Students in Our Gifted & Talented Class All Grew Up to Be…
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Students in Our Gifted & Talented Class All Grew Up to Be Failures—It Wasn't Our Fault
It really had seemed like I was destined for greatness when I was an elementary schooler. Life was so promising for me back then.
Everyone, from my relatives to my educators, thought I was headed in the direction of success and brilliance. I did, too. Homework and tests were always easy for me, and I would receive one straight A after another. I never had to study hard because my mind picked up concepts quickly, and I was always thinking up creative and reasoned responses to every question a teacher had. My brightness didn’t go unnoticed, with people always offering those same excited predictions.
“With a brain like that, you’ll for sure be a doctor or a scientist when you’re older. You’ve got so much to offer the world, Jared!”
In Year 5, at the height of my academic success, I was selected for my school’s Gifted and Talented program.
The class was described as a class to cater for the advanced learning needs of students with exceptional skill and prowess at school. My parents were told by the school faculty that this class would take my already brimming potential to the next level. The imposition on our existing curriculum would be small, with only a few extra lessons a week for me to gather with the other gifted students, and go over advanced coursework together. This way, our smarts wouldn’t go to waste.
As you might imagine, my parents were deeply proud about this opportunity. They agreed to enroll me in the program immediately.
And so began my time in the Millovich Prep Gifted & Talented program.
Truth be told, I never seemed to remember much of the class. It had a quality that was so forgettable for me. I remembered the other students that I met, walking into the classroom and introducing myself to the similarly smart kids at the desks. I remembered feeling excited but nervous, worried at how much smarter these other genius kids would be than me, but ready to prove my own abilities to them. Show them how fast I could write, or multiply, or memorise facts.
And that’s where my memories would get fuzzy.
I had vague recollections of lessons and activities in that Gifted & Talented room, at 2pm twice a week, but never anything concrete. My boredom and disinterest clearly kept me from retaining that much. This bored apathy would become an issue for me as I moved into Year 6, not just in that class, but in my education in general.
The transition in my academic abilities was swift and brutal. With puberty came a severe drop in my concentration, memory retention, logical reasoning, imagination and so on. This change seemed to be across the board, affecting all my classes and prior skills. Over the following year, my grade point average dropped from As to Bs to Ds, as I now struggled to get through assignments I’d previously whizzed through.
To say my parents were disappointed would be a colossal understatement. They had expected me to skyrocket to even greater heights of achievement, not become a slacker delinquent too dumb to complete even basic school tasks. Tutors they hired couldn’t bring my intelligent mojo back, nor could restore my lost motivation. The sudden uptick in the difficulty of schooling had depressed me, and I couldn’t see the point in trying if everything was now so impossible for me.
When the Gifted & Talented class finally kicked me out, it wasn’t a surprise nor was it a concern—overachieving was the least of my priorities school-wise. Now, my biggest focus would be not getting kicked out of school itself for underachieving.
For the rest of my schooling years, I was the burnout slacker. I watched countless peers, who I had easily outshone in grade school, outpace me academically with ease. Even my old, slow friend Ricky, who couldn’t even tell time until he was 12, gained a sudden burst of intellect in secondary education. His rich parents must have been pleased they wouldn’t have to buy his way into a university. I wasn’t in a position to call him a dimwit anymore—not when he was now the A+ student I’d used to be.
Somehow, I managed to graduate from high school despite my intellectual lethargy. Of course, my laggard results hadn’t gotten me into any decent colleges. But at least it kept my parents from complete despair, who had now long accepted that I wasn’t the wunderkind they’d thought I’d be.
Instead, I became a cleaner at a local car wash. The work was tiring and the hours weren’t great, but I relished being able to do monotonous tasks that my impaired brain didn’t struggle with. I tried my hand at community college, even managed to get into one I liked. The coursework to become a social worker had seemed doable at first. But, like in school, eventually my distraction and unmotivation crept back in.
