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[Ted Belmont]

I was in the gifted program for two years, then the school cancelled it for lack of funding. I was in Scholar Bowl until my senior year, though.

[Mongrel]

... Do I even need to post in this thread? *waves cane*

Most of my memories of childhood are not things I want to remember, really.

Let's just say that a decade of gifted classes and sky-high IQ scores (such bullshit) doesn't necessarily mean you'll do anything productive or useful for yourself or society. I learned way more by getting the hell away from home and getting the hell out of the educational system then I ever did in school or at home... only it was too late and I was already years behind everyone else. Not academically, just in that undefinable way that means that I could have spent the time from when I was 15 to when I was 25 in a coma and probably have been better for the experience.

As an added kick in the teeth, the gifted classes I was in, you know, most of the people I went to school with for years really did grow up to be worth their potential. At 30, they are executives, community activists (the good kind), doctors of international stature, world travellers and other fascinating and exciting things that blow anything and everything I've ever done out of the water. They are golden. I will see them all at a funeral next Thursday, I'm sure it will be fun.

I liked Guild, because I've always been most comfortable going against the grain. If everyone around me is happy, I will look for the bad things that might happen. If everyone around me is unhappy, I try to find reasons for everyone to be cheerful. I've tried to put this to good use, but it just isolates me further.

Actually, it would be very descriptive to say that I've pretty much spent my whole life on the outside, looking in. Still true today.

[Transportation]

We called it TRACK. It was a bit laughable as some of the most intelligent people in that class year did not get along with the more self-absorbed people in it and thus didn't join.

During my stay (a few years) we did such exciting things as:

• Make one of those egg crash cushions. This was more boring than it sounds.
• Design the architecture of a house. I was praised for my magnificent foresight of putting the stairs by the front door.

It was a genuine waste of time and the later "Advanced" Placement courses were more useful, which says a lot.

In my case GATE classes weren't social suicide so much as just more homework. Didn't realize that for a while though, when a friend of mine who wasn't in GATE confessed her history syllabus charted her class studying China... and that was it. Our class was doing China, Russia, most of Europe, and then swinging around to South America if we could. I got pretty pissed.

...you studied China? We were lucky to get through U.S. history. To be more specific the program was State* level-> National level-> "World" level (by which they basically mean U.S. history + World Wars). Also, that last one was taught by a basketball coach.

By the end, I was in a high school based around doing projects where I just did whatever I wanted. One of my projects was literally writing a thesis on Lewis Carroll, and another was simply reading a pile of books and telling my teacher what I thought (verbally). We had to get internships, and that's how I became the assistant internet director of a major gubernatorial campaign (which failed) at the age of 16. After that, I didn't get another internship. Who cared. I graduated with a 4.0, valedictorian, and my speech was about how the school was bullshit even though it was trying so hard not to be. Colleges loved me when I applied, but LIFE HAD OTHER PLANS

...where the hell did you go to school? Was it private or something?

*Hooboy did I like learning about the Northwest Territory!

[yyler]

It was a public charter that is nationwide if your nation is Amurica, usually called The Met [city name]. Started in Rhode Island, if I remember right. Um there is more about it here and linking that makes me feel like a spammer

You reminded me about sixth grade, though. Most of that was spent at an army base learning about aeronautics. We did the egg cushion, but we also had to design the rocket (or slingshot) and the cushion and the carrier and so many things. We also had to design and build rockets from basically scratch. The fuel and fuselage and everything was left up to us to design and choose.

Another thing we did was play Clue later in the year, only we actually had to test things with iodine and I don't remember any of it but there was a lot of chemistry and logic puzzling.

[Friday]

We wrote our own CYOAs. No, I'm not kidding. The teacher gave me, and I quote:

"A+++, this is the best I've ever seen."

It was a science fiction. 

Oh also at one time the guys made a list of all the girls in the class and rated them on a scale from 1-10, in multiple categories including looks, personality, parents (?) voice, etc

The teacher got ahold of it somehow and my god was she pissed. I remember she made the boys stand up in front of the class and they were expelled after they tearfully apologized

fucking, I remember she went around the entire class one by one and without fail every single kid ended up crying because it had morphed into some kind of weird therapy session

I remember being the only person in the entire class who did not end up crying. I was so bemused by what was going on all around me. It was like some sort of surreal alternate dimension.

[Norondor]

We wrote our own CYOAs. No, I'm not kidding. The teacher gave me, and I quote:

"A+++, this is the best I've ever seen."

It was a science fiction. 

Amazing

[sei]

the guys made a list of all the girls in the class and rated them on a scale from 1-10
...
they were expelled

What?

[Rosencrantz]

Maybe I should have waited for this thread to exist before posting this.

[Friday]

the guys made a list of all the girls in the class and rated them on a scale from 1-10
...
they were expelled

What?

It was revoked. Like I said, the teacher was really, really pissed off. Probably because she went through similar shit from the boys when she was a kid, and now she was in a position to get revenge. I don't know how she got them expelled, but she did.

