The Curse Of The G&T Student

“One’s getting wasted and the other’s a waste” — The Offspring, “Keep ’Em Separated’

“Oh god, why the fuck is she in this class?”

“Stupid drug addict is a professor’s daughter, that’s the only reason she passes CS-202.”

“Fuckin’ waste.”

This was a conversation that was loudly spoken about me in the hallways of my university by two of my classmates. I’m pretty sure they wanted me to hear that.

Admittedly, by the time this “conversation” happened, I had a drug problem — a bad one. As in, my brain has permanent damage from that era and I have pretty bad facial blindness because of it.

My drug use was the one chemical hug no one gave me. I was just a wind-up toy to almost everyone in my life; do this, do that, okay fuck off. I’d cry for help and say I was lonely. People would tell me no one liked me unless I dress with X, did X, say Y…The commands never stopped.

Everyone around me cared more about what they wanted me to be rather than who I was and wanted to be. Even my clothes, the most harmless fucking rebellion I could have chosen, were picked apart and a cause of my own hell.

The moment people actually pretended to care about me, I’d run to them regardless of the distance and do whatever they told me. That’s how the trafficking happened. That’s when I got my first taste of drugs: a full vial of LSD, topped with god-knows-what.

After being trafficked in the DMV area, I ran off to the NYC rave scene and started doing ecstasy, benzos, and experimental chemicals that didn’t even have names back then about three times a week. If I could get my hands on it, I’d use every day.

Oddly enough, I stayed in school all that time despite everything. It wasn’t what I particularly wanted. People just wouldn’t get off my case and wouldn’t listen to me when I told them I hated computer science and abhorred programming.

I wanted to drop out and actually live my own life, and eventually, I did. I wanted to write, model, and dance. I ran away from my housing, my school, and everything just to let myself get the fuck away from people telling me what to do.

Today a lot of the people came around and apologized. I’m in a better place. I succeeded in my own right and am working on doing what I want to do. I’m even going to be attending classes at a college to sharpen my writing.

And yet, I am still a statistic of something that is so pervasive in our society.

While people would never have guessed it back then, I was placed in the Gifted & Talented program.

In fact, my high school was considered to be one of the elite high schools in New Jersey. You were only allowed to attend it if you passed a test, filled out an application, had straight A’s, had letters of recommendation, and got lucky.

The admittance rate for my high school was around 1 for every 6 applicants when I went. It’s now even more high-competition. You can’t even pay or bribe your way in. It’s a high school that was literally designed for the G&T overachievers.

Every single student there took classes at the local college by 15 or 16. Most spoke multiple languages fluently. One of my classmates was 12 years old when she started attending and another was doing Calc III at 13 or so.

I was the stupid one in most of my classes there. And boy, going to that high school made me realize something really ugly about the “Golden Children” of the school system.

A common trope about “gifted” students is that they burn out in pretty bad ways.

If you take a look at a lot of teen and stoner movies, you’ll see a trope about that one gifted genius who crumpled under pressure and became a loser. This is not just a trope. This is the very, very harsh reality for many former overachievers.

One of the most brilliant kids I knew, a girl by the name of Elsie*, killed herself in high school because she was depressed, bullied, and told to dance, dance, dance for good grades until she broke.

My ex Adam* was a computer genius who was so incredibly smart, he broke into the DoD, got raided by the CIA, and had his own hacker team when he was a young teenager. He struggled with a crippling drug addiction for years.

My other ex, Vanessa*, got her Ph.D. when she was 21 and specialized in Heideggerian philosophy. She ran away from home, became a sex worker as a teenager to stay away from her parents, and spent much of her time totally piss drunk throughout her twenties.

Another former friend of mine, Vito*, was a G&T for acting. He is 35, still lives with his mother, and has not even been able to form normal friendships with people since college. Come to think of it, I think he may have recently died from an overdose.

Then, there’s my quasicousin who I’ve written about before. An Ivy grad who turned Q-Anon. Then, there are the countless college dropouts I know who would have easily gotten Valedictorian if they weren’t so burnt out.

The list goes on and on and on…Each story more tragic than the last.

Let’s say that we don’t take a look at extreme examples like my friends and me. Studies show that people in high-performance, hard admissions colleges are far more likely to develop anxiety, depression, and OCD than a typical person.

This is the Curse of the G&T Student.

People often look at people at us, shake their heads, cluck their tongues, and say, “What a waste of potential. How could such a talented kid just become such a loss?”

They don’t ask the question they should ask. I never really hear anyone ask, “What makes such a talented kid collapse into themselves before they reach adulthood?”

Most of the people I know who fell to the Curse had very similar backgrounds to me:

• They came from high-control environments where affection and support were conditional on them looking good. Almost without fail, people treated them like dolls. When they acted like people, people broke them like dolls and called them ‘defective.’
• They were often barred from having fun or acting like kids. Almost all of my friends who fell to the Curse were barred from partying as kids. The moment they got to party, they went apeshit and went berserk.
• In extreme cases, parents actively sabotaged their ability to make friends or have romantic relationships. Sometimes this was done by giving them bad clothes that made kids hate them on purpose, other times parents would tell them lies about the kids…It was bad.
• Almost categorically, the children in question were not encouraged to pursue their passions. A lot of parents I know refused to pay for school if they didn’t go to School A or choose Major B. Or, on the more benevolent side of things, parents may have wrongfully assumed they knew the kid’s dreams more than the kid did and the kid didn’t have the heart to tell them that they didn’t want to pursue it.
• The icing on the cake is that parents often either unknowingly neglected or patently ignored their child’s emotional needs. I can’t name how many parents of super-talented kids I saw not bat an eye when their kids’ demeanor changed or thought a therapist would “fix” them when the real problem was they were screaming in the kid’s face.

Unsurprisingly, most kids who fell to the curse are low-contact or no-contact with their parents. (That is, assuming they’re still alive.) Their parents seem to be baffled by this.

A talented child is not a toy, but a person.

Among the parents who buy into the G&T world, there’s this pervasive belief that your children reflect you. That’s a very toxic mindset for a number of reasons.

First off, your child is their own person with their own hopes and dreams. What they want for themselves most likely will not be what you want for them. In fact, it’s almost a guarantee that they won’t be your mini-me forever.

Second, some of the most amazing human beings I’ve met had some of the worst kids I’ve ever seen. This is not their fault and Lord knows they’ve tried everything to make them become better people.

Human beings are unique because they are true wild cards. If you have a gifted kid, it’s okay to encourage them to have fun, explore their passions, and chase after their goals. It’s the easiest way to break the G&T Curse.