when I was 13 I asked my parents if I
could drop out of middle school and go
to college I had been in and out of
various gifting program since I was
about six at the time I was in seventh
grade the only advanced class I was
taking at the time was geometry and I
had already finished all of geometry two
months before the year ended I really
wanted to do math but I wasn’t getting
to do the type of math that I wanted to
do and I wanted to do history I wanted
to do English I wanted to do a lot of
things but I was limited by the
coursework that was given to me and I
didn’t have a lot of friends I couldn’t
relate very well to the other people at
my school and I didn’t know when things
were going to get better and then I had
a conversation with somebody who told me
about an opportunity to change
everything he told me about this little
program at the University of Washington
in Seattle where I live it takes middle
school students who are bored and
frustrated and looking for a new
challenge
students like me it takes them into this
year of grueling college preparatory
work they take lots of classes it’s
reported to have five hours of homework
a night this was one of the most
exciting things to me and then after the
end of that year they go to the
University of Washington as freshmen I
was a lot more enthusiastic about this
and my parents were at first one of the
first questions they asked me was but
what about the prom this is a really
common question that parents have for
students who want to do stuff like this
they were concerned that if I didn’t go
to high school I wouldn’t get those high
school experiences that everybody gets
like prom parties hanging out with
friends but they let me apply to the
program anyway after some convincing and
I got in and I ended up going through
the program and what I discovered was I
ended up getting a lot of those
experiences anyway we did have our
annual spring dance
we called it not a prom we also had a
Drama Society which would put on a play
every year I like to think of it more
like a small high school on a college
campus rather than a sub
of a college today I’m going to be
talking about the lessons I learned
starting seven years ago when I asked my
parents about college I graduated
college last year first lesson I learned
the ability to fail is a valuable skill
I spent a lot of time failing especially
in that first year and I had to learn
how to take that information not take it
personally and use it to better myself
number two it’s okay to have unique
needs what I’m talking about unique
needs here and referring to things like
accommodations for disabled students I’m
also referring thing abstract things
like needing support from your family
during difficult times number three the
type of person you are is a choice you
make I call myself an X gifted kid
because being gifted is not something I
choose but being things like driven and
compassionate is something that I do
choose and I make those choices all the
time number four most importantly ask
for help I’ve been asking for help ever
since that day I talked to my parents
I’m still asking for help now and it’s a
valuable skill and if you want to
accomplish things and be successful you
need to understand that you can’t do
that alone so the ability to fail is a
valuable skill I started the first year
of college preparation in September 2011
this was about six months after I had
that talk with my parents in the first
few weeks we were going through a course
load that’s a lot heavier than what’s
usually expected of a college freshman
we’re taking five classes English
history precalculus ethics and physics
and we were expected to start performing
at a college level very quickly we’re
getting a ton of feedback from our
professors I remember one paper I got
about two weeks into the program I had
these paragraphs of feedback from my
teacher explaining everything I did
wrong and a grade of one point seven out
of four which was like the worst grade I
had ever gotten and I was kind of
devastated by that at first I wasn’t
used to not succeeding at things
especially not succeeding at things that
I did try to succeed at and what kept me
going was the knowledge that everybody’s
expected to
struggle and fail when you’re doing
something like this I mean a lot of
pressure was put on us we put that
pressure upon ourselves too but it was
important to remember that I was asking
a lot of myself and I needed to learn
and I needed to grow by talking to
people and I ended up spending a lot of
time talking to my history professor
about that paper and it took the whole
year I’d argue but eventually I did
learn how to write at a college level
but the other thing I learned was that
failure is not a personal judgment
against yourself it’s not a final
statement of who you are as a person
it’s a bit of information and you can
use the information to become better and
that’s something that you have to do
continuously and it requires a bit of
humility to know that you can’t succeed
at everything but that humility carried
me very far number two it’s okay to have
unique needs so I graduated from that
first year that was kind of like my high
