I’m born and raised in rural northern Nevada population 4000ish. I barely graduated high school and went straight into a manual labor job. I feel like I’m a goddamn Nostradamus or Albert Einstein here sometime.

That’s what we call an average fish suffocating in a puddle

Yea... This was the basis for my first existential crisis in my life... All through small town public school I was basically the smartest kid in the room (sometimes smartest person - we had some really bad teachers). Thought I was god's gift of intelligence to humanity. Went out of town to a really good engineering school and holy shit I was immediately humbled. I was clawing my way to try to reach "average" and couldn't quite reach.

Big fish in a small pond.

Guessing I'm not the only one in here that had a similar pathway with video games. Maybe games in general, as chess was similar.

In my defense, Ft worth was a big town

Oh God.

But they were all dipshits.

You know, this actually explains a lot. Like how I never realized this before.

A bad teacher can stunt you. I always wanted to make video games, but my high school programming teacher's style didn't mesh. Even though I enjoyed the class, he suggested I drop it because he thought I wasn’t a good fit for the field, I reluctantly agreed. Twenty years later, I’ve completed most of the programming for a game I plan to release one day, though I can still picture him tapping the chalkboard every time I asked a question like that was supposed to help...

You’re unique, just like everyone else.

Isn't this basically the premise of Idiocracy?

For me, it was realizing that while I was smart, the shit level of schooling was more an impediment to me gaining the skills needed to continue excelling and I continue to be surrounded by absolute dipshits wherever I go.

In school, I didn't have to study to pass and there was no real incentive to learn how to. This bit me when it came to university because the lectures didn't cover everything that was to be tested on. Turns out, trying is a skill I never needed until then.

Then, in the workforce, I'm constantly exhausted dealing with people who are at best functionally literate and I have to cater to their understanding of literally everything. No desire to either understand the problem or fix the root cause, just make the thing do what they want right then.

The difference between most GT and Standard classes lies in your ability and willingness to put in extra work.

Half the kids in the standard classes just want to skate along as easily as possible. Why stress and work hard when you get the same exact outcome in the end? It's not like they want to go on to college, so why work hard now?

It's not that different in the workforce in many places.

An IQ of 100 is ment to be directly in the middle, so roughly 50% of the population is below that. An IQ of 100 isn't that bright, so think about the incredible masses of dumb people.

So, yeah. It's not impossible that you were the one-eyed among the blind.

You were gifted with a monkeys paw smarter than most people but not smart enough to do anything great so you got stuck around the people you were smarter than to watch them struggle at the self checkout

Everywhere is filled with absolute dipshits. Frankly the bar for "gifted" should not be looked at a praise-worthy state of those deemed such, but rather as a scathing rebuke of the general idiocy rampant across humanity.

I am realizing I were only good at tests.. So sad that I am one of the dumbest and just managed to fool some people with grades. But that does not help with real life.

You know I heard a quote one time that said if you're the smartest person in the room you're in the wrong room. But at the same time my parents always told me whatever I did I needed to be the best at it. Like they put me in tutoring because my math skills were only one year ahead. My family is all engineers, computer scientists etc. Everybody's a bachelor's or above except my one sister who's specifically disabled.

When I decided on nursing school I was like OK I'm just going to aim for something achievable for me. The content should be right at my level, at least I'll be able to excel at that like they're expecting. And the coursework itself was super easy. I had all the chem physics and bio I needed for the conceptual groundwork. I had all the Greek and Latin roots I needed for the terminology. Even the math was actually right on my level (basic algebra, ratio and proportion, PEMDAS equations), I just needed to up my accuracy when I had previously optimized for speed. And even now my computer skills alone are basically unmatched among clinical professionals. I had to call IT for something they needed to remote into the workstation for and they were shocked that I just gave them the IP address.

But my instructors and preceptors absolutely humbled me in people skills and emotional resiliency. I actually flunked out the first time for being too emotionally immature. They made me cry on the regular and I just couldn't get a grip on what they wanted from me interaction wise. It was actually my first shitty job at a psych hospital + going through therapy simultaneously that fixed me. It's wild to say but I feel like the literally criminally insane men I was working with taught me better people skills than my parents did. I learned so much about respect and what it really meant to uphold a promise through adversity and how to keep my stupid mouth shut.

So. I thought I was aiming low, and I still wound up being the dumbest person in the room. Did get the degree though; it's been 6 years now.

“You are reading at college level.”

Translation: “You are baseline literate.”

Small town woes, lol.

I think maybe substitute the word planet for towns.

Gifted And Talented was just segregation with extra steps.

You could buy your way in. You could be placed in the group by referral, without any testing. We had a developmentally disabled kid in our GT class, because his parents were rich and GT offered your kid far more resources than the standard school program.

The lowest common denominator of GT programs wasn't IQ or GPA or number of spelling bee wins, but address and family income.

Growing up in a town can be rough if you're considered smart, and I've seen plenty posing as a lot dumber than they really are just so they fit in. The people that will not dumb themselves down tend to stand out more because of this.