I agree with you. It is unfair and not necessarily helpful to society at large to place so much emphasis on one part of your intelligence, on one day (or two or three if you have the money). Going to a community college and working with student government/leadership and needy folks does, though. And in my experience universities just LOVE those students. Once you've gotten one degree, you are "degree material" and admissions officers know it. State unis get paid to get students complete so they are serious about attracting such students--no SATs required. It's not "sexy" but it is a GREAT place to get a good education, to get your prereqs out of the way for very little money, and to set yourself up for scholarships later. She can even live off campus. I went to uni and dropped out to finish at CC (in spite of very high scores) because it was cheaper and the instructors for the prereqs were actually better. Small class sizes. Loved it, finished early because I didn't have to deal with weed-out attitudes, full tutoring centers, etc. Got in with a work-study and a scholarship to my initial university of choice (well... I went there the first time, too, but my point is they treated me better after CC). I know that is not a fun option for a high achiever to look at. I know. I never would have DREAMED of applying to community college out of high school. It seemed like a cop-out. But, if she's committed to that school and thinks it's the best for her, really, truly, community colleges would love to have a mind of that caliber in the classroom. Community colleges also have academic-based scholarships, and not only for minority or poor students. It's worth a shot. Nursing is standardized-test heavy and ultra, ultra competitive. I would strongly suggest, if this is her life calling, that she get the academic and psychological help necessary now to help her get past this. At least seeing whether it's an anxiety issue or something would be helpful. You just can't pass the boards if you don't test well. I believe your daughter can do it but now is the time to address those issues whatever they may be--or perhaps while at a CC. They may even have support services that help her with testing skills. And yes, CCs have some of the best RN programs and pre-nursing programs in the country, though four-year unis would hate to lose your $ so would never admit it.

If you're learning a programming language, you're learning a modern language of a sort. It's not nearly as complex as any human language, but it is a living language and understanding some of the basics of programming languages (for they have their own logic just as human languages do) is an important topic for any modern user. I can use two programming languages and I use them to do beautiful things: create graphics that inform people about mathematical patterns in their data. That data happens to be about social services, so I believe that my work and my ability to program (you can't make these graphics with Microsoft Excel push-button graphics) is important to my ability to demonstrate truth and create beauty. Is it a foundation of a classical education? Heck no! I learned philosophy and classics and literature and religion and calculus and how to play an instrument first. But high schoolers should have the opportunity to delve into some of their vocational topics of interest, just to get their feet wet, and this is one of them. But you said your curriculum is pretty full--does that mean that your high schooler has zero electives in which to explore his passions in life or learn new things? I'm thinking musical composition, wood work, car mechanics, volunteering at a hospital... I would say, leave some room to explore, regardless. Programming could be one area. You might limit it to one year and then say he needs to try at least three other vocational skills, one with people, one hands-on, and one in design/the arts, just to give him a taste. So that's a yes, it should be, if the student wants, but along with other subjects like car repair. This is a great time to get an idea of how the world works, and programming is a crucial part of that. But then... so is growing your own squash. ;)

Well, you have your answer, then. Just say "Thanks for the invitation, but the answer is no." If they try to discuss, just say, "No, this is our family's decision and we're not discussing it further. We do appreciate your hospitality, though."

Here is a case where Wikipedia is truly unreliable, though it does say at the top that it is in need of experts for this article. It is probably a case of the linguist's failure to understand English as an analytic language rather than synthetic language. Honestly, I think that this is like saying some languages don't have a past tense or something. The point is not the number of tenses, the point is that understanding one grammar and type of grammar does not allow you to fully appreciate every grammar. In this case the failure to map tenses 1:1 is simply one example of why both grammars are needed eventually. It is not to say that Greek grammar is totally irrelevant or that somehow, the number of tenses is important in and of itself. In some languages, tense is expressed by adding on to the word itself, but in English we use particles. http://www.myenglishteacher.eu/blog/12-all-english-tenses-with-examples/ I go, I am going, I have gone, I have been going. I went, I was going, I had gone, I had been going. I will go, I will be going, I will have gone, I will have been going. English's being analytic is one reason that our verb forms come together like this, and this is one reason one would not want to forgo English grammar for the sake of Latin and Greek, though I can see postponing it especially if I worked part-time and homeschooled. "I will have gone" is a beautiful construction. I demand it be acknowledged. :) Edited to add: I realize that sometimes, these are interpreted as aspect--and I'm willing to give up six tenses if you give me two aspects--however, that was not how it was described in books I used to teach. Two tenses! So there really is no future in the English language? Haha. Seriously though, it's like the zombie split infinitive. You can't split a Greek infinitive because, and again this comes back to the synthetic / analytic distinction, it's one word. You CAN split an English infinitive, though not on the entrance exam to Cambridge, where you have to convince someone you know Greek grammar using an essay written in English. But I'm a descriptivist who views language as a biological phenomenon, so we will probably just have to agree to disagree on a lot of things.

