ACE 3 (but that feels one too high). I consider myself to have had a good childhood with loving parents. My father never had a relationship with his father. I think that abandonment is a factor in some of the emotional dysregulation issues he's dealt with throughout his life. I'm the oldest and, when I was really young, he also had some issues with drugs and alcohol that were basically dealt with by the time my siblings came along.

I was identified as gifted in 1st grade. It got to a point where I was teaching myself and working from 3rd and 4th grade textbooks in class, so the school basically told my parents I either needed to skip grades or go somewhere that would allow me to work at an accelerated pace because "otherwise, he's going to get frustrated and end up hating school." Parents moved me to a private school that taught in kind of an alternative style. The closest thing I can approximate it to is somewhat Montessori style. Starting in 1st grade, I basically sat in a cubicle and self-taught myself every subject. I had a minimum amount of course work to complete for each subject each day, and I was also in charge of grading my own work. If you got your work done, you graded and corrected your work accurately, and didn't get in trouble for anything else, then they had a "privileges" system that basically allowed you to play board games or, at times, wander the school grounds to do things like shoot baskets. I remember days where my school work took maybe an hour total. When I was in 9th grade, that school moved to a more traditional high school class setup, which was pretty boring for me. I'd been so far ahead before the change though that it allowed me to take a couple honors courses at the local university 1st semester of senior year and then graduate a semester early, where I spent that semester interning on Capitol Hill.

Growing up, I always did really well on standardized testing. I'd think I did terrible if I scored below the 97th percentile. For the college entrance exams, I scored National Merit Scholar level. In college, I tested at 137 and 142 (different IQ tests, don't recall which two).

Because the private school was small and "unaccredited" at the time, I suspect that led me to miss out on potential opportunities at more exclusive universities. Instead, I ended up attending a large state university (still a decent school). There, I had to teach myself how to study (never needed to before) and learn to balance attendance (for a subset of classes, I could skip lectures and still score highly on tests, but that sometimes bit me because I'd get dinged for missed attendance). Around junior year, I was officially diagnosed with ADHD.

I've spent my career working in the technology side of consulting. I'd classify myself as "somewhat satisfied" with my life. Career-wise, I've consciously made some decisions that I knew would potentially slow my career advancement in the interest of my family and trying to have a more sustainable work/life balance.

I'll be honest, I don't feel like my brain is put to great use most of the time. (Counterintuitively, that seems to get somewhat worse the more I advance.) I stay working in the field mainly because the nature of the work brings change and new challenges (new clients, new problems, etc.) and because I highly value working with intelligent people (and I'd put most of my coworkers in that category). Once in a while, something comes along that really allows me to leverage my natural strengths and shine. Between, I can get very bored and almost go on autopilot at times (some of that is the ADHD). Or I'm been viewed as performing well, but know deep down that I am only doing a fraction of what I am capable of. I constantly battle my ADHD tendencies.

I've had to adapt over the years in many ways. With the way I grew up, I'm very self-sufficient, so it took concerted effort to learn to delegate. In general, I had to learn patience. I think I was an okay manager but getting better at both of those things made me much better on the management side of things.

The rest of the "somewhat" response stems mostly to some marriage challenges over the past few years. That's another story but some of what I've described plays a small role there. Ex: it can wear on a partner when the other partner has a strong memory and is usually right, or when you the other partner is several steps ahead of the other when thinking something through, even when it isn't a competitive thing and you are just trying to get to the best or most accurate answer.