Whether my struggles were caused by ADHD, dyslexia or just a dull mind, I didn’t care. Eventually, I dropped out. Working at the car wash wasn’t the doctor-scientist job I’d dreamed of when I was a kid. But it was good, honest work. I never doubted the turns of fate that had brought me to it.
That is, until that one day, when I was scrolling on my Facebook page and saw the lawsuit. The words “Class Action Lawsuit” immediately caught my eye, as well as the fact that it was posted by Mona, an acquaintance from way back in school. Our friend groups had intersected as kids—and we’d also crossed paths in that class.
The Gifted & Talented Program.
It appeared that was the very subject being named in the class action lawsuit in question. What on Earth would she be suing them about, I wondered in bafflement while on my lunch break. Did she trip over a desk and injure a leg or something?
*“Attention all Millovich Elementary alumni: we are seeking plaintiffs for a pending class action lawsuit.*
*If you were in the Gifted & Talented class, you may be entitled to compensation.*
*As many of you who follow me know, I have suffered for many years with cognitive impairment and mental fatigue. These conditions have profoundly impacted my tertiary and career prospects, limiting the work that I am able to do and the opportunities I am able to seek. I love my job dancing at the Kitty Club, but it is not the path I would have chosen for myself.”*
I raised my eyebrows in surprise at this. I’d known she’d struggled after school like I had but I didn’t know she’d become a stripper. At least she definitely earned more money than I did.
*“I have good reason to believe that the Gifted & Talented Class, which I was chosen for due to my academic excellence, is responsible for my conditions that lost me that success. Through poor curriculum and lesson planning, at a key point in my childhood development, I believe this class played a role in stunting my mental growth. This lack of structure also gave me bad learning habits which have followed me into adulthood.*
*I am not the only one—evidence suggests that others in this class were negatively affected by it as well. For our sustained losses from this academic disorganisation, we deserve to be fairly compensated.*
*If you, or anyone you know, has experienced similar cerebral symptoms or issues after attending this class, please get in contact with me ASAP.”*
Upon finishing reading the strange callout, I could feel myself grinning in amusement. Mona was really blaming her failures in life on some auxiliary class we took for a year in school? Because they didn’t teach us well enough? It was absurd. Surely a lawsuit that silly would be thrown out immediately.
And yet, I still wanted to reach out to her. Here was someone else who had burned out in life just like I had. Who had once had a life of promise turn into dismay. Maybe I was looking for a sympathetic, relatable ear when I messaged her back about it. Maybe I wanted a fast, sizable payout. Or maybe I just wanted to know more about this club she worked at.
Either way, I soon found myself sitting at a nearby diner, days later, waiting for Mona to arrive. She had messaged back excitedly when I told her an abbreviated version of my own story. Apparently, it mirrored her own backstory in more ways than she’d expected. Mona was convinced I could be the smoking gun in this suit.
Bustling in from outside in a rain-soaked overcoat, she spotted me signalling to her and made her way over.
“Wow, Jared, I haven’t seen you in so long” she exclaimed, sitting down across from me at the booth. “You’re bigger than I expected.”
The stunting to my mind hadn’t affected my body apparently. So I was a Neanderthal, then.
Mona was beautiful, but had a weariness that aged her. You could tell from her eyes that she wasn’t happy where she was. She got straight down to business.
“This lawsuit has huge potential. The lawyer I retained told me that, with evidence of Millovich’s poor lesson design for that class, we could be talking a payout of hundreds of thousands. I just need someone to help me investigate the matter—another victim of theirs.”
I tried to politely humour her, but couldn’t keep my skepticism from my response.
“You know, Mona” I offered gently, “I understand that it sucks to fail at stuff. No one gets that more than me. And yeah, that program was probably crap—I can’t even remember it. But I think we’ll get farther if we just take responsibility for our difficulties in life, instead of blaming a school. Falling from your perch is common with gifted kids—there’s a whole phenomenon for it.”
Mona’s eager, optimistic face instantly fell. I could tell she was mad at my blunt words, but she did a good job holding it in.
