12 Year old with an IQ of 170.

[lonestar]

I had the same problem. I did almost no work whatsoever in high school and came out with honors and grades allowing me to get into the best mathematics school in the country.

University was a bit of a rude awakening.

Same here.  My first physics class at Cal was the proudest D I have ever earned.

[rumborak]

Oh yeah, me too. I went to university and suddenly realized that I couldn't just breeze through anymore. The single most important thing university taught me is to create my own motivation.

rumborak

What kind of marks were you getting "breezing through"?

B- and C+, that kind of stuff. A and A- in math and physics, because it interested me

rumborak

[73109]

I'm worried as shit about university. I really don't want to sound like a dick, but I have managed to get straight A's with very little effort. I mean, a don't think I've ever worked really hard on anything. "Studying" for English, Science and History consists of glancing over my notes, and "studying for math" consists of looking over the problems and saying "easy, easy, easy, I'm gonna get an A." When I go to a university, especially the ones I'm looking to go to, I'm fucked.

[SPNKr]

>12 y/o, IQ 170
>Maths genius
>Born with Asperger's

Ohh. That explains it.

[Pirate]

Isn't Asperger's one of those things that isn't a thing?

[rumborak]

How did you "create your own motivation"? I really wish I had done well on my first exams in January. I just couldn't bring myself to study more than 2-4 hours a day and even when I was studying it was at a very slow pace and with a lot of distractions and breaks. I got a 6, 7, 9, 9 and a 12 (all on 20) which kind of sucks. But even now I can't bring myself to keep up what we have seen so far in the second semester...

Well, it's not that I morphed into this first-grade student
What I did was to slowly hone in on the amount of learning I need to get a good grade. That ended up being somewhere around 6-8 weeks. So, by the end I would time the beginning of the "hardcore learning group" that I had with a few buddies those 6-8 weeks before exam time. Before that there was a lot of partying and playing in my band
We had of course a few courses with mandatory attendance (the practical stuff where you do experiments etc.), so it's not that I stayed away from uni for months or something.
There was one exam though where I really gave all, just to sort of prove to myself that I can write good grades if I want to. The exam was called "TET" (theoretical electrical engineering, all about electric fields and shit) and had a fail rate of ~85%. It weeded out people to no end. So, I really busted my ass (it was very math-heavy, so I liked it) and ended up third-best student in the exam, with a B- or something. After that I said "why bother doing that for the other exams?"

rumborak

[Adami]

Isn't Asperger's one of those things that isn't a thing?

No.

[rumborak]

Asperger's is kinda a mild form of autism. And believe me it's real, I would say about 50% of my coworkers have it to some degree (yay for having all those MIT graduates!).

rumborak

[Adami]

Asperger's is kinda a mild form of autism. And believe me it's real, I would say about 50% of my coworkers have it to some degree (yay for having all those MIT graduates!).

rumborak

Just an FYI, it's very likely in the next few years that Asperger's will be eliminated from the DSM and people with it will simply be considered Autistic.

[rumborak]

Oh well, the DSM is kinda sketchy anyway in its classifications

rumborak

[SPNKr]

Except it's a developmental disorder, so the more communicative, social, and the more experiences you have in life will get you out of 50% of it at least by the time you're like 19 years old.
I wouldn't call it that rare from what I see. I have it too.

[Fiery Winds]

Except it's a developmental disorder, so the more communicative, social, and the more experiences you have in life will get you out of 50% of it at least by the time you're like 19 years old.
I wouldn't call it that rare from what I see. I have it too.

Same for me. I realized I had it after meeting the daughter of a friend who had it.  Very similar to my childhood.  I seem to have grown out of a lot of it too.

[SPNKr]

Except it's a developmental disorder, so the more communicative, social, and the more experiences you have in life will get you out of 50% of it at least by the time you're like 19 years old.
I wouldn't call it that rare from what I see. I have it too.

Same for me. I realized I had it after meeting the daughter of a friend who had it.  Very similar to my childhood.  I seem to have grown out of a lot of it too.

My statement was just out of experience. But I was diagnosed through a psychologist when I was 17. Very late diagnosis though. Took months to go through all of these tests n shit. Was tedious.