school graduation and I started at the
University of Washington I went there
for a couple years and when I was 16 I
moved on campus it was my first time
living away from my parents and a lot of
things started to come up a lot once I
was having trouble taking care of myself
as I think many 16 year-olds would
without their parents one thing that
happened that was a little ridiculous
was I would go to class and I’d be
sitting in these big lecture halls with
up to 700 students it would be full
people are starting to get sick so I’m
sitting in class taking notes trying to
pay attention and I hear a noise like
that and it breaks my concentration and
it’s a lot more anxiety inducing than it
used to be when I was younger so I try
to get my focus back on the teacher and
I’m just like desperately trying to
ignore the sounds it’s just it keeps
happening and throughout that whole
class period I’m no longer paying
attention I’m just focusing on trying to
predict when it’s going to happen again
and trying to deal with that and I ended
up skipping a lot of class that year
because it was just too much for me and
I wasn’t getting anything out of class
anyway and after a while I realized that
this could not continue I ended up
talking to a psychiatrist
who told me about something called
misophonia this literally means hatred
of sound it’s something that people one
study estimates that 20% of college
students have and it’s having a fighter
but a fight-or-flight reaction to a
relatively innocuous noise like
sniffling she also told me that I have
ADHD which explained a lot of the
problems I was having with
self-management and it also explained
other things about myself and it was
really useful for a couple different
reasons one was I legally had the right
to go to my school and say hey I need
accommodations and they set me up with
the system so that I could wear
headphones and the input into the
headphones would be whatever the teacher
was saying into this little microphone
that I carried around with me which
meant that I could filter out all that
background noise and just focus in class
and it was like a miracle how quickly
that improved everything in my life not
having that source of stress and as for
the ADHD thing there’s this concept of
twice exceptional which refers to gifted
students who have disabilities and I
think it’s a little bit misleading
because in my case I consider my
giftedness and my disability to come
from the same source which is ADHD
because I have ADHD I can do things like
make connections very quickly and when
you’re working in research that’s a
great thing to be able to do because
you’re looking at data all the time and
you need to make those connections and I
talked to a lot of people with ADHD who
are incredibly successful and who have
found ways to manage the more negative
parts of it like being disorganized for
example and what I’ve learned is that
once you can manage that and once you
have that knowledge about yourself the
positive aspects of it can really shine
so I consider ADHD for me
to be kind of like a superpower because
it gives me the ability to do things
that other people can’t do and all
superpowers come with the weakness in my
case I’m pretty disorganized and I get
easily distracted but I know how to deal
with that now and because I’m not
ashamed of that part of myself it means
that I can really appreciate the parts
of it that really improved my life and
make me the person that I am number
three the
type of person you are is a choice you
make so I graduated last year
I’ve always wondered when you’re in high
school there are a lot of bullies and
there are a lot of geniuses I’ve
wondered where they go after high school
because you don’t use those words for
adults a lot of the time sometimes you
do but not as much as you do in high
school so what happens where do they go
in my experience the label of gifted
kind of fell away after I graduated from
school it’s something that people don’t
really care about once you’re in the
working world especially in a field like
scientific research where everybody is
brilliant the only time I really talk
about my age in a professional setting
is when I need to tell people I can’t
meet them at a bar and this can be a
little bit difficult to deal with if you
spent your whole life calling yourself
gifted having that label and having that
be your entire identity because it means
that once you lose that you kind of lose
your entire sense of self and so what
I’ve been doing is I’ve been working to
replace the label gifted with things
like driven and passionate and for
example I consider myself to be good at
educating people I’ve spent a lot of
time helping people with math right now
I volunteer every week helping kids with
social skills that’s not something that
was born knowing how to do it’s
something I had to learn and I made that
choice a few years ago to have that be
part of Who I am
same with music I played piano for a
really long time these days I sing in a
choir I’ve been doing that for a few
years now and that’s also not something
I was born knowing how to do it’s a
skill that I had to hone I am from a
family of people that I consider to be
