March 23, 2022

Illustrated by Jack Copeland

While gifted kid burnout was brought to light as a joke, it is an issue a lot of students deal with today. According to the Davidson Institute, “the definition of gifted child burnout is chronic exhaustion that stems from a mismatch between the individual and their current educational environment.” In other words, this means that when a student becomes tired of dealing with pressures of perfectionism placed on them at a very young age. Due to this constant stress, they are left  facing issues with their mental health and well-being later on in life.

“She’s got something special.”

“She’s an incredibly bright young girl.”

“I have no comments. She’s doing incredibly well.”

These are all things I heard growing up. I had my first experience of being a smart kid in third grade. In fourth grade, I was separated from the rest of my classmates into my first advanced math group.

Being labeled at such a young age as a gifted student sets the scene for the rest of a student’s middle and high school career. According to a report conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “the top environmental conditions harming adolescent wellness… were poverty, trauma, discrimination and an excessive pressure to excel.”

In sixth grade, I took the test to enter the SAGE program. I ended up not making it in by a few test points. After this, I went home and cried for hours because all the smart kids were in SAGE, and I had been taught that by not making it, I was not smart enough. Since I had been defined by my intelligence for so long, I felt as though I was letting people down by not accomplishing that task. This is a struggle 1a lot of gifted kids face. 

According to a 2019 study conducted by Journal for the Education of the Gifted, “highly intelligent teens tend to be [perfectionists] compared to their peers.” When students are labeled as gifted at a young age, it instills these perfectionist ideals. If they don’t live up to these expectations, they are seen as a failure.  

These perfectionistic ideals are very dangerous habits to have growing up. As these students get older, these perfectionistic habits can manifest into more mental health problems. According to Healthline, “perfectionism can make you feel unhappy with your life. It can lead to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and self-harm. Eventually, it can also lead you to stop trying to succeed.”

This is the epitome of what happens with gifted kid burnout. 

The constant pressure of having to live up to the expectations schools unknowingly place on students takes a toll. Suddenly, students are signed up to take every standardized test the school has to report. Friend groups are determined based on what classes are taken. It becomes a need for gifted students to be better than their peers because they are taught that their worth is defined by their intelligence. 

At my high school, we had three different diploma options to choose from: the regular one, Gold Medallion and AP Capstone. The higher the diploma, the more advanced classes were required to be taken. My class of gifted students had a never-ending competition of who could get the highest diploma with the best grades, when in reality, the only difference was the decorations at graduation. However, that extra cord proved that we could live up to the expectations placed on us all the way back in elementary school, and without completing the higher diplomas, it felt as though we were lacking somehow –– as if we had failed. 

CBS News spoke with students attending the public schools in Mercer Island, Washington. 

“We all tell ourselves that our GPA doesn’t define us, but it really does here,” student Joe Gormley said.

His classmate Thomas Lee said, “the end goal isn’t to learn, it’s to get a number.”

These are common themes seen with students all over. This constant need to succeed comes to a sudden halt once we get to college and realize that nobody cares. After years of always having our worth determined by our intelligence, it no longer matters. So what are we, if not our intelligence? 

We lose motivation and we’re left with this overwhelming sense of anxiety of not knowing where we belong or who we can relate to. 

So how do we help prevent students from facing this phenomenon? 

“Adolescents who believed that both of their parents valued character traits as much as or more than achievement exhibited better outcomes at school, greater mental health and less rule-breaking behavior than peers who believed their parents were primarily achievement-minded,” researchers at The Washington Post said. “Those who fared the worst reported their mothers placed a higher value on achievement than character and were also critical.”

While we may not be able to fix the education system and the pressures it places on students, the best thing to do for gifted students is to reinforce that their character traits are important. It is important to make sure that the only topic of discussion isn’t grades and how good they are at something. Parents should make sure to encourage being a good person and allow the student to have hobbies that aren’t defined by their talent. They can make sure to not place so much weight on grade cards and that their students understand grades are not the end-all. Hopefully, by prioritizing the student’s character traits rather than measuring their achievement, we can teach gifted students everywhere that getting a B on that history exam is not the end of the world. 

The U.N. Refugee Agency is a global organization focused on helping refugees from humanitarian crises around the world. If you feel inclined, donate here:  https://donate.unhcr.org/int/en/venezuela-emergency

Edited by Sarah Rubinstein | srubinstein@themaneater.com 

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