Latin and Greek are synthetic languages. English is (mostly) an analytic language. In that respect, I wouldn't say Latin grammar replaces English grammar. Although I think that studying Latin or Greek obviates the need for a lot of grammar and linguistic theory early on (because you get the basics), English grammar can and should be studied later. Tense is one area where English is more complex than Latin or Greek. I think Latin has three tenses and two aspects for a total of six time-related forms. Latin mood is similar to Russian moods in that each tense has one of two moods. Greek is more similar to English in that it has several tenses and the moods are timeless (i.e. you don't have the optative mood for every tense). At least, that's what I remember. English has twelve tenses in the indicative mood, plus the subjunctive, the imperative, and... I'm pretty sure that's it. Three moods. Greek has like, five moods but one was more or less obscure by New Testament times. English tenses are a huge pain in the behind but understanding their relationships to mood is key, because Latin and Greek tenses and moods do NOT map 1:1 to English. Likewise, there are a lot of aspects of English speech, particularly sentence order, which are not as important in synthetic languages like Latin and Greek. I also think it's important to appreciate the beauty of English as an analytic language like Persian or French. Though they may seem less complex than synthetic languages, in fact their idiomatic nature is really something to be appreciated. Planning out word order in advance is quite a challenge for speakers of synthetic languages! I think studying English grammar, for older students of course, is important in the appreciation of our own language. Without understanding the complexity of our own language it may appear inferior to Latin and Greek when in fact it is a very highly developed, beautiful language in itself. And then of course understanding the difference between synthetic languages, with their common endings on like, everything, which make thousand-page poems not only possible but actually fairly easy, and analytic languages, with their paucity of common endings, which makes Shakespeare and Chaucer just so. flipping. amazing... well, this is really important for high schoolers, IMO. (I got it my second two years of college, sadly, as I wasn't homeschooled or in private school.)

