<p>Thanks Deborah for your post. I know what I am speaking of - worked in the food industry buisness for 10+ years to put myself through college, starting very young. At the end of the summer, I had to throw away my clothes. If not for that work, I would not have learned how to work, minute by minute, at a task. I am one of those “smart but lazy” kids.</p>
<p>Everybody’s “one of those ‘smart but lazy’ kids”, it seems, until they ___________ (fill in the blank with some sort of experience doing grueling manual labour) which taught them the value of good old-fashioned hard work, and from then on the laziness was all gone, and they lived happily ever after.</p>
<p>Forgive my cynicism, but it’s really hard to avoid rolling my eyes at these kinds of stories.</p>
<p>Cool dude, there are things that make me roll my eyes, too.</p>
<p>Might be different than the ones that make you roll your eyes though.</p>
<p>From SlackerDad “Apparently you missed the post where I noted that I’d be satisfied with a relatively low paying job ($20K a year) if it were something I didn’t hate and that had flexible hours; and that as I keep saying, I think I could provide a lot of value for the buck (with the corollary being that the intellectual abilities of people like me are as things stand now being at least partially wasted).”</p>
<p>Wouldn’t the world be full of rainbows and butterflies if we all loved our jobs 100% of the time, always could work when we wanted to, and were as smart as SlackerDad. However, VALUE also consists of working hard at things you hate (at the moment), working at times when yuou would rather be doing something else, and working on tasks that are “below” your so smart intelligence.</p>
<p>I could not help myself…</p>
<p>Get a job at Starbucks, they offer health insurance.</p>
<p>Didn’t read Mom90’s posts as suggesting, even flippantly, that bucking up and doing the hard labor is some magical cure-all for laziness/apathy, but rather that it helps develop a skill set, especially if a desired goal is not in the immediate future. It is hard for many to work for a long term goal down the road. They may work hard for a cause they feel strongly about, but see little value in working the mundane job for the mundane payoff.</p>
<p>Not too many people bound out of bed and jump for joy at the opportunity to clean toilets or fry hamburgers, but if they see it as a means to achieve a goal down the road, they can tolerate the short-term displeasure for the hopeful long term pleasure. If there is no long term goal in sight, the short term effort will wane</p>
<p>Closest Starbucks is considerably more than 50 miles away, Oldfort. Hard to believe there’s any such place like this any more, I know; and I even live in a college town!</p>
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<p>I think that you are saying that these stories show a lack of appreciation for your situation: that they sound like the “Stop It!” Bob Newhart video that you supplied some pages back. (Thanks!)</p>
<p>However, if nothing new is tried, if every possibility is rejected, then nothing will change. So, if change is wanted, then my question is: What looks plausible to you as a step in a potentially good direction? What will you try first?</p>
<p>“Everybody’s “one of those ‘smart but lazy’ kids”, it seems, until they ___________ (fill in the blank with some sort of experience doing grueling manual labour) which taught them the value of good old-fashioned hard work, and from then on the laziness was all gone…”</p>
<p>(filling in the blank)…buy food, clothes, medicine…endless list follows here; pay to license/gas/insure/repair for a car; pay for rent, student loans, taxes (assuming there’s an income), overdue library books…another endless list follows here; support family (many endless lists…)</p>
<p>“and they lived happily ever after.” maybe, maybe not. but that’s how it goes after you stop getting money from home. no more drinking whiskey while sucking milk.</p>
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<p>Well, how would you know unless you tried it? Oh, I forgot, you’re too intellectual and all to be slinging the burgers at McDonald’s. The world owes you something more befitting your intellect.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t agree with the characterisation that “every possibility is rejected”. First let’s remember that my primary goal is to keep my son from destroying his academic record such that his opportunities for college are limited. To that end, I mentioned that I initially sought to homeschool him as someone here suggested, but that’s a no-go thanks to his mom. His mother also dismisses the notion of ADHD; however, I intend to seek an official diagnosis regardless (if there are any lawyers here, feel free to comment on whether I could potentially be headed for trouble by doing so against her wishes, even though I’m probably not going to seek to have him medicated). This will likely be helpful just to have on record at school so that his educators deal with his issues with understanding instead of simply with consternation. (And yes, I can see how those who pooh-pooh the existence of this condition would find that unfair special treatment for the “lazy”, and I’m not sure that I can fully dismiss their objection; but like most parents I’m looking out for my own, fair or not.)</p>
