I guess I would best describe myself as a late bloomer but that would be too simplistic. If anything, my academic challenges started because I started too early. My mom wanted me out of the house and found a private school that would take me a year earlier than anyone else. When you are 4 and everyone else is 5 it is a significant handicap that isn’t going to be rectified. I didn’t know I was younger than everyone else, but I knew I had to work harder than most to keep up.

 

If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, by eleventh grade, I was categorized as a significant overachiever. The school discovered this about me when a psychologist working on his master’s degree used my class as a guinea pig, administering all kinds of tests to me and my classmates. The conclusion from the tests was that I should not have been able to keep up with the challenging academic program at the school and the fact that I at least was keeping a middling profile was baffling to them. I also failed math and that led to follow-up investigations and the conclusion that I should go to the public school’s summer school and then leave and go to public school for grade 12.

 

During that summer it was also discovered that I had what we would call an LD, but since the term hadn’t been invented yet, the diagnosis was that I had a focus problem which left me a slow reader. All the IQ and similar tests were time-based so of course I registered lower than most of the class.

 

I don’t think they quite considered me a ‘moron,’ but I was advised that I should not consider college because I was never going to get in and if I did, I would flunk out quickly. That prognosis was another confirmation of my academic potential, or lack thereof, that I had experienced most of my school life.

Everyone seemed to be a much better student than me. The only thing that kept me going was the fear of failure and an ego that deep down believed I was better than they were saying, and I was going to be somebody in this life.

My first hopeful experience came when I went to the public school’s summer school math class and very quickly, I was seen as the class genius. At private school they would put up a geometry problem and I would stare at it for 10 minutes while half the class was writing away. Sometimes I got to the answer, sometimes I did not. In public summer school I was the one writing right away and everyone else was staring at the ceiling.

 

That was my first insight into the possibility that I was not the loser they thought I was.
For grades 12 and 13, (the author lived in Canada), I may not have been in the top tier of the class but in the general population that I was now competing with, I was in the top third. I applied to college and was accepted.

In college I could tailor classes to where my talents and interests were. Math was no longer on the table.

I realized that if I worked hard and applied myself, I could succeed.  I discovered skills and aptitudes that were undeveloped in private school but flourished in college. The college competition was not smarter than me and my dedication to my studies was better than most. I graduated with distinction which meant I had an A grade point average. I was accepted to graduate school where I received my MA and got there a year ahead of the rest of my class. I received my professional degree a few years later and had a very successful career for 40 years. I developed a national reputation. I published 2 books, and I retired comfortably.

The late bloomer effect on my career was that I brought a factor of maturity, personal drive, fear of failure and an ego that overcame the external knocks; I finally believed I could do so many things that I would never have dreamed of back when I was young.
I was always told at home that I could accomplish anything I put my mind to, so naturally I checked on how the stars of the class were doing. I quickly learned that I was not in their league and even worse my perception was that they did not even notice me or care about my existence. In my tainted eyes they were nobleman, and I was a lowly serf.
If you have ever seen the movie, “Peggy Sue Got Married,” there is a scene at the end when the rejected class nerd of High School comes to a High School reunion many years later. He arrives as a wealthy celebrity with a few “babes” on his arms, and the envy of the entire class. In the end the nerd was rich and famous, the “cool” kid was an auto mechanic.  

In an interview with a Silicon Valley titan, Alex Karp, who has dyslexia and ADHD, he describes the kind of people he hires for his company, Palantir. He views ‘Palantirians,’ like the Goonies, as underdogs winning in the end.

‘Most people at Palantir didn’t get to do a lot of winning in high school,’ Mr. Karp said at a company gathering in Palo Alto, to laughter from the audience.

‘Believe in yourself, develop confidence, work hard and find out what you are interested in, and pursue it in every venue open to you and success will come your way as well.’