Book review, March 2012

Three books:
1. The last lecture by Randy Pausch
2. Gifted grownups--the mixed blessings of extradinary potential by Marylou Kelly streznewski
3. Smart girls, gifted Woman, By Barbara A. Kerr



1. The last Lecture
by Randy Pausch
a computer science professor at CMU got pancreatic cancer. he gave a "last lecture" talking about how to live. The video got very famous then he wrote this book.
It's a semi-autography, about his childhood dreams and how he adventures to achieve them. also something about how to live his life.
There are two parts that's really special unique meaning to me,
First, of course it's about how childhood upbring determine the course of a person's life, which is the topic that I have always been interested in. His parents are both very curious and "nerdy" person that encourages exploration and gaining of knowledge, and so on and so on, I am not getting into detail here.
Second, it's about how he faced his cancer; he is so fucking practical! he basically planned how to spent his rest of the time to better benifit his family. He sold their house, and moved the entire family to virginia, where his wives family is. And then he did various things and basically lived a normal life. the way he looked at death is basically "oh well, now I have to do a lot of things in a short amount of time", a lot of things are impossible to do, for example watching his son growing up, but others that could be done, he tried to do them.
Yeah so it is practical, but so what, that's the whole point of death, we have a limited time in the world and how we spend it. He just have a shorter time in a sudden notice. Essentially we are doing the same thing.


2. Gifted grownups--the mixed blessings of extradinary potential
by Marylou Kelly streznewski

It's one of the most awesome and awakening books I've read.
Everything about the book could be seen from the title, and I want to stress the word "Mixed Blessing", which because I have been suffering from so far, and this book is certainly one of the keys to avoid a lot of the suffering.
So the author interviewed about 50 very gifted children and talked with them after they grow up into their adulthood. She presented their stories and summarized the common feelings/frustrations originated from extradinary potential, as well as ways to counter them.
So the book has three parts; I: what's the characteristics of gifted grownups, which I strongly identify myself to. II: the experience of a smart kids growing up, for instance, bored at school, family problems, loneliess etc etc. III: some specially interesting topics like personality disorder that's essentially giftedness, how they finding similar minds (friends and lovers), gifted woman and underachievements.
it bascially addressed a hell of the problems I have been confronting, some of which I didn't even know I have or I attributed to other reasons. This book puts a lot of my concepts and views in place. For example, I have been having a hard time in team work, because I am always impatient, I feel others are very slow and stupid and low efficient. But If I expressed my feelings nobody will like me, if I don't express my feelings I will suffer a lot during the slow and low-efficient team work. before reading this book, I thought it's all my "fault", that I should have been more patient and repect/appreciate others more, blabla, but hey, over the years I have been trying to be more patient and appreciative, but really it's not that I am wrong, it's just that I am smarter and faster than most people. Realizing this fact (instead of blaming myself) is a huge step to better function as a person and in a team, as well as in making some of my life choices.
Another example, I have been feeling "different" from all others for my entire life. Then I blamed myself for being different, and strange, and unable to fit in. the book pointed out all gifted adults have been feeling the same and the reason that it's hard to fit in is just that more gifted mind could be threatening to others and could make yourself bored very easily. Then the book talked about how to find the "alike" mind, which is of tremoudous help for me to find friends that I can truely relate to in a deep and intense level that I always wanted, instead of trying to hang out of normal people and "adapt to" the normal life style, which will never work.
Well in summary, knowing all the facts of the giftedness and knowing that people similar to me do exit are giant spetacular improvement of my view about myself and the world. I should have read this book maybe back in middle school, and that would have saved me so much trouble and frustrations.

Some interesting books and ideas quoted from this book:
the making of Americans by Gertrude Stein, a gifted woman
the cinderalla complex: fear of success and desire of being cared for. "like cinderella, woman today are still waiting for something external to transform their lives." Woman caught up in the Cinderella complex are "too angry to stay behind and too frighted to move ahead

3. Smart girls, gifted Woman
By Barbara A. Kerr

a similar book to the "gifted grownups" but specifically talking about one gender. the special part about this book are two:
it talked about the stories of a few famously successful woman in history and discussed what's the special characteristics to make them more successful than other similarly gifted woman, as it is very common for underachievement to happen in this gender because of social influence. So the two points that I remembered the author summarized, are: 1. having a unlimited/financial well being while growing up. So they feel free to pursue their intellectual interest. 2. the second part will go to the next point
what kind of relationships that gifted woman have. So the best man you could have just exact opposite of the popular standard. A macho confident protective handsome popular successful man is exactly the one you should avoid. for the reasons that you need a man's nourishing and understanding to give you chance to fully develop and utilize your potential, while this popular Standard man requires your nourish and support while ignoring your blazant talent. the most painful thing for woman like you is that your talent get ignored and muffled. So the book is telling you to look for caring nourishing man that understands you, which I totally agree with my previous experience and logic.
but the sad thing is the social expectation and such, women are considered to be "successful" if they manage to "capture" a standard popular man, thus a lot of gifted woman spend tons of time getting the man that doesn't give them things they need for full growth.

Finally, I am totally familiar of the "fear of success" that the books decribes. For example, when I am writing this book review, I feel I have so many thoughts pouring out of my mind that I don't even have time to type them up, and a lof of them are so brilliant and more is coming, that I am so scared. For the reasons of: 1. where am I going? I am like standing in the nobody's land intellectualwise, only I have been travelled there in my mind while nobody has reached, it felt so lonly and scary  2. what am I going to do with all my brilliance? I am so fast, I am so deep, I am so intense, I can do so many things at one time and my mind is running like a fast burning machine, what do I do with it? will people realize what I really am? apparently so far no one really know my potential. it's a feeling of lost and lonliness, combined with a sense of high. together, they lead me to be scared of myself, and scared of possible success, because somehow success is like too much of a burden and even very lonly. (even though I am very lonly anyway with or without success)