<p>As for me, in researching ADHD once I quite unexpectedly discovered that it describes me so perfectly, I have come to the conclusion that the best types of careers for those of us that have this condition along with high intellectual aptitude, are those that involve what one ADHD sufferer described as “putting out fires all day”. He is a consultant in the Twin Cities at 3M IIRC, and different people come to him with different issues for him to tackle all day. He doesn’t have big projects that take lots of planning, or a pile of work on his desk for him to take initiative to tackle; and the issues to tackle come to him rather than his having to seek them out. Sounds perfect, and though I doubt there’s much of anything like that around here (as I say, we don’t even have a Starbucks, much less anything like 3M), it’s definitely something to keep in mind for the middle and long term.</p>
<p>BTW, in the way of a little explanation for my annoyance at the suggestion that I (or my son?) work at McDonald’s to teach us a good work ethic: I would bet that I’ve logged more time working at “McJobs” (though none of them were actually at McDonald’s per se, they were in other fast food or pizza chains) than at least 95% of the people posting here. And those jobs did nothing for me except make me more and more averse to “good old-fashioned work”. It’s not that I “think I’m too good” for such work; I just hate it–no different from how I don’t think I’m too good to sleep on a pile of gravel instead of a mattress, it’s just that I would find the former very uncomfortable.</p>
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<p>I suggest looking into the research on willpower and self-regulation. Procrastination, for example, is a failure of self-regulation. A few interesting results:</p>
<p>Everybody has a finite supply of will-power. If you use it for one thing, it’s not available for the next thing. </p>
<p>Some people are naturally way better than other people at self-regulation; they have more willpower. Too bad for those of us not gifted in that direction. People with ADD and Aspergers in general are by nature very bad at self-regulation. One can say this is a moral failing or a character failing, but it’s innate.</p>
<p>Sleepiness and low blood glucose sap willpower. If you’re sleepy or hungry, you have trouble resisting temptation. So one step in getting better at achieving goals is to make sure you get enough sleep and eat right.</p>
<p>You can set up external structures to aid your willpower; you don’t have to do it all in your head. For a simple example, if you can’t resist eating delicious cookies if they are right there in your house, don’t buy them. You have to resist buying them in the grocery store, but that takes less willpower than keeping on resisting them all day every day because they’re in the cupboard-- and remember, willpower is finite.</p>
<p>Self-regulation (willpower) is strongest in the morning.</p>
<p>You can build up your store of willpower, by exercising willpower, apparently. So, if you commit to one small thing every day, and follow through with it for a few weeks, you get better at exercising willpower for other things.</p>
<p>Listening to smug people lecture you about willpower, if you are deficient, is not likely to help you. It’s dangerous for the smug people too, because since you don’t have much willpower you might not be able to resist kicking them. Or you might not try-- maybe you think smug people deserve to be kicked if they torment other people.</p>
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<p>LOL! Thanks Cardinal, this made my day. :)</p>
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<p>I’m sorry. I did not mean that as a description: I was trying to say that if every possibility is rejected…then nothing will change. … in order to ask which possibilities might be worth trying (for you), so as to avoid the outcome of nothing changing, when change is desired.</p>
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<p>I wonder if this idea can have any short-term implications as well–something that you could get started on. For example, there is Cardinal Fang’s post just above. Also: could the possibility of putting out fires (along with the other motivation you described some pages back) be sufficient to get back to working on finishing up your degree?</p>
<p>Would kicking require willpower or motivation? ;)</p>
<p>I want ADad as my therapist, just sayin’.</p>
<p>Aw, Pizzagirl, thank you for your kind words! :)</p>
<p>OP, you mentioned the sort of jobs that are very high-pressure in concentrated bursts. I wouldn’t consider myself an underachiever, but demographically as far as intelligence and test scores i fall in approximately the same range as you and your son. I completely understand the feeling of not wanting to do work that feels like sloth work. I don’t know if anyone has addressed this in a previous post, but to me it seems that instead of medicating your son and fighting his nature the best avenue would just be to find help him find what he loves and pursue it.
