So much potential... Young Overachievers

Being selected to go to the Gifted Kids Program was the highest honour given to anyone at my primary school. I was never selected, but I used to tell people it was because I was too intelligent for it, in fact I was simply too gifted. It's not just being singled out as a gifted child that gives people a sense of superiority, but other academic markers as well. To this day I still like to brag about how I had a 13-year-old reading age when I was nine. Similarly, I like to cling on desperately to the fact that I played in a cricket tournament for Wellington one time. Believe it or not, this is not a shameless brag about me peaking in primary school, but more an investigation into what us overachievers are up to now, and how the pressure of performing well in school has impacted our adult lives.

One thing I've never really known how to do is study, I had people telling me I was intelligent from a young age which meant I expected things to come easy to me. In high school I expected to just know how to do physics despite never showing up to class or actually listening. The reason I didn't listen though, is because I wasn't immediately good at it, causing me to lose interest quickly.

Ruby is a self-confessed overachiever, and struggles with the same issue.

"If I'm not immediately good at something I have no motivation to do it. If I can't do it easily I don't want to do it at all."

Focussing so intently on grades and achievements can take away the fun of learning. When you get a bad grade you don't think 'oh that's okay because I learnt so much'. You panic because you can't get excellence endorsed or whatever the fuck.

Daisy – on paper – is an overachiever by the very definition of the word, she was Dux of her high school and will soon be off to Oxford to do her PhD. Despite this, the pressure of academic achievement has had a huge impact on her life.

"If I don't get something instantly then I feel like a failure, especially for subjects like maths that I'm not immediately confident in. It means I'm really bad at pushing through things that are hard, and also bad at asking for help in case everyone realises I'm an idiot. I'm not an idiot, but that's always the worry I have."

It's not just academic achievements that can leave us feeling pressure in our adult lives. Billy was a competitive diver and represented New Zealand overseas.

"Being apart of such a competitive space when I was so young, left me with a need to be constantly busy. Otherwise I feel unproductive and my anxiety gets in the way of keeping things. It left me feeling not good enough all the time and restricted what I took part in because I thought I would just fail."

Billy can't really shake her high achieving spirit and finds she always feels pressure to excercise in a competitive way – she participates in competitive running now.

The common theme among this focus group of overachievers is the sense of anxiety that happens as a result of being congratulated for your abilities.

Caitlin did well in school but, when she didn't do well, she realised that her mental health took a huge hit if she didn't get the grade she wanted.

"It kind of made me realise that I was an extremely anxious person, which led to me being depressed. I based so much of my self-worth on how well I did in school and it impacted me hugely."

The education system in New Zealand is facing a 'truancy crisis' with fewer than 60 per cent of students attending school regularly. This number has been on the decline since 2015 and was made worse by Covid-19.

The Government has a plan to get stricter about informing parents on absences faster and making sure students aren't regularly missing school. At some point though, it might be worth realising that the damage is coming from inside the house. With an education system that values you based on your booksmarts and assigns you a level of intelligence before you can even spell the word (I could spell it because of my reading age), isn't it worth thinking about the pressure kids are under?

It might seem like this attack on the education system comes from a place of jealousy because I didn't turn into the child prodigy I was clearly meant to be, but it's not. A traditional school system isn't for everyone and instead of beating around the bush with truancy solutions we should think about how the education system actually serves young people.

It's clear from this very scientific focus group that measuring a child's intelligence and telling them how smart they are has a huge impact on how they interact with the education system in the future, and even how they value themselves.

Big love to all of my young overachievers (except the ones that went to Gifted Kids Programmes).