Anyway, like I said, it didn't stick, and about a week later everyone went back to pretending the entire incident had never occurred, even going so far as to shush me whenever I would bring it up.

[Büge]

...Well, how did you rate?

[Friday]

I don't know. I never knew about the list until the day the teacher brought it up in class, and I never saw it.

[Detonator]

I don't know. I never knew about the list until the day the teacher brought it up in class, and I never saw it.

Maybe that's why you didn't cry.

[Friday]

Perhaps, but even the boys who had nothing to do with it cried when their turn came to talk. Like I said, it turned into this really weird group therapy thing that had little to do with the list.

[Büge]

Admit it, Friday. You were lower-case b in school.

[Thad]

School:

Did pretty all right socially on up through second grade.

Then Mom went a little nuts and dragged us up to Hicksville despite my protestations.  I got dropped in with a bunch of kids who'd already formed cliques and weren't exactly friendly toward people who were different.  My response was generally to be caustic and insulting, which made me feel better but obviously didn't do much to improve my popularity.  As far as that, I probably wasn't a hell of a lot different from Guild.

I skipped seventh grade and as such found myself largely surrounded by new people; that worked out pretty well and I had a much better time that year than I'd had the previous few.  But I don't think that was ENTIRELY due to the change of scenery; I had a theater class with people who'd been nasty to me in years past and they were much nicer to me then.  I think part of it was people getting older and more mature, part was that theater's more my natural element and I just fit in better there, and part was the old "girls are mean to you if they have a crush on you" adage.  (One of the girls who was especially mean to me in grade school actually looked me up on MySpace a couple years back and invited me out for sushi to apologize and to catch up.  And she grew up HOT.  Pity she moved to California right after that.)

I moved back down to Tempe for high school and met a new crowd of people and I never really had much trouble fitting in socially.  I wasn't exactly one of the popular kids, but people generally liked me.  College was much the same, at least in broad strokes.

As regards GATE: I was in a gifted program in grade school but wasn't really popular even among that group.

The main thing I've been remembering about that group is that the teacher loaned me a copy of Maus when I was 11 -- it pretty much changed my life.  I've been rereading it and considering dropping him a line.

...a Google search for his name indicates that he wrote a freaking awesome piece on school choice for Newsweek about 18 months prior to loaning me the book.  Okay, now I HAVE to find the dude.

[Mongrel]

I don't think anyone's ever looked me up to apologise for past behaviour.

What a hilariously novel idea.

[Fortinbras]

I also got hauled to an ass town in the far north for two years when I was a kid.  Quick diversion from my Springsteen upbringing to something a bit more Faulkner.  Population of 100something, I think there was a rocking chair on the "Now Entering Town" sign.  When we returned to semicivilization I was just disinterested in making friends for a while and by the time I shook it to some degree I was that loner kid.  It didn't follow me to high school, but generally the only friends I made in high school (I had others outside of it) were people-you-do-drugs-with type friends.

Was never in gifted but they tested me a few times.  Was always too nervous to pay attention to the testing or just about anything else in elementary school.  I think I fit a lifetime of nervousness, awkwardness and antisocial behavior into my first sixteen years and shook it from my system after that.

[Fredward]

I had no friends in elementary school up until about Grade 7, mostly because I was an arrogant little piece of shit who hated everyone because they did not love everything I said. Then I figured out that being nice was actually worthwhile, and it's been uphill ever since.

[Kashan]

My grade school separated the GATE kids completely from the rest of the kids. I don't know whether other school did this, but I didn't really know anybody outside of the gate program. I was sort of an outcast even within the gate program, but I think that was because I was weird and also way smarter than the other kids in the program, and not due to any particular viciousness. I ended up going to a magnet school for middle school and most of high school. I was still pretty weird, but there were kids there who were as smart or smarter than me and willing to tolerate my weirdness. I tried a lot to be funny, and I really really wasn't. I'd also do/say completely random things to see how people would react. In hindsight I realize that I didn't understand human interaction at all and was trying to figure it out, at the time I wasn't really introspective enough to figure it out. I did develop some really close friends through the sci-fi/fantasy club at school, many of which I'm still in regular contact with. I had low grades throughout high school and during my junior year I finally got kicked out of the school over an F in piano II and I decided to go to the self-paced alternative school rather than my home school. It was a weird school. It was mostly pregnant girls or boys who had gotten kicked out of their home school over fights, but for some reason I fit in fine there.

I here people talk about not caring what people think about them, or how social interaction is all fake, pretty often from smart people who don't understand how to talk to people. I absolutely care what people think about me, and I always have. What people think about me affects a major portion of my life experiences. Social skills, in my experience, aren't about just saying what's expected, but rather about saying what will make the other person do/feel the way you want them to.

[Brentai]

I'm not sure if it goes for all of us but a lot of us have more trouble getting ourselves to like other people than we have getting other people to like us.

I am extremely efficient at getting people to stop wanting to talk to me, which I am fully aware is a lot like being really good at snapping your own bones.