My words were harsh but I believed them. Like so many other gifted students in the world, I’d let it get to my head too young. Gotten too complacent, only for hormonal changes and harder coursework to upend my status quo. I saw so many others online lament the trend—the cliché of the gifted burnout.
“I’ve looked *into* this, Jared,” Mona insisted. “There are others like us—every other student in that class. Most of them are dropouts, a good deal of them are homeless, but every single one has been affected too. I’m giving you the chance to get justice for them—and for you.”
I returned home that night sure that I’d never take Mona up on that offer. Then I saw them glinting at me across the dingy studio apartment: my old school trophies and awards. The one remnant of my former glory that I’d kept. I sighed longingly.
I’d be helping Mona, after all.
The lynchpin in her lawsuit against the class, she revealed to me, was proof of the program’s academic negligence towards us. According to her, this would most likely be found in the building of the company that had run it.
ReGifted Corp had a shiny chrome exterior to their headquarters. As Mona and I approached the lobby that morning, donned in disguises, I felt the prickling of anxiety. This place was so sterile and professional—surely they’d see through us. But when we told reception we were teachers here for Gifted & Talented training, they waved us on through. A shirt and tie went a long way.
Making our way upstairs in the elevator, we settled on a plan.
“You check Level 9, which is their Information facility. I’ll check their Curriculum department on Level 11, and we’ll meet back in the lobby. Remember—grab any files or USB drives you can.”
With that directive, I bid Mona luck and crept out of the elevator into the maze of building corridors. Walking briskly down one after another, I began to feel dread set in. Something was not right about this place. Why were there scientists in lab coats walking around an educational facility? Why were there sounds of humming machinery through several doors? And why did I remember being here before?
Unable to bear the mystery any longer, I stealthily pushed my head through one of the unlocked doors on the level. Instead of finding data evidence, I saw something far, far worse.
There was a test classroom with desks inside. I had expected there might be. But I hadn’t expected the room’s rows and rows of children—with shiny, chrome, encircling machinery clasped to their heads. From the corridor I watched the transfixed children' s eyes flicker in pain as the machines interfaced with their brains. I knew instantly what those devices—towering over the kids’ heads like whirring salon heat lamps—were doing.
I knew because they’d inflicted the same thing on me.
Memories began to flash in my mind, triggered by sight of the disturbing mass harvesting. Excursions taking place during our Gifted & Talented classes. Excursions to this very same cold, demented building. Conversations about us like we weren’t there, by scientists who saw not talented children, but reservoirs of intelligence to sap and steal.
“What a bright, promising batch” the lead scientist in the room announced to his colleague, walking between the rows of comatose, seated children. “They have so much to offer our clients’ kids.”
That’s when his eyes landed on my own, in the crack of the door.
I took off running down the darkened halls and into the stairway. I never looked back for that scientist, possibly the same one who robbed my mind years ago. Against the odds, I made it out of the building into the afternoon sun.
Mona, however, didn’t. I waited for her outside the building for as long as I could, and was about to go to the police over her disappearance. And then I saw the post on her Facebook page.
News had just been received that Mona had been found dead at the club she performed at, that same evening. The cause of death was apparently a drug overdose. Of course, it wasn’t really. They’d gotten to her. Maybe they’d drained the rest of her brain, like when we were children, until she died. Or just killed her the old fashioned way. When I saw that the post about the lawsuit was deleted, I knew at once they’d gone out of their way to bury it.
I won’t let that happen.
That’s why I’m writing this post seeking other plaintiffs for an upcoming class action lawsuit. If you were in the Gifted & Talented class at any school across the globe—any school ReGifted Corp had their claws in—you may be entitled to compensation.
What’s more is you were almost certainly the victim of brain-sucking torture that you were left with no memory of, being whisked away under the guise of field trips. Your intellect and skills were then sold to wealthy parents of children without it. You were then discarded like a husk, forever failing to succeed because your brain’s matter has been literally disintegrated by their machines.
But we do have actionable evidence—ourselves.
If you, or anyone you know, has experienced similar cerebral symptoms or issues after attending this class, please get in contact with me ASAP.