I hear what you are saying and I definitely know what you are talking about with respect to communication with our loved ones. :) I think men in general can think very abstractly but when dealing with problems in life that apply to them, in general they seem to take a more concrete approach (even the very abstract thinking men). Regarding your second paragraph: I think that intelligence is not well understood. Beyond processing speed, which shows up in IQ tests, there is so little we know about how potential intelligence is expressed. All IQ tests are timed, so one thing that we do not know is how many people would test as high IQ if given as much time as they needed and proper mental preparation (e.g. "We believe you can do this."). We do know that some processes, which only a few computers can do, take a long time, but give us answers that can't be gotten another, faster way. Why not so with people? What if only some people have particular genius, but are never asked to use it because nobody thinks that anything good can come of such a slow person? As a matter of principle I try not to assume anything about the intelligence of someone based on their ability to see my point of view or get my point. I'll never forget a boy in high school who was so decidedly average that I was only in one class with him--a required civics class for which there was no honors option. But we had a certain type of exam, oral map exams, and when we saw him do that test in like, 10 seconds flat with no errors, we realized right away that we'd all underestimated him. He had a very special spatial visualization gift and all of a sudden the fact that he was good with cars and mechanics made sense. He could do something that I've never seen anybody do since, and I've tried with lots of people because I think I was witnessing something amazing. He did it without studying (he never studied because he wasn't "book smart"). He never went to college. He fixes cars now, I think. But hey, no gifted label, no quick processing, not smart, right? He didn't take physics with us. Not good enough at the math, they said. The world has lost a potentially incredible mechanical engineer. I wouldn't assume anything about abstract thinking, spatial thinking, intelligence, verbal ability, and processing speed, personally. I think life and the human brain are too full of potential to make assumptions. Back in the day, people like me with poor oral comprehension but great visual comprehension (now used for all the print and digital technology we have) would have been considered dunces. I don't remember rhymes without working really, really hard! But nowadays it is people like me, not like my older daughter who is great at memorizing poems, who are on top in the IQ tests. Aren't I special... or am I? There is a story about one modern philosopher who was given the All Souls exam at Oxford (I cannot remember which philosopher it was, darnit) who did not finish. Having seen his papers, which were out-of-this-world brilliant, they gave him a nearly unprecedented second chance to take the test un-timed. He wrote what is now considered the start of a modern classic. Imagine if they would have just said, "Well, we feel really frustrated by the fact that you did not finish. Your processing speed is too slow for us gifted folks." (And I'm pretty sure a lot of the faculty at Oxford would test as "gifted".) That is probably the number one reason I don't read those books, heh. I know a lot of people in the sciences and academia, and I don't know a single person who was labeled and fostered as a child to get where they were. Everyone was very self-motivated and I think most of us achieved what we did by developing character overcoming obstacles, NOT by being recognized as someone with a special talent. I realize it may be useful in some contexts, such as developing a homeschool curriculum, or dealing with a child who has a drastically different personality to that of mom or dad. But I can never stand to get through the lines that make what I can't help but see as exceptions for people. There is a book I'm going to read on mindset which is recommended by our school: http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=32124 I think that would be more useful in dealing with frustration than anything dealing with gifted individuals, per se. But I haven't read it yet. I have gotten a lot of great recommendations, though, from very smart people (math PhDs, in case you're wondering whether you can be smart and appreciate it ;).

Until you get one, you can always use an online metronome on the computer. That's what I make my kids do when they aren't allowed to use the phone. As for phones not being loud enough... well, we plug ours into a speaker. But all violamama's other points are completely valid and they are reasons I don't use my phone for my kids either. (That said it has a fine tuner on it, with a loud metronome, for when mommy practices. :) )

I remember watching movies about crazy teenagers, and that they'd report about every single vandalism in a four-county-area, on the evening news. It seemed to take all of two minutes to report on vandalism across half the state, if I recall correctly. There will always be a few rotten apples but I can't let them spoil my fun.

That's actually a much greater source of frustration for me personally, but that is not really what this thread was posted about so I haven't talked about it, just like I'm not really addessing the difficulties faced by those on the autistic spectrum. I understood this thread to be about finding frustration in communicating with / dealing with / waiting for other people. But ultimately my point is all comes down to the fact that a huge amount of frustration in life is about what we expect rather than about what is. Some people do have fewer expectations for themselves, but I'm not sure that high intellectual ability people are more likely to get frustrated with themselves than those with low ability. The question is when they learn to cope. Funny how some say children with certain severe disabilities seem so happy... They probably adjust their expectations early on. That is something anybody could do, no matter how intelligent. We're alive. We're here with the trees, making something from nothing. Let's rejoice and leave our big brains out of it. :~)

Yes, I agree, and I'm not trying to invalidate anybody's feelings. We all face frustration and it is... well... frustrating. I really appreciate your taking the time to read my posts. My thought is not that it's not valid frustration, but that it's not only your frustration, and I seriously doubt that it comes from a unique problem that others don't have. Given that so many people in the world feel they are not understood, or heard, or valued, is this really a gifted problem? I think that viewing one's self as special, as having a special problem, is part of what creates the frustration in the first place. "I'm special, I know something you don't, why is that not recognized?" That sets somebody up for disappointment. I guarantee you, even a future Nobel Prize winner is going to have to kiss her professor's butt during her PhD work. Feeling like she's the only one who's frustrated, or that it stems from her intelligence rather than her expectations, will not help her in any way whatsoever. I understand that in the context of someone who talks over others, intelligence may seem to be the source of frustration. But to me, that thought and that expression is the problem in and of itself. Putting the blame for the feeling on the circumstance, rather than the mindset, is where we run into trouble. If we cling to being smart, being beautiful, being popular, being of a certain race, whatever, as the cause of the problem, or as an important part of the problem--then we can blame part of that frustration on others, or on things we can't change. That absolves us of the responsibility to make the change. It's only when we realize that it is something that we can change, namely, our expectations of industrialized institutional environments, and of other people's ability to understand us and our context, that we can really take control and reduce frustration. Of course I am not saying I have fully done that! Of course I get frustrated, though rarely because I feel I'm not understood. Mainly it's being cut off in traffic. HOW COULD YOU NOT SEE THAT YOU WERE GOING TO HAVE TO MERGE? THERE WERE LIKE 15 SIGNS! (Though I realize that I can do nothing about other people's driving, so it's fruitless and I should just treat it like the weather and take a deep breath... that is the theory, and then there is the reality of a woman trying to get home from work.) So I'm not saying I have this whole detachment thing down. Thanks for taking the time to read my posts. I appreciate it. I believe we understand one another's viewpoints better now. That is huge progress on an internet message board. :) (Incidentally... I'm not actually frustrated, I'm procrastinating and a fast typer. Heh. Sometimes that comes across all wrong.)

