moved to another country, started a new life as an immigrant.

got an econ major/math minor but finished it in 5 years.

now i work a temp contract job because i have no experience.

i am an optimist, though. the moment i give up is the moment it'll be over. so never say never. :)
 
OP sounds like you want a magic pill that will fix all your problems. You are looking for an easy way to blame it on something. You are even looking at autism as a cause? Even being normal doesn't mean you can't finish college and or get in a good career. There was probably more going on during High School to college that you didn't talked about. What exactly do you want now? Make more money? Land a good job?
 
Geniuses themselves don't talk about the gift of genius, they just talk about hard work and long hours.

Nothing is free or gifted, nothing
 
The way I see it, raw intelligence isn't worth a whole lot. It's certainly not a replacement for a poor work ethic (aka drive); it doesn't matter how smart you are if you fail to apply yourself to a given problem by choosing to give up instead.

From my experience, at least when it comes to students, the average person confuses intelligence with drive. I've never considered myself to be particularly smart, but people looked at all the A's I was getting in middle and high school and thought otherwise. But I didn't get those grades because I was smart, I studied for hours every day to make up for where I fell short. I wanted to succeed, to get the highest grades, and to be the best I could be, and I put that before pretty much everything else in my life.

You say this:

FuuRe said:
I started to lose interest in studying, for three years i managed to be at least top 3 of my class without making a lot of effort to achieve it but i knew i wasn't who i was before

Then it really happened

I was 12, and i remember shutting down studies completely, i still was smart, but girls and videogames were a lot more interesting to me, i lost all my abilities to absorb knowledge easily and became a "normal" kid.
Click to expand...

It sounds to me like you found things that you had a passion for, or at the very least, something you preferred to your studies. Here’s my take on it: up until this point, you hadn’t really been challenged by your studies, in part due to being ‘too advanced’ for the time. The problem with this is that without regular mental stimulation from challenges, anybody will grow bored. Boredom leads to laziness and laziness leads to poor performance, which resulted in your grades getting worse and why you went from "genius" to "normal". Furthermore, once you get into the rut of "Why bother trying when I'm so bad at [whatever]?" it can be hard to climb out of and this contributes to your feeling of "I lost all my abilities to absorb knowledge easily".

If you're looking for a fix, I suggest you try finding something you have a passion for and learn more about it. Don’t be afraid to look beyond the things you are already familiar with. Once you’ve found something you love, learn more about it and apply the things you’ve learned. Find a group of people who share your passion and discuss it with them. Once you’ve mastered it, try demonstrating it to someone else. And the key is, as I said earlier, always challenge yourself. Otherwise, you might just become bored, lazy, and "normal".

One last quip that is totally unrelated to the above; your English is fine.
 
easy things are easy to do and hard things are hard to do.

everyone wants to talk about how in control they felt when they were doing easy shit; well, it's because it wasn't challenging.

When your university grades start slipping, you're doing yourself no favors by sitting around pondering "but I never used to study in high school!"

Next step people usually convince themselves about something involving B vitamins.
 
Thing is, you were probably never a genius to begin with, so you can start by lowering your expectations by accepting that you are just a regular, normal dude.
 
I was kind of the same.... not genius by any stretch of the imagination, but was certainly at the top of my classes when I was younger and destined for top grades.

Then was I was about 13, I just lost interest. Grades started to fall, finished school with average grades, went to college, but dropped out after a year.

Looking back I find it really frustrating....
 
I graduated highschool a year early. Took all "honors" classes. College still kicked my ass.

If you're above average the world rushes to tell you you're special. They forget to mention there are millions of other people who make you look like a neanderthal.
 
Wow. This exact scenario is pretty much my story. Only difference is I moved out of the state but I was starting to become really disinterested in school before that. I had the opportunity for gifted programs as a child but my mother wanted me to live a "normal" life too. Bleh.

Now I'm 24 and still finishing up my bachelors and dealing with debt.
 
Through elementary school I was 1-2 grades above my level in math and reading, and they had me attend upper grade math and English periods. I did okay but I hated it, I was out of place on so many levels. By the time I got to middle school I told my parents and the school that I didn't want to go above my grade, they didn't make me, and I was much happier for it. There is a lot to be said about doing the normal coursework, school is about socialization as much as it is about education.
 
I got far dumber after leaving school.