#entertainment
source
It really had seemed like I was destined for greatness when I was an elementary schooler. Life was so promising for me back then.
Everyone, from my relatives to my educators, thought I was headed in the direction of success and brilliance. I did, too. Homework and tests were always easy for me, and I would receive one straight A after another. I never had to study hard because my mind picked up concepts quickly, and I was always thinking up creative and reasoned responses to every question a teacher had. My brightness didn’t go unnoticed, with people always offering those same excited predictions.
“With a brain like that, you’ll for sure be a doctor or a scientist when you’re older. You’ve got so much to offer the world, Jared!”
In Year 5, at the height of my academic success, I was selected for my school’s Gifted and Talented program.
The class was described as a class to cater for the advanced learning needs of students with exceptional skill and prowess at school. My parents were told by the school faculty that this class would take my already brimming potential to the next level. The imposition on our existing curriculum would be small, with only a few extra lessons a week for me to gather with the other gifted students, and go over advanced coursework together. This way, our smarts wouldn’t go to waste.
As you might imagine, my parents were deeply proud about this opportunity. They agreed to enroll me in the program immediately.
And so began my time in the Millovich Prep Gifted & Talented program.
Truth be told, I never seemed to remember much of the class. It had a quality that was so forgettable for me. I remembered the other students that I met, walking into the classroom and introducing myself to the similarly smart kids at the desks. I remembered feeling excited but nervous, worried at how much smarter these other genius kids would be than me, but ready to prove my own abilities to them. Show them how fast I could write, or multiply, or memorise facts.
And that’s where my memories would get fuzzy.
I had vague recollections of lessons and activities in that Gifted & Talented room, at 2pm twice a week, but never anything concrete. My boredom and disinterest clearly kept me from retaining that much. This bored apathy would become an issue for me as I moved into Year 6, not just in that class, but in my education in general.
The transition in my academic abilities was swift and brutal. With puberty came a severe drop in my concentration, memory retention, logical reasoning, imagination and so on. This change seemed to be across the board, affecting all my classes and prior skills. Over the following year, my grade point average dropped from As to Bs to Ds, as I now struggled to get through assignments I’d previously whizzed through.
To say my parents were disappointed would be a colossal understatement. They had expected me to skyrocket to even greater heights of achievement, not become a slacker delinquent too dumb to complete even basic school tasks. Tutors they hired couldn’t bring my intelligent mojo back, nor could restore my lost motivation. The sudden uptick in the difficulty of schooling had depressed me, and I couldn’t see the point in trying if everything was now so impossible for me.
When the Gifted & Talented class finally kicked me out, it wasn’t a surprise nor was it a concern—overachieving was the least of my priorities school-wise. Now, my biggest focus would be not getting kicked out of school itself for underachieving.
For the rest of my schooling years, I was the burnout slacker. I watched countless peers, who I had easily outshone in grade school, outpace me academically with ease. Even my old, slow friend Ricky, who couldn’t even tell time until he was 12, gained a sudden burst of intellect in secondary education. His rich parents must have been pleased they wouldn’t have to buy his way into a university. I wasn’t in a position to call him a dimwit anymore—not when he was now the A+ student I’d used to be.
Somehow, I managed to graduate from high school despite my intellectual lethargy. Of course, my laggard results hadn’t gotten me into any decent colleges. But at least it kept my parents from complete despair, who had now long accepted that I wasn’t the wunderkind they’d thought I’d be.
Instead, I became a cleaner at a local car wash. The work was tiring and the hours weren’t great, but I relished being able to do monotonous tasks that my impaired brain didn’t struggle with. I tried my hand at community college, even managed to get into one I liked. The coursework to become a social worker had seemed doable at first. But, like in school, eventually my distraction and unmotivation crept back in.
Whether my struggles were caused by ADHD, dyslexia or just a dull mind, I didn’t care. Eventually, I dropped out. Working at the car wash wasn’t the doctor-scientist job I’d dreamed of when I was a kid. But it was good, honest work. I never doubted the turns of fate that had brought me to it.