On the one hand, I totally see your point. It is very low effort. On the other hand, if they aren't stoned or drunk and they got out of the house to walk around, honestly, I'm not going to judge them. "Young adult" is kind of a misnomer. They are really big children, like toddlers are huge, mobile babies. I don't make excuses for crime or anything, but trick-or-treating is not a crime in my book.

Haha, I'm loving the drinking game idea, but that could get expensive / dangerous. Re: teens trick or treating: I see a few teens at least every Halloween. They just spontaneously decide to go, I guess. With us I think we were bored.

What I am trying to say is that I fundamentally disagree that differences between people are the source of frustration. It is our expectations of others that are the source of frustration. We can change those expectations to eliminate the frustration. We don't need anyone to do anything for us, to make any accommodations. I have pointed out before that I was in gifted education; have scored in the top .01% or higher in some parts on IQ tests throughout my life. I'm saying this so that you know that I understand that sometimes you need to work hard to get on the same page as other people. I get it. Some of us have interests and passions that are not shared by many. But ultimately, if you find a hard time connecting with others, my professional opinion is that it sounds like you're human. Relationships and self-sacrifice are hard until you find "the one". But MANY people, not only the highly intelligent, find it difficult to connect with most others. I cannot imagine how difficult my life would have been, had I been told that my frustration were due to some quality in the world and people around me, or in something I could not change, like my personality or intelligence or looks. I would have been paralyzed in a world that I could not control, by the belief that in order to be happy, I would need others to behave in a certain way. Let me share with you another person's experience--my dad's. My poor dad. Without psychologically skilled parents to guide him, he often felt too smart for his environment. Unable to tolerate the slow pace of the classroom because it felt like a personal affront to him, he eventually dropped out and then went back for a high school degree. He did engineering work and filed two patents without a college degree. But ultimately, he did not have a good career. His main problem? He expected others to defer to him; rather than dealing with the world as it was, he blamed it for his unhappiness. My mother said she often had to leave the room when he started out, "Nobody gets it!!!" (She didn't tell me this until much later, after my own divorce.) Because he couldn't change the world, he found other ways to cope with unhappiness. They were not very healthy. :( How different from my own life, and we have similar intellects. How very differently I was raised: by a mother who taught me to find happiness within and not to ask for it from others, who told me to find fulfillment without demanding the labor of others (even in the second grade). How different my life was when I had mentors in high school who pointed out that it's really not what you know but what who you love that connects you with others. How different my experience was when I found I was able to cope with many environments by changing my expectations and behaviors to adapt to many scenarios to succeed. My dad? A lost career because he felt he wasn't recognized. He didn't have the emotional stamina to kiss behind and work up the ladder. Me? Many times I have shut my mouth with the right answer, given it to my boss, and been promoted later. No dad. Nobody gets each other. That's the human condition. Everybody hurts. Everybody. I thank my mother. She was tough with us but she expected us to put others first and to not give in to anger and frustration just because we were not "understood". Only a few in this world write books that express existential loneliness, but those books are read and understood by millions and hundreds of millions. Think about that. The key to happiness is not in realizing you are special, but in realizing that you are not. No matter how smart you are. :) Please note: I do not want to diminish the very difficult lives that are experienced by people on the autistic spectrum. But I would say that that is not a question of giftedness, but a question of difficulty relating to others that has to do with being on the autistic spectrum. If someone had posted "autistic people frustrated with not understanding the need to sacrifice intellectual pursuits for the group harmony" my answers sure would be different to this thread because it is a big challenge for people on the autistic spectrum to learn to cope with things that come so naturally to others. But that is not the question posed in this thread. If that is the question, it needs to be rephrased, because that's not what it sounds like.

