If you have ever gone to school a day in your life, you most definitely have heard the term “gifted child.” If not that, you’ve at least heard of honors kids, AP kids, or even accelerated students. I have been called all of these names several times throughout my life from Kindergarten to senior year of high school, and honestly I feel like it had a huge negative impact on my life.

Don’t get me wrong, being considered gifted gave me so many opportunities and for that, I am forever grateful. I was able to attend and take honors and AP classes at a private high school and now I attend a top 100 college which wouldn’t be possible without some academic ability, so for that, I am really thankful. What I am not thankful for, however, is all the negatives that come with that.

Being gifted fed deeply into my mental health struggles. When I was seven years old and in the second grade, I struggled a little bit with fractions. I will never forget the time I got an 86 on a quiz because I messed up on one problem. When I came home that day, I couldn’t look my mom in the eyes because I thought I failed her, as I had never gotten below an A in my short academic career. I handed her the paper and locked myself in my room sobbing until I was physically ill. My mom had to spend quite some time trying to console me and make me understand that grades were not that important, and she didn’t care what grades I received as long as I was trying.

I wish I could say that after that moment I realized having anxiety over grades wasn’t worth my time and I grew out of it. As I proceeded through school, however, the anxiety just got worse. I cried in my mom’s lap for hours when I didn’t get approved to take AP U.S. History because I didn’t test well. When I didn’t have the scores on my PSATs that I wanted, I begged my parents enroll me in an SAT prep course. I would go on to take the SATs twice and still be too mortified to share my score, even though it was well above average. Those are some major examples but there are hundreds of moments in between where just struggling on some math homework was enough to give me a meltdown, especially on days where I was averaging 4 hours of homework a night. I aimed for perfection, and when I didn’t get it, I broke down.

Then there is the issue that being gifted required me to sacrifice a normal social life. I could sense that from a pretty young age, and started to surround myself with not gifted friends as a way to normalize my life. As far back as elementary school, when other kids were out playing, I would be working on one of my extra projects that I was assigned through my gifted program. In middle school, things were a little more even but in the honors’ classes, we were always assigned more homework than everyone else. I had to turn down invitations to be with friends several times so I could sit and finish the same project they had just done, but mine had five extra parts. The same thing happened in high school; many of my weekends were spent in front of a computer typing up papers. The times that I did get to go out, my mind was stuck on how much work I had to do when I got home.

The thing I hate the most about always being considered gifted, is the superiority complex it gave me. Imagine being told how special and different you are from a young age. Eventually you will start to believe it and maybe even start to act like it. The classes I was in were always told “this is the honors class; I expect far more from you than any of my other classes.” Why did they expect so much more? We were still students playing sports, playing instruments, in theater, etc. so why were we expected to do 4 or more hours of homework a night? It was infuriating. Then there were the few classes were the teacher would get mad at us and ask why we thought we were so much better and smarter. Hint: it’s because it’s what we were told.

By the end of high school, I realized that none of this even matters. You can be above average, average or below average at school, but none of it tells what kind of person you are or honestly how smart you are. Intelligence can be measured in a lot of different ways; we just happen to put all of our focus into school. I’ve learned I’m really not all that smart; I’m definitely not smarter than a lot of my peers, and I’m honestly not that great at school anymore. But I am happy. The difference is, now that I’m in college, I don’t have this unnecessary pressure being put on me to be the best and I’m not expected to do anymore than the other students at my school. We’re on a much more even playing field finally. The point I’m trying to make is, I’m not sure if the benefits of being “gifted” really helped me in life or outweighed the negatives.