That is, until that one day, when I was scrolling on my Facebook page and saw the lawsuit. The words “Class Action Lawsuit” immediately caught my eye, as well as the fact that it was posted by Mona, an acquaintance from way back in school. Our friend groups had intersected as kids—and we’d also crossed paths in that class.
The Gifted & Talented Program.
It appeared that was the very subject being named in the class action lawsuit in question. What on Earth would she be suing them about, I wondered in bafflement while on my lunch break. Did she trip over a desk and injure a leg or something?
*“Attention all Millovich Elementary alumni: we are seeking plaintiffs for a pending class action lawsuit.*
*If you were in the Gifted & Talented class, you may be entitled to compensation.*
*As many of you who follow me know, I have suffered for many years with cognitive impairment and mental fatigue. These conditions have profoundly impacted my tertiary and career prospects, limiting the work that I am able to do and the opportunities I am able to seek. I love my job dancing at the Kitty Club, but it is not the path I would have chosen for myself.”*
I raised my eyebrows in surprise at this. I’d known she’d struggled after school like I had but I didn’t know she’d become a stripper. At least she definitely earned more money than I did.
*“I have good reason to believe that the Gifted & Talented Class, which I was chosen for due to my academic excellence, is responsible for my conditions that lost me that success. Through poor curriculum and lesson planning, at a key point in my childhood development, I believe this class played a role in stunting my mental growth. This lack of structure also gave me bad learning habits which have followed me into adulthood.*
*I am not the only one—evidence suggests that others in this class were negatively affected by it as well. For our sustained losses from this academic disorganisation, we deserve to be fairly compensated.*
*If you, or anyone you know, has experienced similar cerebral symptoms or issues after attending this class, please get in contact with me ASAP.”*
Upon finishing reading the strange callout, I could feel myself grinning in amusement. Mona was really blaming her failures in life on some auxiliary class we took for a year in school? Because they didn’t teach us well enough? It was absurd. Surely a lawsuit that silly would be thrown out immediately.
And yet, I still wanted to reach out to her. Here was someone else who had burned out in life just like I had. Who had once had a life of promise turn into dismay. Maybe I was looking for a sympathetic, relatable ear when I messaged her back about it. Maybe I wanted a fast, sizable payout. Or maybe I just wanted to know more about this club she worked at.
Either way, I soon found myself sitting at a nearby diner, days later, waiting for Mona to arrive. She had messaged back excitedly when I told her an abbreviated version of my own story. Apparently, it mirrored her own backstory in more ways than she’d expected. Mona was convinced I could be the smoking gun in this suit.
Bustling in from outside in a rain-soaked overcoat, she spotted me signalling to her and made her way over.
“Wow, Jared, I haven’t seen you in so long” she exclaimed, sitting down across from me at the booth. “You’re bigger than I expected.”
The stunting to my mind hadn’t affected my body apparently. So I was a Neanderthal, then.
Mona was beautiful, but had a weariness that aged her. You could tell from her eyes that she wasn’t happy where she was. She got straight down to business.
“This lawsuit has huge potential. The lawyer I retained told me that, with evidence of Millovich’s poor lesson design for that class, we could be talking a payout of hundreds of thousands. I just need someone to help me investigate the matter—another victim of theirs.”
I tried to politely humour her, but couldn’t keep my skepticism from my response.
“You know, Mona” I offered gently, “I understand that it sucks to fail at stuff. No one gets that more than me. And yeah, that program was probably crap—I can’t even remember it. But I think we’ll get farther if we just take responsibility for our difficulties in life, instead of blaming a school. Falling from your perch is common with gifted kids—there’s a whole phenomenon for it.”
Mona’s eager, optimistic face instantly fell. I could tell she was mad at my blunt words, but she did a good job holding it in.
My words were harsh but I believed them. Like so many other gifted students in the world, I’d let it get to my head too young. Gotten too complacent, only for hormonal changes and harder coursework to upend my status quo. I saw so many others online lament the trend—the cliché of the gifted burnout.
