Skipping grades (off-topic), was Re: weekends

From: Ron Bauerle <BAUERLE_at_engr.erie.ge.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 8:55:25 -0400 (EDT)

Note: the following is off-topic, but I wanted to let everybody else have
the opportunity to get involved in any further discussions...

>From: AHVT94B_at_prodigy.com (MR THADDEUS R BOYD)

>Well, school's starting, which means I'm only going to be here on weekends
>for the rest of the school-year...good news is, I've skipped 7th grade.

Hmm, maybe I should forward you the logs I made from rec.org.mensa when I
posted about this several months back - from what I remember of the
follow-ups and e-mail replies, this wasn't universally a negative
experience, but in general it was. I posted about it to see if anybody
else's experience was like mine: I skipped 5th grade, and have suffered
socially for it ever since. While it's possible that this still would have
been the case had I not skipped the grade and thus been that much smarter
than my colleagues, the fact that after skipping the grade I was still smarter
than most of them, _plus_ being a year behind them physically, pretty much
destroyed any dating and other social opportunities I might have had...

I don't mean for this to be a self-fulfilling prophecy for you though, so
my advice is to take advantage of as many social opportunities as you can
to get to know your new classmates and establish some good friendships if
possible. If you're into sports, go out for them, but hopefully the year's
difference won't be too much to overcome (I'm not athletic, which was
another strike against me).

I'm curious as to whether or not any of this came up as an issue during
the supposed discussions you had with your counselor, parents, etc.

Anyway, if anybody wants to discuss this further, I suggest we take it to
e-mail and not clutter up the list any more...

Ron Bauerle
Received on Mon Aug 21 1995 - 09:07:18 PDT