[Adami]

Oh well, the DSM is kinda sketchy anyway in its classifications

rumborak

Oh yea I can't stand the DSM, but unfortunately I can make a living without sticking to it. Such is life I guess.

[ScioPath]

Isn't Asperger's one of those things that isn't a thing?

I have it.

Except it's a developmental disorder, so the more communicative, social, and the more experiences you have in life will get you out of 50% of it at least by the time you're like 19 years old.

At least 4 more years of social awkwardness? Fuck yeah.

[rumborak]

Except it's a developmental disorder, so the more communicative, social, and the more experiences you have in life will get you out of 50% of it at least by the time you're like 19 years old.

I think that only applies to the mild cases. I know somebody who works with the hard cases, and she told me that social interaction is to them like colors to a blind guy. They heard about it, they know people put great important to it, but can not penetrate it at all. So they resort to rote memorization to get by.

I wouldn't call it that rare from what I see. I have it too.

BTW, I'm not questioning that you have it, but Asperger's has become a bit of fashionable condition to have.

rumborak

[Pirate]

What are the symptoms of this thing again?

[Adami]

Except it's a developmental disorder, so the more communicative, social, and the more experiences you have in life will get you out of 50% of it at least by the time you're like 19 years old.
I wouldn't call it that rare from what I see. I have it too.

Aspegers is already a much milder form of Autism but it has its own spectrum. If you can just "get out of it" at some point, you most likely have an even more mild and less severe version of it as is.

[Fiery Winds]

I agree Rumborak, and I wouldn't be surprised if a psychologist said I didn't have it, or had something else.  But it isn't something that hinders my daily functioning, so I probably won't try for an official diagnosis.

[Adami]

I agree Rumborak, and I wouldn't be surprised if a psychologist said I didn't have it, or had something else.  But it isn't something that hinders my daily functioning, so I probably won't try for an official diagnosis.

If it doesn't hinder anything, then there's no disorder. At the very most....features.

[Fiery Winds]

I agree Rumborak, and I wouldn't be surprised if a psychologist said I didn't have it, or had something else.  But it isn't something that hinders my daily functioning, so I probably won't try for an official diagnosis.

If it doesn't hinder anything, then there's no disorder. At the very most....features.

That could be it.  Though I should clarify what I mean by not hindering my daily activities.  I can do everything I need to do, but that's due to making my own "adaptations" per se.  I also make sure I avoid situations that I know I would struggle with.

[SPNKr]

Except it's a developmental disorder, so the more communicative, social, and the more experiences you have in life will get you out of 50% of it at least by the time you're like 19 years old.

At least 4 more years of social awkwardness? Fuck yeah.

Haha, just don't use that as an excuse to everybody. They'll think you're an idiot and have life "easy", you just can't tell that many people apart from family and your best friends.

Except it's a developmental disorder, so the more communicative, social, and the more experiences you have in life will get you out of 50% of it at least by the time you're like 19 years old.
I wouldn't call it that rare from what I see. I have it too.

Aspegers is already a much milder form of Autism but it has its own spectrum. If you can just "get out of it" at some point, you most likely have an even more mild and less severe version of it as is.

I for sure never had a severe form of it. I never think about it anymore to tell the truth. If you keep blaming your weaknesses on ASD, you will never develop out of it.
Years ago I used to feel hindered until I found out about my diagnosis. But today, I don't.

[rumborak]

No offense guys, but the way you are describing so far it doesn't sound you really have Asperger's. I mean, I have people in my company who will come into the restroom looking to the wall the whole time while going to the stall. And BO problems up the wazoo because they have no concept of how others perceive them.

rumborak

[SPNKr]

That's because we're much older than the reported age group that evidently has it. We've had lots more experience in communication and social skills than them in the real world of course, and I don't think we take many things seriously like a kid does.
Now if you had observed when I was 14 or 15, then yes it would've been at least a little bit more evident. It's not serious at all anymore, for me.

[Fiery Winds]

I think the difference between when I was younger and now, is that I sort of have an awareness of it.  I just don't know what to do in certain situations to deal with it, so I just avoid it.  

EDIT:  Getting off topic, so I started a thread for this discussion here.