“I’ve looked *into* this, Jared,” Mona insisted. “There are others like us—every other student in that class. Most of them are dropouts, a good deal of them are homeless, but every single one has been affected too. I’m giving you the chance to get justice for them—and for you.”
I returned home that night sure that I’d never take Mona up on that offer. Then I saw them glinting at me across the dingy studio apartment: my old school trophies and awards. The one remnant of my former glory that I’d kept. I sighed longingly.
I’d be helping Mona, after all.
The lynchpin in her lawsuit against the class, she revealed to me, was proof of the program’s academic negligence towards us. According to her, this would most likely be found in the building of the company that had run it.
ReGifted Corp had a shiny chrome exterior to their headquarters. As Mona and I approached the lobby that morning, donned in disguises, I felt the prickling of anxiety. This place was so sterile and professional—surely they’d see through us. But when we told reception we were teachers here for Gifted & Talented training, they waved us on through. A shirt and tie went a long way.
Making our way upstairs in the elevator, we settled on a plan.
“You check Level 9, which is their Information facility. I’ll check their Curriculum department on Level 11, and we’ll meet back in the lobby. Remember—grab any files or USB drives you can.”
With that directive, I bid Mona luck and crept out of the elevator into the maze of building corridors. Walking briskly down one after another, I began to feel dread set in. Something was not right about this place. Why were there scientists in lab coats walking around an educational facility? Why were there sounds of humming machinery through several doors? And why did I remember being here before?
Unable to bear the mystery any longer, I stealthily pushed my head through one of the unlocked doors on the level. Instead of finding data evidence, I saw something far, far worse.
There was a test classroom with desks inside. I had expected there might be. But I hadn’t expected the room’s rows and rows of children—with shiny, chrome, encircling machinery clasped to their heads. From the corridor I watched the transfixed children' s eyes flicker in pain as the machines interfaced with their brains. I knew instantly what those devices—towering over the kids’ heads like whirring salon heat lamps—were doing.
I knew because they’d inflicted the same thing on me.
Memories began to flash in my mind, triggered by sight of the disturbing mass harvesting. Excursions taking place during our Gifted & Talented classes. Excursions to this very same cold, demented building. Conversations about us like we weren’t there, by scientists who saw not talented children, but reservoirs of intelligence to sap and steal.
“What a bright, promising batch” the lead scientist in the room announced to his colleague, walking between the rows of comatose, seated children. “They have so much to offer our clients’ kids.”
That’s when his eyes landed on my own, in the crack of the door.
I took off running down the darkened halls and into the stairway. I never looked back for that scientist, possibly the same one who robbed my mind years ago. Against the odds, I made it out of the building into the afternoon sun.
Mona, however, didn’t. I waited for her outside the building for as long as I could, and was about to go to the police over her disappearance. And then I saw the post on her Facebook page.
News had just been received that Mona had been found dead at the club she performed at, that same evening. The cause of death was apparently a drug overdose. Of course, it wasn’t really. They’d gotten to her. Maybe they’d drained the rest of her brain, like when we were children, until she died. Or just killed her the old fashioned way. When I saw that the post about the lawsuit was deleted, I knew at once they’d gone out of their way to bury it.
I won’t let that happen.
That’s why I’m writing this post seeking other plaintiffs for an upcoming class action lawsuit. If you were in the Gifted & Talented class at any school across the globe—any school ReGifted Corp had their claws in—you may be entitled to compensation.
What’s more is you were almost certainly the victim of brain-sucking torture that you were left with no memory of, being whisked away under the guise of field trips. Your intellect and skills were then sold to wealthy parents of children without it. You were then discarded like a husk, forever failing to succeed because your brain’s matter has been literally disintegrated by their machines.
But we do have actionable evidence—ourselves.
If you, or anyone you know, has experienced similar cerebral symptoms or issues after attending this class, please get in contact with me ASAP.
#entertainment
source
| 2,000 mlx | |
| 4 | |
| 0 |