[darkpuma]

Maybe it reflects poorly on my character, but when I was a kid I and several other "gifted" kids turned receiving undue praise into a sport. We'd compete to find the laziest way (without lying) to receive praise specifically from the 'gifted instructor' meant to be supervising us. I think I won when I printed off a picture taken from the mandrelbot set (I did not write the renderer, I just screenshotted it) and hung the printout on the blackboard with the word "Fractal" written underneath it. The response to that was as though I had invented fractals (which of course I never claimed.)

It was a dumb game, but it taught me an important life lesson about how adults will believe what they want to believe. You don't even have to lie to people if they're willing to lie to themselves.