incredibly gifted my brother Michael is
the starting quarterback at his high
school my sisters Kate and Coco do track
and field and they’re really good at it
they they really impressed me and
they’re that way because they’ve chosen
to work really hard and make sacrifices
and give up their time
and all this commitment so that they can
accomplish these things my brother would
not have made it to starting quarterback
if he didn’t make the choice to be that
type of person a leader and athlete and
same with my sisters they made the
choice to commit themselves to track and
field and its really paid off for them
and I’m really proud of them and I’m
trying to internalize the idea that I
can be like them in a way I can work
really hard to meet my goals and I can
make the type of person I am be a choice
and it’s a choice that I make every day
what type of person I am to the world
it’s not a label that was imposed on me
when I was six it’s a choice and it’s
completely controlled by me and that’s
really important the theme of all of
this is asking for help I have been
asking for help ever since I was 13 when
I was 13 I didn’t really think I needed
help with anything when I talked to my
parents I thought all I was asking from
them was for them to sign a consent form
but I was asking for a lot more than
that I was asking for their support and
I was telling them that something was
wrong and that I needed help I wasn’t
getting the love I needed from my peers
I wasn’t getting the stimulation I
needed from school and something had to
change
so even that saying that I wanted to go
to college was a cry for help in a way
and that’s a good thing I think if I
hadn’t made that choice I would be a
much different person and I asked for
help from my teachers I asked for help
from my family all the time I asked for
help from professionals who can give me
the help I need I asked for help from my
co-workers and my bosses and asking for
help is sort of it requires a lot of
humility but it also requires an
acknowledgement that nobody can do
anything alone some people including me
when I was 13 think that you can do
everything alone but I can’t and
acknowledging that means that I can
really succeed because I surround myself
with people who will help me and support
me in anything I try to do so I’d like
to invite all of you no matter what your
background is no matter whether you
consider yourself gifted no matter what
you’ve been told about yourself to
always challenge yourself always strive
to
provide for yourself whatever you need
and through that always ask for help thank you
could drop out of middle school and go
to college I had been in and out of
various gifting program since I was
about six at the time I was in seventh
grade the only advanced class I was
taking at the time was geometry and I
had already finished all of geometry two
months before the year ended I really
wanted to do math but I wasn’t getting
to do the type of math that I wanted to
do and I wanted to do history I wanted
to do English I wanted to do a lot of
things but I was limited by the
coursework that was given to me and I
didn’t have a lot of friends I couldn’t
relate very well to the other people at
my school and I didn’t know when things
were going to get better and then I had
a conversation with somebody who told me
about an opportunity to change
everything he told me about this little
program at the University of Washington
in Seattle where I live it takes middle
school students who are bored and
frustrated and looking for a new
challenge
students like me it takes them into this
year of grueling college preparatory
work they take lots of classes it’s
reported to have five hours of homework
a night this was one of the most
exciting things to me and then after the
end of that year they go to the
University of Washington as freshmen I
was a lot more enthusiastic about this
and my parents were at first one of the
first questions they asked me was but
what about the prom this is a really
common question that parents have for
students who want to do stuff like this
they were concerned that if I didn’t go
to high school I wouldn’t get those high
school experiences that everybody gets
like prom parties hanging out with
friends but they let me apply to the
program anyway after some convincing and
I got in and I ended up going through
the program and what I discovered was I
ended up getting a lot of those
experiences anyway we did have our
annual spring dance
we called it not a prom we also had a
Drama Society which would put on a play
every year I like to think of it more
like a small high school on a college
campus rather than a sub
of a college today I’m going to be
talking about the lessons I learned
starting seven years ago when I asked my
parents about college I graduated
college last year first lesson I learned
the ability to fail is a valuable skill
I spent a lot of time failing especially
in that first year and I had to learn
how to take that information not take it
personally and use it to better myself
number two it’s okay to have unique
needs what I’m talking about unique
needs here and referring to things like
accommodations for disabled students I’m
