The pressure behind intelligence: "I studied in a gifted students program, but I learned that my self-esteem depended on academic approval"

Behind the label of "gifted child" there are often stories of perseverance, but also experiences in which intelligence ends up becoming tied to self-esteem and the pressure to maintain outstanding academic performance.

In a personal essay, writer Sophie Boudreau recounts the feelings she experienced after being identified as a high-ability student.

When she was in the early years of elementary school, she began to be considered a gifted child. "They took me out of my first-grade class and brought me to the fifth-grade classroom, where a teacher told me to choose a chapter book that was 'more appropriate for my level,'" she recalled.

Although she was initially grateful for that opportunity, over the years she began to see it as a burden. She increasingly felt the weight of being academically separated from her classmates.

**What the gifted student program was like**

When Boudreau entered secondary school in 1998, specific programs for high-ability students promoted by the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) already existed. As she recalled, the experience was initially positive because she shared classes with students of similar interests and had a "warm and encouraging" teacher who motivated them to develop their individual abilities.

The NAGC defines gifted students as those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude—an exceptional capacity to reason and learn—or performance ranking within the top 10% in one or more areas. Boudreau notes that this model has also been questioned because it can exclude equally capable students due to social or cultural factors.

Boudreau also cites research compiled by specialist Jenny Grant Rankin that reveals inequalities in these programs. According to those studies, African American students were 50% less likely to be identified as gifted than white students with the same academic results. That gap widened when teachers were white.

**When all self-esteem depended on grades**

Boudreau acknowledges that, at a certain stage of her life, everything revolved around academic achievement, which seeped into every area of her life and could even become an obstacle. "If I had trouble understanding a concept in math or didn't understand a question on a social studies test, I avoided asking for help. After all, I was gifted. I wasn't supposed to need help with anything."

She felt she had to excel at everything she did. She would abandon many of her hobbies as soon as she discovered she was not exceptional at them, and she obsessively pursued the highest grade in school. When she received a lower mark, she would end up in tears or needed someone to remind her that she was still intelligent.

As she recalls, the program also reinforced the idea that a gifted student had to stand out in every area. Many students enrolled in as many advanced courses as possible, convinced that academic success was the only path to professional and personal achievement.

**The reality check in college: you can't always be the best**

When the young woman arrived at university, she experienced a feeling she had never encountered before. "I was no longer 'the smart one,' but just one among thousands of smart kids, all with ambitions equal to or even greater than my own. Professors rarely praised me directly, and getting a B every now and then became commonplace," she recalled.

Every time she failed to reach the level of excellence she expected of herself, she felt she was letting down the person she believed she was supposed to be. That shift coincided with mental health problems and a profound identity crisis. "Wasn't I supposed to get into university, earn excellent grades, and immediately launch a brilliant career?" she wondered.

During her classes, she avoided asking for help even when she had doubts. She was gifted — she couldn't have doubts. After graduating, she received a Fulbright scholarship to teach in Malaysia. Yet even that opportunity was accompanied by uncertainty about her future: "It was very hard for me to admit that I didn't want to pursue a postgraduate degree, which embarrassed me. Without academic recognition or notable achievements, would I be lost forever?"

How she managed to change the way she saw herself

Over the years, she began to connect the anxiety she suffered with the pressure she had felt since childhood, and recognized that she still struggled to accept professional criticism. "Sometimes, adulthood feels like a constant battle to remind myself that I am a valuable and worthy person, regardless of my external achievements," she concluded.

"I don't regret my time as a gifted child, but I do wish the gifted program had offered more attention to students' mental health and greater inclusion for those children who didn't fit the program's relatively narrow mold of exceptionality."

From her perspective, in recent years the concept of the gifted child has become a meme laden with jokes about perfectionism and the fear of not measuring up to others' expectations.

"I wish I could unlearn the idea that external praise equals true success, and instead measure excellence in terms of learning for the sake of learning itself," she concluded.