Was very bright once upon a time. Was in accelerated English all through high school, got into the most exclusive High School in Melbourne in year 8 via an entrance exam that they only allow in a tiny percentage of entrants per school that enters.

Went to uni to be a computer programmer. Didn't pan out because I kept failing Discrete Mathematics (but passed the first 2 years of C++) so I quit.

Long story short, I"m now a shit kicking public servant.

Fuck my life.
 
I'm the same as you OP. The problem is, being smart won't help you much if you're not willing to study. I never had to study because i would understand everything in school, and then High School came a long and i wasn't prepared for it. Classes were more difficult and the teachers didn't have time to explain everything, so the majority of the work had to be done at home. But i had no idea how to study properly, staring at a book for more than 5 minutes was really bizarre to me. So i began failing my classes, i had to drop my favorite subject (Physics) because i was failing miserably. I would love to blame ADD or depression (they did play some role into this) but the reality is, i was a lazy fuck and wasn't able to discipline myself to put in the work needed.
 
I could do algebra before kindergarten and was seriously studying philosophy and quantum mechanics in the forth grade but that didn't stop me from making the idiotic decision to drop out of high school (no matter how many reasons I had at the time). I'm only making up for it now, almost finished my bachelors in physics! No time to regret, just gotta move forward and keep bettering myself one step at a time.
 
It's not just about being academically smart especially as you grow older and are exposed to issues/subjects that are far deeper than they would seem on the surface. Being able to think critically and approach these subject matters with an inquisitive attitude and being able to view issues from a variety of perspectives is what matters more than just raw intelligence, IMO. Analytical skills are far harder to develop and is not something that the average education professional can impart.
 
I used to be the "dream kid" at my school, excelling at everything till I was about 10-12. Then I got a bunch of friends that showed me what fun life in the streets was, and I quickly lost concentration and the will to study. I even skipped a couple of classes, that's a rarity for someone so young :P.

I have no problem with that though - I am who I am and the road is going only forward anyway.
 
Those people who say you need to have passion, determination, perseverance, all those things that put you ahead of the crowd and find you success. They're right, no matter how cheesy it sounds. You can be super talented, or incredibly smart, but it's all for nothing if it's not being applied through hard work.
 
I like cats for that sort of thing. They are calm and relaxing. I lost my job and then by some strange compulsion had to get a cat.

You should get a cat. They will teach you what it means to care for someone.

They'll say, "stay focused! You'll get it! Good human! Now you know what it means to serve."

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I got two cats and a new job! So...good luck man!

All hail the Cat Overlords! Agu?
 
Agnostic said:
You were a big fish in a small pond. Now you're in the ocean with the sharks.
Click to expand...
I'm going with this. I was far brighter than the average kid at my junior school so I had an inflated sense of my own abilities until later life put me in my place.

My 'slide' happened at the same time I discovered girls and trouble, but that was just coincidence.
 
The most productive/successful people I've met in my life were quite intelligent, but it's their passion that drives them to work so hard.
 
YeY75qG.jpg
 
backslashbunny said:
It's possible you have ADD.

It's also possible you just developed a little earlier than your peers, but now they've all caught up.

I wouldn't be so quick to blame something "going wrong," though.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's ADD or ADD is just a simple "mental illness". ADD (a legitimate symptom, very often with the cause unknown) is caused by some chemical imbalance, and most of the time, it is hormonal. OP, since you mentioned this started around when you would begin puberty and that you got fat, consider doing a hormone panel. Ask your GP about this.
 
Mysterious said:
I don't think it's ADD or ADD is just a simple "mental illness". ADD (a legitimate symptom, very often with the cause unknown) is caused by some chemical imbalance, and most of the time, it is hormonal. OP, since you mentioned this started around when you would begin puberty and that you got fat, consider doing a hormone panel. Ask your GP about this.
Click to expand...

Thank you and everyone for your kind answers, i got a psychological and gp appointment on schedule.

I know there's a big possibility that things won't change at all and i'm perfectly normal, but thanks to everyone since i will get checked and if it isn't treatable i will get help from groups or motivators in order to get my shit together

And please do not focus on "OP thinks he was a genius lol", i chose poorly the thread title, i was more advanced than my peers and that's it.
 