Well, I'm in with the let-teens-do-fun-stuff crowd. I don't care how big you are, you come in a costume and you get candy. One boy came as Dr. Who. Alone. He had to be 14 or so. This year I'm giving him my copies of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well. He was so sweet. I just felt a kinship with that kid. After all, it's not like they can have adult fun. If we don't want them having grown-up fun we need to let them do some fun kid stuff still. They're just kids even if they look like men. When I was a teen sometimes we'd go to the park in the evening, after the little kids had gone, and play lava tag and swing on the swings. We also went trick or treating in really stupid costumes a couple of years. Too old? I guess so... but we weren't too old to have to go to school. "It's intimidating for me to open the door to what look like men saying trick or treat." I'd much rather give a grown man candy and have him leave, than have to shut the door on the hand of a Comcast salesperson (one literally put his hand in the door frame, jerk) or local political candidate who starts whining about "multi-family homes" (poor people) popping up in the neighborhood. Of course, if we got a lot of criminals here I supposed it would be different. But I can't imagine a lot of little ones going trick or treating in such a neighborhood either. Still, I don't really fear men, per se.

My daughter is super sensitive to talk of death, etc. I have no idea why because we've tried to keep a sensitive, open, circle-of-life approach to it since the kids were very small, but oh well. When her teacher sent a book home with a near-drowning, I sent it back with a polite note saying that it appeared to be targeted towards a much older interest level (I looked it up and it was indeed a remedial high-school book). Teacher was totally fine with it. That teacher is very experienced but sometimes they have volunteers dole out books from the library to classrooms, and with 30 kids in the classroom, the teachers don't always read each one. In your case, it's kind of amazing that the teacher wouldn't know that some kids can really be sensitive to this stuff, but live and learn. I agree with other posters--you don't need to provide a justification, but if you do, I suggest the sandwich method. (It's a great book--not appropriate for our son who is very sensitive to separation issues--maybe later, thanks.)

I just get the picture taken and order a couple for grandparents. It's far from her best picture and we don't even have a good photographer in the family, but I like to support the school. Still, it does seem outdated. I like that the school has a picture of her in the yearbook.

I'm sorry to hear about your friend. :( I really like this and I know I've read it before. I think I will memorize it with my daughter.

I taught myself to write with both hands. I composed music under my desk, poems, wrote a book. I learned a lot of character traits that have served me well in life. In other words, I learned to deal with it. Some call it stifling. I call it self-control. I think the idea that someone is only my peer if they have the same IQ as me is the heart of the disagreement. My life is not about expressing my intellect. Intellect is 85 or 185, again, my life is NOT about my intellectual pursuits. It is about what I do for and with the community of humans and life on earth. My peers are those who share in that mission with me. Are they all my moral equals? No. Some are wiser and some more foolish. Are they all my intellectual equals? No. Some are smarter and some less intelligent. Are they all my peers in experience? No. Some have had much more sheltered lives, and some have lived through things I cannot imagine. But overall, we are peers in the most important part of life: the part in which we are striving to make the world a better place for all living things. I'm not even religious! But I thought we were beyond survival and personal enrichment. It's just not all about me. Because remember: it's not only your profoundly gifted child who's stifling something. A child with mechanical skill is being stifled. A child with social skills is being stifled. A child who is bored to heck with academic studies has a lot of parts of himself being stifled. Public school is not exactly Disneyland... for anybody. They say "learning is fun!" all they want, but notice that nobody says, "institutional public school is FUN!" Because it's such a lie for pretty much everyone. Imagine if they were ALL unstifled! All 25 of them. It would be mayhem. Physical kids are sitting at a desk. At least gifted kids can go somewhere in their heads. And I really don't see why just my child's personality and passion should be the one expressed. So many people have things they'd rather be doing than sitting there with 25 other kids talking about something they learned on PBS kids two years ago. Being profoundly gifted is far from the only thing that would make it frustrating. Everyone else has to deal. Why not someone who is very smart?

