19 People Are Revealing What Became Of The “Smart Kid” Once They Became Adults

18.

“That kid was me! Everything came easy in the beginning. I was reading far above my grade level, doing above-grade-level math. I was the quintessential ‘Smart Kid.’ Then, somewhere in mid-middle school, I hit the ceiling of my above-average intelligence. Once I got to where I had to actually ‘learn’ something, I was in trouble.”

“I began to struggle in math, or with anything that I had to memorize. I knew plenty of history, literature, and the parts of a human cell, but algebra might as well have been a foreign language (which I also struggled with), and I couldn’t memorize the periodic table to save myself. I had no idea how to study or learn new things that I couldn’t just read about in a textbook. I had such a hard time doing it. I didn’t enjoy school anymore and barely graduated high school, when I could still regurgitate facts from a textbook or news stories better than most people.

I got accepted to college due to my ACT scores alone, but because I already had a baby, I had to go to work. Thirty years of physical labor jobs later, and I am finally working at a job where I get to use my brain. I look back at my elementary school education, and I can remember years of teachers letting me go to the school library and get books to just come back to the class and read quietly. I believe this was them thinking they were helping me, but really, it was ignoring me in order to help the kids who were struggling. This was in a lower-class part of SLC, so there were a lot of struggling students. I don’t ever remember getting academically challenged during my early years. I wish there had been a teacher or two who wanted to give me more attention.”

—Anonymous, 54, Utah