Astrid’s Journal

Lately I’ve felt very bad… Cause I’m intelligent (IQ within the highly gifted range), but bad at everything else…

It’s not a new issue - for the last almost six years I’ve always been wondering why I was so bad at many things, while I “should” be good at them. From the time I was a little kid on I’ve always been said to have social and emotional problems and some behaviour issues (eg. get frustrated and angry very easily). And I don’t consider anything wrong with all those years I’ve wondered why I behave the way I do - including the meanwhile 1.5 years I’ve thought I’m on the autistic spectrum. I’ve never considered that a “problem” - it was an issue in 10th grade, but so was the whole social skills stuff and I didn’t feel bad about that being an issue (well… I of course wanted to get better at it, but the fact people addressed it didn’t make me sad).

What I mean is the issue of how can an intellignet girl like me be sooo behind in evertyhing else? My Dad will say that “I’m not less clever than him” if I don’t understand a social situation. My Mum will shout at me that it seems as if I’m mentally retarded. My teacher will use my intelligence as a positive way of starting to say that it’s not the only thing that’s important. And the Dutch tutors on ICC obviously found me to be the complete opposite of the ideal blind teen: good with the computer and at English, but I seemed to have very poor O&M (Orientation & Mobility) skills, couldn’t even tie my own bowling shoes (that’s why I have shoes with zippers, not lace-ups) and appearantly was always curt.

As I started reading articles from the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the National Federation of the Blind and other organisations for the blind, that dealt with blind-child development and intervention, I felt increasingly depressed: they all listed problems applicable to a 17-year-old me, but solutions that were good for preschoolers. And yeah, there were articles that acknowladged that there are teens out there with the same issues, but either they told about multi-handicapped people, or they blamed the parents for being over-protective. As far as I know, my parents have never been over-protective (I can remember myself not wanting or being able to learn the things I should, such as practical or daily living skills) and I’m AFAIK not multi-handicapped either.

What makes me feel bad, is that my learning abilities make me get an image of the “superkid”, which carries expectations with it… expectations I’ve no idea of how to meet… So I feel I can either use my learning abilities to compensate for my other difficulties (which I feel is useless), or my learning abilities will make me be viewed as a kid who should be a superkid at evertyhing. I like neither… and it makes me wonder why I should have my learning abilities, if they only lead to expectations in other areas I can’t meet…

Astrid

Hi all,

Here’s a new entry for my diary, cause I now can find the time (well, actually I should do homework but I’ve four free hours tomorrow so I’ll do that then).

As I said, my finals week started October 27th and ended October 31st. I got most of my grades back last week. My best is English (for which I’d everything correct), but the reading test was extremely easy and it wasn’t the same as my classmates got (well, it was less work) so I feel it’s not really fair… General science was also a good grade (8,9 out of 10) and philosophy was 8. Latin was 6,9 which I consider quite good for a difficult subject like Latin. The last I’ve got back so far was history. And of course one always gets back the bad grades when one already thinks one’s only good grades. It was a 4,5 while 5,5 is sufficient. I have to get back French and German. I don’t worry about German but feel I’ve done French really bad. It was a typical De Jager (French teacher) test, meaning we didn’t get what we’d expected and the lay-out sucked. Half of the test was suddenly gone and replaced by weird chars and another part of the test appeared twice… Pfff, I’d thought all the test would be made up of columns etc., which didn’t appear to be, but De Jager always thinks of some stupid lay-out..

My new timetable (we get a new every seven weeks or so) really sucks. On Monday I have two classes, then 4 free hours and then two classes. On Tuesday I start the second hour and go on till the eights with one free hour. Wednesday the second till ninth class with two free hours, Tuesday *sigh* the first till ninth with only one free hour and Friday is a relaxed day cause then I have from the third till the seventh hour with no free hours.

On November 1st I went to an info day on the university of Nijmegen. I went to info classes for English and history. English seems sooo cool and history is not really cool cause I only like part of it. So this week I’ve been telling everyone I’ll perhaps study English. However, I know myself well enough to know my ideas of what I want might change very rpidly. Not even a year ago I wanted to study Dutch, but now I don’t like that anymore. I’ve now decided I’ll go to info classes on universities for English and history and take brochures on other subjects, cause I think either English or history (probably English) is what I want, but I have to get info on other subjects. Nijmegen by the way is a very cool town.

Astri