also referring thing abstract things
like needing support from your family
during difficult times number three the
type of person you are is a choice you
make I call myself an X gifted kid
because being gifted is not something I
choose but being things like driven and
compassionate is something that I do
choose and I make those choices all the
time number four most importantly ask
for help I’ve been asking for help ever
since that day I talked to my parents
I’m still asking for help now and it’s a
valuable skill and if you want to
accomplish things and be successful you
need to understand that you can’t do
that alone so the ability to fail is a
valuable skill I started the first year
of college preparation in September 2011
this was about six months after I had
that talk with my parents in the first
few weeks we were going through a course
load that’s a lot heavier than what’s
usually expected of a college freshman
we’re taking five classes English
history precalculus ethics and physics
and we were expected to start performing
at a college level very quickly we’re
getting a ton of feedback from our
professors I remember one paper I got
about two weeks into the program I had
these paragraphs of feedback from my
teacher explaining everything I did
wrong and a grade of one point seven out
of four which was like the worst grade I
had ever gotten and I was kind of
devastated by that at first I wasn’t
used to not succeeding at things
especially not succeeding at things that
I did try to succeed at and what kept me
going was the knowledge that everybody’s
expected to
struggle and fail when you’re doing
something like this I mean a lot of
pressure was put on us we put that
pressure upon ourselves too but it was
important to remember that I was asking
a lot of myself and I needed to learn
and I needed to grow by talking to
people and I ended up spending a lot of
time talking to my history professor
about that paper and it took the whole
year I’d argue but eventually I did
learn how to write at a college level
but the other thing I learned was that
failure is not a personal judgment
against yourself it’s not a final
statement of who you are as a person
it’s a bit of information and you can
use the information to become better and
that’s something that you have to do
continuously and it requires a bit of
humility to know that you can’t succeed
at everything but that humility carried
me very far number two it’s okay to have
unique needs so I graduated from that
first year that was kind of like my high
school graduation and I started at the
University of Washington I went there
for a couple years and when I was 16 I
moved on campus it was my first time
living away from my parents and a lot of
things started to come up a lot once I
was having trouble taking care of myself
as I think many 16 year-olds would
without their parents one thing that
happened that was a little ridiculous
was I would go to class and I’d be
sitting in these big lecture halls with
up to 700 students it would be full
people are starting to get sick so I’m
sitting in class taking notes trying to
pay attention and I hear a noise like
that and it breaks my concentration and
it’s a lot more anxiety inducing than it
used to be when I was younger so I try
to get my focus back on the teacher and
I’m just like desperately trying to
ignore the sounds it’s just it keeps
happening and throughout that whole
class period I’m no longer paying
attention I’m just focusing on trying to
predict when it’s going to happen again
and trying to deal with that and I ended
up skipping a lot of class that year
because it was just too much for me and
I wasn’t getting anything out of class
anyway and after a while I realized that
this could not continue I ended up
talking to a psychiatrist
who told me about something called
misophonia this literally means hatred
of sound it’s something that people one
study estimates that 20% of college
students have and it’s having a fighter
but a fight-or-flight reaction to a
relatively innocuous noise like
sniffling she also told me that I have
ADHD which explained a lot of the
problems I was having with
self-management and it also explained
other things about myself and it was
really useful for a couple different
reasons one was I legally had the right
to go to my school and say hey I need
accommodations and they set me up with
the system so that I could wear
headphones and the input into the
headphones would be whatever the teacher
was saying into this little microphone
that I carried around with me which
meant that I could filter out all that
background noise and just focus in class
and it was like a miracle how quickly
that improved everything in my life not
having that source of stress and as for
the ADHD thing there’s this concept of
twice exceptional which refers to gifted
students who have disabilities and I
think it’s a little bit misleading
because in my case I consider my
giftedness and my disability to come
from the same source which is ADHD
because I have ADHD I can do things like
make connections very quickly and when
you’re working in research that’s a
great thing to be able to do because