I'm pretty similar. High IQ, way in front of most kids from the beginning of school, gifted programmes, got into a selective secondary school, then I hit my teenage years and stopped giving a shit and coasted. I still ended up doing well but didn't do as spectacularly as I could have done had I actually worked. My work ethic is pretty bad even today.
 
FuuRe said:
Thank you and everyone for your kind answers, i got a psychological and gp appointment on schedule.

I know there's a big possibility that things won't change at all and i'm perfectly normal, but thanks to everyone since i will get checked and if it isn't treatable i will get help from groups or motivators in order to get my shit together

And please do not focus on "OP thinks he was a genius lol", i chose poorly the thread title, i was more advanced than my peers and that's it.
Click to expand...

If specific hormones are not balanced (ex: relatively low testosterone compared to estrogen, even though testosterone by itself may be perfectly normal) can cause "mental fatigue", foggy thoughts and an incredible difficult time staying concentrated (ADD symptoms). Therapy can help solve the problems in the interim, but seeing a GP and getting recommended to an endocrinologist can solve these issues long-term. If it's hormonal, it is absolutely fixable.

If it's not, then I would recommend continuing to work with your doctor to find the root cause. I don't think it's a mental illness since ADHD/etc symptoms are noticeable from a very early age, and this clearly is not the case with you.
 
I was pretty much the same. Being smart allowed me to spend more time doing fun things instead of studying. So I kept studying less and less. I got lazy and I still am.
I always had above average grades even with minimal effort and that kind of became my life motto. Achieve as much as possible with the least amount of effort. It's working great so far.
 
KeRaSh said:
I was pretty much the same. Being smart allowed me to spend more time doing fun things instead of studying. So I kept studying less and less. I got lazy and I still am.
I always had above average grades even with minimal effort and that kind of became my life motto. Achieve as much as possible with the least amount of effort. It's working great so far.
Click to expand...

My man.
 
Evil_Silver said:
The idea of a genius is a myth. A person is recognized as a "genius" in two ways: their creative ability and/or their abiltiy to recognize and apply patterns. The image of the genius who barely puts forth effort and understands everything with ease is not accurate. Pretty much all the popular geniuses in history were the result of pure perspiration. In other words, they spent the majority of their time sharpening their minds by working on problems ALL DAY LONG.

The mind is like a sword and if you don't use it, it will become dull. It doesn't matter how smart you percieve yourself to be or people percieve you to be. The brain is also like a muscle. If you don't exercise those brain muscles, how will your mind grow stronger? Look at pro sports players. They are the best in the world and they still practice. The skills are always their but they need to sharpen them to play at a high level.

Here is what you do:

1. Take as many brain supplements as you can such as fish oi l(fish oil rocks)
2. Engage in creative problem solving as much as possible. Constantly use your imagination and reasoning ability to find new ways of solving problems and identifying new ones to solve. Creative problem solving teaches you how to think instead of what to think. It encourages productive thinking and teaches you how to solve problems by creating ideas from scratch. Your constantly forcing your brain to think differently. This will certainly exercise your brain a great deal. I would start by reading or watching stuff that interests you and try and use your imagination and reasoning ability to indentify problems to solve and constantly finding new ways of solving the same problem.
3. Sleep

You didn't go from "genius" to "normal." You got rusty. Think about it. You used to spend your free time reading and learning. You were spending a good deal of your time sharpening your mind. Then you stopped and your mind got out of shape. Now you just need to get your mind back in shape.
Click to expand...

I want to second this. I thought intelligence was completely innate, and i realized later in life this was not the case.

I remember teachers sort of skewing my perspective. I had a similar experience to the OP where i did well early, but not so great later. I barely passed high school, i didn't even know if i was going to get to graduate until like a day or two before graduation. All my relatives were already in town to see me graduate, so it was kinda stressful.

I remember in 5th grade specifically, one of my teachers drew this illustration on the board. He drew two coffee cups, one large, and one small. He said the small cup was most people, and the big cup was smart people. He said there are a lot of smart people that don't fill up their cup, but that normal people can fill their small cup completely and do better than the smart people. This is totally wrong as it implies there is some ceiling of intelligence people have, and that there is eventually some wall where you will no longer have the brains to solve the next problem.

In reality, smart people work very hard. They don't expect to be good at things, they learn to be good. With the right mental tool set and training you can learn to pick up just about anything and do something with it.
 
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