You seem to have already provided evidence of the fact that he does well in short-term high-pressure situations such as standardized tests. Obviously he has interests; perhaps he can find a job in one of those career fields that mimics the pressure of a standardized test? A job that is always surprising and requires him to strain himself mentally?
Perhaps he would literally do well as a fire-fighter? Hahaha.
If he isn’t interested in school, is he a kinesthetic sort of guy who really likes to be out doing things?</p>
<p>The entire thread is interesting - but I only read through the first 5 pages of postings. </p>
<p>Asking about “slacking” on College Confidential is a set up, for sure. I mean, think about it. Who inhabits this site? Young people- or their parents- who are “achievement” driven in one form or another. Or anxious on some level about their child and his/her well-being. (Yes, myself included.) I have one daughter who is over-the-top achievment driven. When I express concern that she is pushing herself too much her reply is, “It makes me happy.” She gains a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction from this. The other is laid back and so happy when she is being kind or providing a listening ear to one of her friends. They are very different personalities and temperaments.</p>
<p>I’d say that our country is learning, in a huge, wake-up-call kinda’ way, that a job doesn’t define you and neither does money. We pay a huge price for making the mistake of thinking that what we “DO” equals our worth as human beings. And we place a heavy burden on those who, for whatever reason, don’t follow the script. </p>
<p>IMHO our societal standards are frenzied, off kilter, promote an ethic of selfishness and are simply unbalanced. </p>
<p>Having said that, if the original poster is unhappy with his life trajectory then he can take action to do something different. If he’s worried about his son, there are many alternatives that people choose over that which is “typically” chosen in main-stream USA. I have a friend from high school who took an alternative route and she has lived one of the most genuinely interesting, adventure-filled lives of anyone I know. </p>
<p>I’m having difficulty discerning if the op’s angst comes from within, is a result of outside influences, or is a combination of each. Once he clarifies that (for himself), he will have a better idea of how to help his son. </p>
<p>In my opinion, it’s a matter of what brings each of us a sense of satisfaction, feeling fully alive, and a sense of well-being. Sounds to me that the political action stuff provides this for the op. In this culture it takes guts to march to a tune that no-one else hears.</p>
<p>ADad, I’m definitely going to finish that degree–but first my wife needs to get a teaching job (or something else if she can’t find a teaching position) so we can handle it financially.</p>
<p>Elizaruns, I wouldn’t say my son is totally uninterested in school–he says he does like his gifted class, but that’s only a half day once a week. Also, his regular classroom teacher is in her first year, and he does not like her that well (my wife and I were also not impressed with her when going to conferences, and it annoys me that when grading his assignments, she “corrects” his work in ways that are sometimes incorrect or too narrow in scope). I’m hoping he may like middle school better next year, although it could also be more problematic for him if he is not organised.</p>
<p>As far as whether he likes kinesthetic things, he likes to ride his bike and play tennis, but probably no more than any other kid. I would say his favourite activity is reading, although watching the cartoon series Narudo Shippuden (sp?) is lately a close second, LOL.</p>
<p>Patc, I really liked your post. I tend to agree with you about our societal standards. OTOH (as you implicitly acknowledge) while we can try to change society, there is only so much one person can do and ultimately we have to live in the society we inhabit. </p>
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<p>It certainly wouldn’t have been the place I expected to go (had I even known of its existence). But in Googling “smart but lazy”, this was the site that had the relevant results, though the threads were a couple years old. And it has turned out to be a most illuminating discussion indeed.</p>
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<p>Interesting question. I would say it mostly comes from without rather than within, and particularly as I’ve said out of concern that my son won’t be as resilient as I feel I am.</p>