[Bertio]

As a high school dropout living in the blue collar world after some rough time as a teen on the street, having left home at 15, I'd long forgotten about the potential I once had in grade school. Years later when I decided to go back to school and get a degree, I entered the CS program. Despite great performance I carried the delusion that I was not nearly as smart as everyone else. I was also often the only woman in the class and deep down believed that I was inferior. I had accepted that hard work was my only real tool for success. But I truly loved the material and chose to get a double major in Math. I was pretty isolated from my peers and was completely unaware to what degree I was outperforming them. It wasn't for several years out in the workforce where I actually started to realize I was actually alright in the intelligence department and I wasn't just fooling everyone (although I still have my doubts some days...). Nowadays, I frequently find myself in disbelief of where I am now, what my career is, what I get paid and what my life is like compared to where I was headed many years ago.

My brother on the other hand was treated like a genius from an early age and was never really forced to work hard. Even when he failed, there was reasoning that he was just too gifted and he was bored and never really had to learn how to truly apply himself or grow. My dad gave him a job and eventually gave him his company when he retired that he ran into the ground. He lived with my parents until he was over 30 and now approaching 50 he still struggles with keeping a job.

I think about the two of us and how we were both led astray by our adults thinking they already knew what we were capable of. What you say about your experience being damaging really resonates to me even if I'm coming from the opposite side of things. I feel like I got extremely lucky that my particular set of experiences even if they were tough to live through allowed me to land on my feet.