I know it's personal but I am dying to know what university this is. They are basically refusing to give her a double major, as most people understand it. They are asking her to do concurrent bachelors' degrees. I realize that many universities are quite small so it would be personally identifying but I'm just amazed that they have such an inflexible program. I guess this is a lesson to all of us--check out the student-friendliness of graduation requirements before choosing a school. When I went to college that wasn't an issue. I appreciate your venting because this is all new to me. I work in higher ed and I was aware that it was getting worse but your particular case is really bad. It also raises to question of who would ever sacrifice a marketable degree for Japanese?!?! I love languages, am very pro-language, but would strongly advise against a language major for anybody other than, I suppose, theology or archaology, but then only if you could get a minor in the profession. I don't know about you guys but we aren't upper-middle class with a red carpet to the top... the degree has to be marketable and meaningful to a lot of people. So sorry you're going through this.

"It might just be that you unwittingly are playing part in the bullying we all speak of." I don't think that dealing with the needs of 29 children, rather than the needs of one, is bullying. It sounds like your son has exceptionally high needs and it is great that your family can provide that for him.

We must be talking about two totally different questions. In one scenario, children of all intellects are invited to share their contributions with the class. In that scenario, I don't see where the frustration comes in. You share your thoughts, make a compelling case, and move on. So, that cannot be the scenario addressed by the OP. In another scenario, there is some event during which there is no appropriate outlet for disagreement. For example, during the middle of an explanation, or in group work when one child has already had her turn. In that case, it could be frustrating to feel that you've been misunderstood, or that incorrect information is being shared. I get that. But that's the time to learn patience and wait for the end. Obviously I have no problem with class discussions in which all children get to explore and try out theories with the teacher and one another. That is fantastic. However, I seriously doubt that is where frustration comes from. My own experience in the classroom was that sometimes, the teacher did deliver information in the form of overheads, lectures, etc. and I had questions or topics of interest that were not directly related to the main theme. But the content needed to be delivered and only so many questions could be answered. The teacher wanted to answer questions that had to do with a basic understanding of the text, which I may have already been familiar with. My experience has been that when I wait and ask the teacher or professor later by e-mail, or after class, or discuss it with a study group, I get a MUCH better attitude and much deeper engagement in my ideas. Just pressing forward with the teacher to prove how smart I am has not seemed to work. That's what learning is about. I thought we were talking about being in a group environment, school or otherwise. For about 50% of the population, school will be mildly to very challenging, depending on where they are on the bell curve. For 50th to 75th%, it will be mildly entertaining. For the top 25%, it will be a good time to read books under the desk. Banging your head against the wall trying to prove to people that you are better at investigating the truth, while you are all confined to the same public institution for seven hours a day, is going to be an exercise in extreme frustration. They don't care. The teacher MIGHT care, but she needs to make everyone else care about the basics, which is hard enough without going on long tangents. She's not paid to teach one child. She's paid to facilitate an environment for 20 - 30 kids. Homeschooling is a great opportunity for children who cannot deal with not being the center of intellectual investigation.

