I just wanted to highlight something. I've never considered myself special, like yeah I was in the gifted program or whatever and got good grades in middle/elementary without much effort but NO ONE ever told me I was "smart." I didn't even find out the gifted program was for "smart" kids until much later on. No one coddled me. My parents never called me smart or gifted, in fact, growing up, they never praised me at all. They emphasized hard work > natural talent and despite me naturally being a lazy shit, I worked hard when I needed to because that's what matters in my family.

I think it's very important to teach kids that it's hard work that makes you successful. My AP classes are filled with kids that think their natural ability to learn things quickly is all they need to succeed, and they are honestly the most snobby and pretentious people I've ever met (and they sound like a majority of people in this thread). They like to think they're better than everyone else (you know, that one guy that uses big fancy words to fulfill some false sense of elitism) and they'll make he most patronizing comments. And the thing is, I've seen so many of them just give up when school gets a little hard - so why the hell are we calling THESE kids gifted or special???

You're not special because you learned basic math in elementary school fast. You're not special because you have it a little easier than the kids that had to work harder to memorize words or make connections.

Who cares if you were gifted? No one. They care about what you do with what ya got so and I'm so disappointed that so many people in this thread who are supposed to be "gifted" never put the two together.

I (hopefully) will stay on track and graduate as valedictorian of my high school this summer and ALL of what I've accomplished is solely because of hard work. High school is when you first get a taste of real life, when how successful you are depends on more than just gifted-ness. The truly special people are the ones that are hardworking (AND smart) not people who got into a lame gifted program !!