I am amazed and astounded at how many people wrote in to say they identified with this. I had no freaking idea. Mind you, I went to entire schools of gifted kids, and many of them worked hard on top of being smart as fuck-all. All the same, it was a real shock for me when I got to college and was finally challenged for the first time. I was miserable-- I lost self-confidence completely when I started doing poorly at things, and am still working to get it back. It sucks, too, that I can't be a professional student for the rest of my life-- to my dismay, I've discovered that it's what I'm best at (ie, as opposed to any real life or marketable skills).