[TempusVox]

So, I essentially grew up in school never doing my homework. Worse things have happened to people

rumborak

Same here.. Worked great for high school (that's until 18 here), but not so great now that I'm in university... I don't really know how to study and I have zero attention span. The 'it's going to be alright' attitude has kind of burned into me.

See for me it was kind of the opposite. I struggled mightily throughout school. There were exceptions. I received A's in English (Honors English), History, and Science, but everything else I barely got by with C's. I always was tested off the charts, and there were some who suggested I had a learning disability. Still other teachers and a few administrators claimed I was lazy. The fact was, I was bored out of my mind, and not being challenged could not perform well at all. There were no accelerated programs when I was in school.

Once I got to college I took off (B.S. 3.8 gpa) and was at or near the top of my class through my JD (cum laude). I recall from my first week of college, it was like a light went off for me, and I soaked up every bit I could from then on.

[Perpetual Change]

Yeah, I breezed through school too but it caught up with me toward the end of high school. All through grade school and my first couple years of high school, I'd been given the impression that I didn't need to study or work at all to pull all B's and a couple of A's. So when I got to classes like AP English where I had to work hard, I did fine, because writing essays was fun for me. But when I got to classes like Trig and AP Bio and Chem, I suffered, because I simply wasn't willing to put the amount of work into them that they required. I, honestly, didn't know how to. I remember everyone in my AP Bio class freaking out for an exam that I hadn't even studied for... I guess at that point in my life, I simply thought having to work that hard for grades was stupid. I just expected the results to come naturally.

And I sat through a year or Algebra II/Trig reading science fiction novels.

Kinda ashamed of myself in retrospect. I would have liked to get into the sciences.

[Jamesman42]

I would have liked to get into the sciences.

How about English?



Am I alone in thinking IQ is a bunch of crap?

[rumborak]

Please, not that discussion.

rumborak

[Pirate]

See, the advantage of having your mother working for the school board and being identified gifted is that if I want, I don't have to be bored. By grade 11 I should be taking all Advanced Placement courses (which I don't expect to be all that challenging anyway - anyone have experience?), only two of which actual grade 11 courses (religion and english) the others all grade 12 - plus maybe one or two independent courses. This allows me to finish high school a semester early, giving me 5 months to get a job and rustle up some cash to pay for school (in addition to scholarships) or find a co-op placement that will prepare me for the kind of work I'm interested in. The problem at this point (grade 9) is that I'm in the middle of getting compulsory credits that mean nothing to me - meaning I'm bored, lazy, and not working to my potential.

And I don't think IQ is a bunch of crap. If people think having a high IQ makes you a better person, or some kind of omniscient being that is never wrong, then they're missing the point and setting themselves up for disappointment

[Jamesman42]

Please, not that discussion.

rumborak

I wasn't aware it was a bad discussion.

[rumborak]

It's just a very tired discussion. The measure of IQ is pretty well correlated with what it purports to measure, analytic skills.
The whole discussion then usually is "IQ is crap, I know people who I would consider intelligent and don't have a high IQ!!!". It's plain based on the fact that having a high IQ is considered desirable, so people get pissy because it's something that only a few people have.

rumborak

[Jamesman42]

Oh...well my point was how can measure someone's intelligence with such an arbitrary test.

[j]

I had the same problem. I did almost no work whatsoever in high school and came out with honors and grades allowing me to get into the best mathematics school in the country.

University was a bit of a rude awakening.

I was the same way.  Didn't crack a book all through high school and got basically all As despite taking AP classes, etc.  Used the same approach my first year of college and got Bs and Cs before bringing a little effort my sophomore year.  Those first two semesters cost me though, they (along with several changes of major) delayed my medical school admission by a year.

By grade 11 I should be taking all Advanced Placement courses (which I don't expect to be all that challenging anyway - anyone have experience?),

I didn't find them remotely challenging.  If I recall, they do entail a little more work than regular classes, but that doesn't say much.

-J

[Sigz]

By grade 11 I should be taking all Advanced Placement courses (which I don't expect to be all that challenging anyway - anyone have experience?),

I didn't find them remotely challenging.  If I recall, they do entail a little more work than regular classes, but that doesn't say much.

-J

Same. The only AP class I found hard was chemistry, and that was because our teacher was total shit (seriously, out of 20 people only 3 passed the AP test, and we only got 3s).