"It is respectful, because really, if you are the expert, why would you want a large error to get propagated when you can quickly point out the missing or incorrect fact that is pertinent to the discussion?" I disagree. I think it is not a question of who is the expert, but who is the authority in a group of people large enough to need a group structure. It is a question of who is taking responsibility for the classroom. Ultimately, a teacher is taking responsibility for 20 - 30 children and interrupting to question the teacher's authority, which in the minds of the class is all bundled together with expertise, is extremely unhelpful. Is my child really better off in a classroom in which the teacher is not respected as in charge by the other students, provided the other children realize the difference between disintegration and explosion? I mean we are talking public school with about 25 7 year olds in a class or more. What is more important: that everyone knows that a tomato is a fruit because it spreads the seed of the plant, OR that everybody gets to do science experiments because when the children work in groups and are given instructions by the teacher, everybody listens and it's not a free-for-all in which every child tries to prove his or her dominance and authority? I'm going to go ahead and say let a tomato be a vegetable for a full 20 hours, until before school the next day, if that means that the class is run in an orderly way. Have you ever been at a meeting in which two jerks decided to waste everybody's time by arguing over the finer details of some statistical analysis? Does it matter? It might, depending on the type of data they're talking about. Do they need to establish their own authority on the matter while 10 other people sit there and listen to them argue? No. No they do not. I think only people who have sat through those interminable meetings, after two cups of coffee and 30 minutes into lunch, can really comprehend how incredibly rude it is to need to be right in front of the group. Just let it go and duke it out in a private meeting and send a memo if you absolutely must. Otherwise everyone will dread these meetings! It's fine to be right. It's not fine to need the whole group to acknowledge that you are right and the teacher/boss/colleague is wrong right now. The world will not explode, disintegrate, implode, or anything else if vocabulary is used improperly once and is corrected in a polite way in private later. Be patient. Take your turn. Sacrifice for the group so you can achieve more together.

SKL, I also walk fast. I swear we live parallel lives... also, I agree with every other post you've made in this thread, and I do feel bad when I walk too fast. I really have to concentrate to slow down but no, I do not consider it a burden.

(Edit: I didn't see that this thread went on and on--ooops, well, I just made it that much longer. Funnily enough, this goes to show--being a gifted kid and finishing two grade levels ahead in math without ever doing homework at night doesn't mean you won't have to ask for others' patience, after all. ;) Original post ahead.) It doesn't matter if your IQ is 85 or 155. It is about respecting other human beings because they are human beings. I never point out people's mistakes during a work meeting unless it's absolutely necessary to do so for the meeting's outcome. If I do, I am very careful to say it in the most diplomatic way possible. Ideally, I think the right way to correct people is to chat separately and say something like, "You mentioned such-and-such during the meeting--I'm wondering if you meant so-and-so, which was out in this memo? I'd like to make sure we're on the same page." I tell my children to do the same at school--and since the teacher will always have a chance to correct her or himself afterwards, that means if they think s/he is wrong, they just remain quiet and look it up after school with me. If the teacher was wrong, they can bring in a very polite note and ask the teacher why there is a contradiction. The same goes for frustration with people who are slow to understand. Normal IQ, high IQ or low IQ--there are going to be people who are slower than you. This is like asking how to deal with old people driving in front of you. Old people drive slowly. No need to point out how special you are because you're young. The answer is just take a deep breath and be grateful and deal. Person with Down's syndrome in front of you can't seem to figure out which cereal to put in the cart, but no room to get around their cart in the grocery store? Turn around and take another aisle or say, "pardon me" and gracefully wait while they move the cart. Someone from another city stuck in the wrong lane and you're late to work? Take a deep breath, and if absolutely necessary roll down your window or (I once did this in Seattle) step out of the car and instruct them how to get in the right lane to get on their way). Have to repeat instructions four times for a woman with a baby screaming in her ear? Give her a sympathetic word. No need to point out to her that YOUR baby slept through the night from day one because you breastfed or something. So someone is not getting a math concept. Help out or keep quiet. There is seriously no need to make a big deal about how sometimes, you have to be patient with others. I guarantee you that no matter how smart you are, IQ 185 and doing nuclear physics in the garage at age 6, people are going to have to be patient with you too. Be patient with others and grateful for what you have. Intellect has nothing to do with it.

See, that's nuts. I'm sorry, but requirements are (a) not common sense, but arbitrary in many cases, and ( B) change annually. It is the departments' and advisors' jobs to help the students make an appropriate plan. The student fills in the form and it must be checked over by the people who grant the degrees. That is their job! Many universities and colleges require an approved plan before upper-level registration. It seems very, very strange to me that she could be consulting with the Japanese, business, and academic advising departments and not receive any counseling on what requirements she needs for graduation. There should be a website detailing all of this, and in the absolute worst-case, low-tech, "we don't know what we are doing" scenario, a piece of paper with checkboxes that advising will go through for each declared major, that matches what the department gave them. True, some students don't go see advising. But you are suggesting your daughter did see advising and that they failed to point out that each major has its own electives? And how did the Japanese program not notice this? Okay, I'm furious with you now. :)