My gifted experience led me to believe I was dumb, lazy, unmotivated, messy, unorganized, a most of all, a waste of potential. With therapy and support, I am now a burnt out, dumb, lazy, unmotivated, messy, unorganized, and most of all, waste of potential, kid who now owns a thriving business. In the beginning, I was a four-year-old girl, hyperlexic, the attitude of a small professor, and a wild imagination. I remember taking my Kindergarten screening, my first test, and reviewing the results on the xeroxed paper. I failed skipping and hopping? I thought I knew what that was. Do I have to fix this? Do I have to learn about skipping and hopping now? I bet if they just let me do it again, I would be able to show them that this was a mistake. My test performance anxiety was discovered and I was obviously uncoordinated. The signs were there. My desk was a disaster, my locker was the equivalent of a garbage receptacle. I still can’t hold a pen correctly, and I was a pleasure to have in class until I wasn’t. Academically, I was perfect. I could read prior to Kindergarten. My teachers were always impressed by my skills and I spent a good portion of my time in the early grades going into the older kids classrooms for extra math and reading. I was a star speller and remember feeling a sense of accomplishment every time I handed in a test first. I was in Math Olympiad and wrote a short story detailing the glorious misadventures of ‘Molly the Monkey’ in first grade for fun. Speaking of fun facts, I never studied. I don’t know how to study. Study skills were completely unnecessary. Like everything else in my life, it didn’t matter, until it did. Eventually, the novelty of having this smart little girl in class would wear off and the notes home would begin. The complaints about talking too much and interrupting students and teachers. Did you know that over six million Jews died in the Holocaust? I knew, because I made it a point to interrupt my entire fifth grade history lesson to drive that point home. Everyone needed to know. For the first time, I heard, “that’s enough” from my teacher, and it stopped me in my tracks. Not surprisingly, it would not be the last time. Something about fifth grade was a turning point for me. I’m going to tell you that it was the first time I got a grade that was less than a 90, but since we all know how human behavior works, it was likely more than that. In that moment, the world stood still and, at the age of 39, I can still see the 73 circled on the paper. It was the grade, it was the rejection from the teacher, it was 10-year-old girl friendships, or lack thereof. I didn’t fit in. I was odd, eccentric, and couldn’t understand why. I’m not doing my homework. Who cares about this assignment? I’m going to do fine on the test, so it doesn’t matter. Oh, I have a project due? I’ll just do it before class. I scored in the 98th percentile on the CTBS test so they put me on the honors track in junior high anyway. I was 12, with a “does any of this actually matter” attitude. Am I seriously trying to say that I was burned out at 12? Yes. I was. It was too much, and I couldn’t live up to it. What was the point of doing the extra work if I’m just going to get good grades anyway? I found out what the point was after multiple parent teacher conferences. The homework grades were pulling down my GPA. This was more an annoyance than anything and I still sailed through each year. I went away to college and thought, “ok this actually matters now”. The problem was, I never learned how to study. I remember staring at my textbooks thinking, ok this information has to get in there somehow. It didn’t work. While I did well, I definitely could have done better my first few semesters. I crashed. Hard. I developed debilitating existential OCD. I had to come home from school. When people talk about a “tragic gift” I feel it to my soul. It’s something you could never understand unless you’ve lived it.