Releasing Gifted Kids into the Wild
RETOUCH BY DAVID FINCH
F
or all they knew, my parents had raised a
well-adjusted young man. Bright, funny,
ambitious—at the age of eighteen, it
seemed as though I possessed all of the adjectives a person might need in order to be successful in life. I, too, had thought I had my act
together, having soared through all the requisite developmental milestones of
a Gen X-er at age-appropriate intervals:
nized as the step that necessarily followed high
school. The coursework wasn’t the problem; it
was living independently that seemed to be the
issue. I just wasn’t prepared for the demands of
real life.
Of all the things I’d learned in my honors and
advanced-placement classes, none of it had to
do with functioning like an adult.
Laundry, for instance, was just something that
everyone else seemed to know how to
do. Sure, I had vague recollections of my mom cranking dials and pressing
d
buttons on the machines
e
arn
e
l
’d
I
s
g
at home. Detergents were
e thin
Age 7: Stopped pred
Of all th
n
a
s
r
added, and there was
no
tending to be a Duke
in my ho ment classes,
some screen thingy that
-place
of Hazzard
d
e
c
h
n
t
i
a
v
gathered lint, but this
ad
do w
had to
t
i
f
.
Age 8: Began preo
t
constituted the entirety
e
l
non
adu
n
a
e
k
i
l
tending to be GI Joe
of my knowledge of
ing
unction
f
laundry processes. For
Age 12: Began recitthis reason, I avoided
ing entire episodes of
doing any laundry my entire first week and
ALF—girls were not
a
half at the University of Miami. I’d pass the
impressed by this remarkable skill
dormitory laundry room