you’re looking at data all the time and
you need to make those connections and I
talked to a lot of people with ADHD who
are incredibly successful and who have
found ways to manage the more negative
parts of it like being disorganized for
example and what I’ve learned is that
once you can manage that and once you
have that knowledge about yourself the
positive aspects of it can really shine
so I consider ADHD for me
to be kind of like a superpower because
it gives me the ability to do things
that other people can’t do and all
superpowers come with the weakness in my
case I’m pretty disorganized and I get
easily distracted but I know how to deal
with that now and because I’m not
ashamed of that part of myself it means
that I can really appreciate the parts
of it that really improved my life and
make me the person that I am number
three the
type of person you are is a choice you
make so I graduated last year
I’ve always wondered when you’re in high
school there are a lot of bullies and
there are a lot of geniuses I’ve
wondered where they go after high school
because you don’t use those words for
adults a lot of the time sometimes you
do but not as much as you do in high
school so what happens where do they go
in my experience the label of gifted
kind of fell away after I graduated from
school it’s something that people don’t
really care about once you’re in the
working world especially in a field like
scientific research where everybody is
brilliant the only time I really talk
about my age in a professional setting
is when I need to tell people I can’t
meet them at a bar and this can be a
little bit difficult to deal with if you
spent your whole life calling yourself
gifted having that label and having that
be your entire identity because it means
that once you lose that you kind of lose
your entire sense of self and so what
I’ve been doing is I’ve been working to
replace the label gifted with things
like driven and passionate and for
example I consider myself to be good at
educating people I’ve spent a lot of
time helping people with math right now
I volunteer every week helping kids with
social skills that’s not something that
was born knowing how to do it’s
something I had to learn and I made that
choice a few years ago to have that be
part of Who I am
same with music I played piano for a
really long time these days I sing in a
choir I’ve been doing that for a few
years now and that’s also not something
I was born knowing how to do it’s a
skill that I had to hone I am from a
family of people that I consider to be
incredibly gifted my brother Michael is
the starting quarterback at his high
school my sisters Kate and Coco do track
and field and they’re really good at it
they they really impressed me and
they’re that way because they’ve chosen
to work really hard and make sacrifices
and give up their time
and all this commitment so that they can
accomplish these things my brother would
not have made it to starting quarterback
if he didn’t make the choice to be that
type of person a leader and athlete and
same with my sisters they made the
choice to commit themselves to track and
field and its really paid off for them
and I’m really proud of them and I’m
trying to internalize the idea that I
can be like them in a way I can work
really hard to meet my goals and I can
make the type of person I am be a choice
and it’s a choice that I make every day
what type of person I am to the world
it’s not a label that was imposed on me
when I was six it’s a choice and it’s
completely controlled by me and that’s
really important the theme of all of
this is asking for help I have been
asking for help ever since I was 13 when
I was 13 I didn’t really think I needed
help with anything when I talked to my
parents I thought all I was asking from
them was for them to sign a consent form
but I was asking for a lot more than
that I was asking for their support and
I was telling them that something was
wrong and that I needed help I wasn’t
getting the love I needed from my peers
I wasn’t getting the stimulation I
needed from school and something had to
change
so even that saying that I wanted to go
to college was a cry for help in a way
and that’s a good thing I think if I
hadn’t made that choice I would be a
much different person and I asked for
help from my teachers I asked for help
from my family all the time I asked for
help from professionals who can give me
the help I need I asked for help from my
co-workers and my bosses and asking for
help is sort of it requires a lot of
humility but it also requires an
acknowledgement that nobody can do
anything alone some people including me
when I was 13 think that you can do
everything alone but I can’t and
acknowledging that means that I can
really succeed because I surround myself
with people who will help me and support
me in anything I try to do so I’d like
to invite all of you no matter what your
background is no matter whether you
consider yourself gifted no matter what
you’ve been told about yourself to
always challenge yourself always strive
to
provide for yourself whatever you need
and through that always ask for help thank you
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