BellaOnline Forums Education Gifted Education The Perils of Multipoteniality

Great article, Lorel -- although my son seems to have honed in on what he wants to do (I have made sure he is aware that the door is open to change if he desires it, though), he has a number of friends that seem to be caught in that trap.

You said, "... sometimes even mature adults as well."

That kind of hit home, even though I'm not gifted. I'm a stage in my life where I'm trying to decide what to do next, now that DS will be going to college f/t in the fall. (Until then, I seem to be mostly booked with driving him to and from activities, so a slight reprieve!) I don't really want to go back to what I used to do -- programming -- and even if I did, I would need to relearn it all, plus new stuff, since it has been so long. But I think about the options, and am having my own troubles narrowing down my focus, trying to figure out how to proceed.

Somehow, "You can have it all" is often interpreted as "You MUST have it all" -- and that is definitely overwhelming!

I think, too, it isn't just that they can excel in multiple areas, but that they can have multiple, diverse, passions. Passion can sometimes carry the day when raw talent isn't there as much as they might like.

Here's a link to the article Ms. A is referencing:BellaOnline ALERT: Raw URLs are not allowed in these forums for security reasons. Please use UBB code. If you don't know how to do UBB code just post here for help - we will help out!

Nice article, Lorel. I especially felt the tip about interning early in one's education to be a good one that I myself started giving back when our son was I think 10 and we learned from a college student interning at an MIT lab from his home university in India (one that has a higher ranking than MIT in some places, I am thinking) that in India, ALL college students MUST do an internship in their field before getting the college degree. I had felt our son's internship experience was good for him to have, but hadn't really thought about how everyone really should do some time in the particular job environment they are formally studying to work in someday before they get the degree, and this despite the fact that I knew I had goofed by not interning in college as I am pretty sure I wouldn't have bothered to do my graduate degree in the same topic if I had (but I just never thought about how it's good for ALL to do internships before graduating from college till I heard from that student that it's not even a choice in India).

That's really interesting about Indian students needing to intern. I'll bet their undergrads are far less likely to switch majors than their American counterparts. And then there are all the college grads who end up working in a totally unrelated field to what they were studying in school...