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I was tested as a child and had an iq of 164 at 10 years old. For my entire childhood every adult treated me like I was smarter than them and in most cases I was. I was in gifted and accelerated classes and excelled.
I know I'm not smart because from the headstart in life I got I went on to barely graduate from high school, drop out of community college twice, never hold a job for longer than 18 months, and have more gaps on my resume than experience.
Sounds a lot like ADHD.
It is! Or at least what a previous therapist thought.
There are multiple kinds of 'smart'. The following section in Wiki breaks them down into IQ, emotional, social, and moral. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence#Human
Historically, a lot of 'high IQ' people didn't necessarily 'fit in' to society. See the story of William James Sidis ... 'He entered Harvard University at age 11 and, as an adult, was claimed by family members to have an IQ between 250 and 300'.
Also historically, people smart enough to see that a lot of the world is about shuckin' and jivin' and not giving a crap? may not be not interested in playing the game. Some find other interests and don't see the point in 'accomplishing' things that will mostly be forgotten. Ramanujan had a HUGE talent for math ONLY, unrecognized until he wrote a professor halfway around the world.
We were all born without a manual. There are ways to enjoy life on your own terms.
That's all because you're bored. The world isn't geared for genius level intelligence.
Boredom is a lot more dangerous and potentially disastrous than most people realize, but it's definitely not my only problem. I struggle with some mental health issues that make most things a lot harder for me than many other people.
or even... I'm slightly above average, they put me in honors classes etc. functionally because I played Magic School Bus games as a kid and showed up to 2nd grade already knowing what an herbivore was, I got more boring homework to do for my entire adolescence. Whatbreally doomed me was "academically gifted" math class was just skipping a grade and my math performance never recovered.
I was fortunate that individuals in my elementary school actually made accommodations for me being ahead of average. My third grade teacher gave me a fourth grade math book and special assignments from it. The pull-out classes for smart kids were K-2 and 3-5, but I got put in the 3-5 class in second grade. My principal supported my parents in moving me to a different class because of teachers who weren’t supporting me (multiple times, actually).
My school was in a pretty low-income district, but I completely lucked out with educators (and parents) who fought for me.
Definitely still ended up on the gifted child > burnt out teen/adult who struggles with some basic life skills, but at least I didn’t end up struggling with my ADHD in school until high school because of the support in my younger years.
I went to decent schools in a decent district, they had "Academically Gifted" programs for elementary and middle school students, with "honors" and "AP" classes for high schoolers. A structural problem I think they had is they were operating kind of on video game logic: "You're smart so for you we're going to make classes harder for you." You're doing too well on Medium, we're bumping you up to Hard.
Which basically did the opposite of what I really needed. I didn't need more and longer assignments. In most subjects you could go a little deeper in detail with me and I'd keep up. In math class, I needed more concrete explanations of what the numbers meant. Math class is so often just "Here is how you do this algortihm. Follow these rules and you get the answer." "Okay, I got 7." "No, you were supposed to get -2, you forgot the transistational property of non-equal equality. You need to talk to the guidance counselor about your future because at this rate you're not going to pass this class." Funny how I did extremely well in chemistry and physics where they explained the math in concrete terms that I could build an intuitive relationship with.
I think there's also a problem where...Picture a mathematician. What do you see? A man in a sweater vest in an ivy covered building filling a chalkboard with greek letters and arcane symbols that prove some deep truth about reality, right? That's what it looks like to be good at math, so that's what we're going to make math class look like for every single citizen. Never mind that administrators rarely do math at all, a lot of office workers are fine with a 4-function calculator, meanwhile a carpenter needs a functioning understanding of trigonometry. In academia, aesthetics is more important than reality.