as small as a world and as large as alone

8:22pm May 7, 2014

princess-neville:

as someone who was labeled a “gifted kid” as a child i understand the intense pressure that creates and how soul-crushing it can be to not live up to the “smart kid” label but I really do not think it is worse or as bad as being labeled stupid or “not bright” or one of the “bad kids” as a child (especially in a school system that is racist and ableist), idk how anyone could argue that it is. 

I’ve been in both positions.  It’s usually worse to be underestimated than overestimated.  But not always.  And being put in both positions at exactly the same time is its own special kind of hell.  But the assumptions that came with being gifted went much further than feeling like I couldn’t live up to something, they ended up almost killing me.  So I can’t say it’s always better than being underestimated.  Sometimes they’re equally as bad.  Sometimes one or the other is better.  Overall being underestimated is worse, but you can’t go from a generalization like that to telling any specific person that their experience is automatically better or worse than someone else’s, because individual experiences are where generalizations fall apart. 

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