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What does it mean to be a gifted student? According to Natural Association, “children are gifted when their ability is significantly above the norm for their age”. For me being a gifted student is challenging yourself to explore new areas of study and excel in those areas. Being a gifted student never left me feeling different; I was treated the same as my other peers. Thus, while I had the opportunity to broaden my knowledge, I am still able to participate in school as a typical teenager would.
As an elementary student classes weren’t challenging for me. Understanding new material came naturally to me and homework was never a problem. For example learning about long division intrigued me rather than confusing me, allowing me to quickly figure out the difference between large numbers at a young age. Therefore, I never felt particularly challenged from the material I learned in my basic classes, and was left wanting to learn more.
In the third grade I was presented the option to take a test to classify as a gifted student. Initially I was nervous and scared to take this test, because I believed that if I passed the test I was going to have switch schools or have to do an overwhelming amount of schoolwork. I was also anxious because, if I had failed the test, I feared I would appear unintelligent. Walking into the classroom, these feelings of anxiety didn’t subside until the second I received the results.
After finding out that I had passed and was now considered a gifted student, my feelings of anxiousness were replaced with excitement. I was still going to be a regular student in class with all my friends and the teachers I was familiar with. Also, because my classes had not changed, I was not going to be treated any differently from my peers with the exception of having more options to take difficult classes with more challenging information. This allowed me to later take two high school courses while I was still a middle school student, broadening my horizons in subjects such as math and languages.
Now, as a teenage high schooler, I understand that being a gifted student has provided me with the ability to go over the limit and push my personal boundaries. I have matured in ways that far exceed academic expectations by becoming more open to new opportunities, exploring various fields of studies, and taking on more responsibilities. This level of maturity has even led me to pursue student counsel, resulting in me being chosen as the ninth grade representative of my class. Thereby, my experiences as a gifted student have led me to challenge myself without changing my surroundings. Above all, I was still able to live the life of a typical student and gain the education that I have always strived for.