How the fallen gifted child can rise again
The title is misleading. The full answer would be too comprehensive for a medium post. If this article becomes too complex, use an AI like ChatGPT to understand it, as my articulation may be insufficient. What context am I talking about? Well, there is a specific group of people who do well academically as children uptil the end of schooling, but their academic performance crashes immediately upon reaching college, especially if they take STEM courses. I refer to the kind of people who need to put little effort compared to their peers in school and still do well enough to put them ahead in the class, but fail severely once in college.
The reasons this group of people did well in school is due to a combination of talent, bounded syllabus in school, structured learning and immediate feedback among many factors. I am sure by now, there are plenty of articles out there talking about the reasons for their fall. I will not repeat those. There are plenty of articles that give solutions for these kinds of people. I am sure that if you are one of those people, the most important thing you want to hear about is how to get back your mental prowess, your “smarts”, that brain that used to treat tests with ease, and get back the life where you were standing in the elite tier among your academic peers, and the life of high prestige and social status you used to have.
I believe the core reasons for the academic downfall of the gifted child is that they did not develop the discipline, habits, mentality, learning skills and the underlying neural infrastructure required for higher level learning. Learning at college levels, and especially STEM courses, is far more demanding than school. However, I will not provide some complicated plan for developing everything required to get back the smarts. I will talk about a simple and cliche method of learning that will be the key to providing two of the most important requirements for sustained motivation in learning. Structure and feeback. Hopefully this method will become a brick to building your mental foundations to get out of the rut you may be in. After all, if you can learn better and more consistently, that will help you get back on your horse.
In college, the former gifted child is overwhelmed by the lack of structure on what to learn and how to learn, making them incapable of deciding on a study plan. They often have no feedback until the end of the semester whether any method of effort they put in is even effective. The feedback comes far too late and too little. How to solve these problems? The cliche method to providing structure and feedback to learning is … mental models. Yes, cliche. But effective. Highly effective. Model building is one of the most effective methods of higher learning that will be required even in your real world job outside of college. I would go so far as to say that mental model building is a key skill that must be mastered and used daily for years to reach the highest levels of STEM fields such as becoming a professor in academia, or the top engineer in a company.
Get Smart Work’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Allow me to explain. A mental model is essentially an abstraction we create in our mind to explain a system. For example, a train system. The easiest model we can create in our minds to represent a train system is using a set of tracks, a vehicle designed to move on that tract, and a flat piece of land to lay the track. This forms a mental model. A set of components, i.e. the track, the train and the land. A set of rules for their behaviour such as trains can only travel on the tracks and the tracks are stationary. Finally, a set of rules for the abstract world of the model such as some level of friction on the tracks and the train wheels, ignore air resistance, etc. That simple. From this we can reason how a train moves, we can reason about its velocity, acceleration, its force, momentum and so much more. Just using a basic mental model. A set of components, rules for each component and rules for the abstract world in which these exist. That is all a mental model is. You can expand on this basis for your usage. Don’t hold yourself back.
How does a mental model provide structure to unstructured learning in college? Here we come to another cliche which is the first principles. The first principles is to think of the foundational concepts of a particular field of study or a system. The basic concepts from which all other concepts in that field or system is derived. For example, probability theory is based on the axioms stated by its pioneers. Those are the foundational concepts. The basic ideas upon which all other ideas of probability theory are built. That is how we build a structure for college level of education. Simply learn the ideas in the basic concepts of that subject and build a mental model in the mind of these concepts. Then all subsequent topics of that subject can then expand on this first mental model. For example, to build a mental model of a topic X, ask what are the conceptual foundations of X, which are Y, then ask what are the conceptual foundations of Y, and continue till you reach the core concepts at the very bottom. Then start building a mental model from that bottom, then see how each level above builds on these basic ideas till you get to Y topic and finally to X topic. A helpful way to start building a mental model is to approach the mental building from a problem solving perspective. Search online for what were people trying to solve that led to the foundational concepts of that subject, then what problems led to people building the next level of concepts of that subject, then what problems led people to build the next level of concepts built on the previous level, and so on. Thus, building mental models bring structure to your learning. You can see the levels and progress through them one level at a time.
Now, let us talk about feedback. Once you build the mental models, you can start finding problems related to that subject. Start from the easiest problems. Try to use the mental models you have so far built to solve these problems. That is, try to reason using the mental models instead of using memorized solution patterns. E.g. if asked to find the changes to the train velocity at fixed intervals of time as the train accelerates, you can start reasoning using the model instead of directly applying formulas. Try to imagine how the train would move using the rules you already applied to it, and figure out the solution to velocity changes at each time intervals as the train accelerates. Of course, you have to memorized the basic formulaes for this but try not to use the memorized solution patterns. Once you attempt to solve problems using your mental models, you will find results that contradict your model, and you will find that your model is inadequate to explain the phenomenon required to solve the problem. That is good, you can now update your mental model. Go back to the books and clarify the errors, especially errors in assumptions you had or concepts you misunderstood, then update your model. Now you have immediate feedback as you solve problems. Thus, you can see how well you are learning based on how well your model is built and how well it can be used to reason about the subject. As you solve problems by reasoning with mental models, you get immediate feedback on how well you are learning your subject.
As you advance through model building, you can even start to see the similarities between models and build a stronger model that connects two or more similar models. Keep going and one day you might just have a model of the entire world.
However, none of what I say will work if one does not take care of their physical and mental health. The absolute basic one must do to take care of physical health is by first ensuring sleeping at a time that suits their own body’s recovery rhythm and sleeping the duration suitable for them. Some people recover better by sleeping at 9 pm, some at 11 pm. Some people recover better by sleeping 8 hours some by 9 hours. One will have to find out through experiments what suits them. Then eating a balanced diet and in enough quantities to help their body function properly is necessary. You will need the energy.
As for the mental health aspect, I would recommend watching youtube videos of popular and, most importantly, licensed, medical professionals like Dr. Alok Kanojia who has a channel called HealthyGamerGG on YouTube. Of course, take their advice with a grain of salt.
That is the end of this article … If you are one of those former gifted children, I wish you all the best in your life as you take on challenges despite the difficulties you currently face. Good bye.
