Talent Development Resources...................perspectives on talent : teen/young adult

.. .. Even with the stress of a tournament on the line, Jennifer Shahade insists that chess puts her into a Zen-like state of mind.  "Chess is a really good training ground for having pure experience, for living in the present moment and not in the past or future." This, she says, helps her to balance out her "neurotic New York lifestyle." /// As devoted as she is to chess, Jennifer is equally interested in finding and creating art -- including photography, creative writing, and performance art.  "I want everyday life to be more fun -- even surreal. ... I like art that's both hilarious and profound. That's why the artist Marcel Duchamp is one of my heroes," Jennifer explains. "Duchamp was also a master-level chess player." /// She is writing her first book [about women in chess] ... and plans to smash the assumption that men are more suited to chess because the game rewards aggression, obsession, confidence, and focus -- characteristics that are considered typically male. "Women are a little bit more likely to be realistic about their strengths and weaknesses," she explains. "If you take a talented boy player, they're gonna be like, 'Yeah, I'm great.'

.. .. "Girls are more likely to be able to say, 'I'm good at this and bad at that.' It helps a lot to know what you're good and bad at. On the down side, it's really good to have a lot of confidence in chess." from article "Knight Moves" by Carly Jacobs,  Spring 2004 BUST magazine [subscription] left: August 2004 issue of Chess Life [subscription] above: dressed for a "Pink Party" - and reading  the book Secrets of Chess Tactics ...related book : Birth of the Chess Queen by Marilyn Yalom  Drawing parallels between "symbolic queens on the chessboard and living queens at numerous royal courts," Yalom introduces readers to significant queens, empresses and countesses as she traces the spread of chess across Europe. With anecdotes, art, legends and literature, she shows how the chess queen became "the quintessential metaphor for female power in the Western world." [Publishers Weekly] ...Marcel Duchamp by Francis M. Naumann *related page:**androgyny / gender

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.. .. Interview mag. / Ingrid Sischy : But do you feel a yearning in the young? Camille Paglia : Absolutely. I think there's a yearning for truth, a desire to find great fundamentals again.  The next big voice who changes everything is going to be someone who can absorb the past but also speak to the moment.  Reality is extremely traumatic right now. You wonder how a nascent artist in his or her adolescence can psychologically process a culture that's so split between the hedonistic carnival of pop and the horrors of terrorism and war...

War is always a mutilating and brutalizing experience, so perhaps this generation of young people will be creatively delayed.  We might not hear from their strongest voices until they're in their late twenties or thirties.  My advice is never lose will and aspiration. If young people feel dwarfed, eclipsed, or silenced by our omnipresent commercial culture, they should model themselves on marathon runners -- keep observing, keep storing up experience, and speak later. Interview mag. / Ingrid Sischy : And the beauty of pop culture is that there's always the possibility that tomorrow we'll wake up and all these new ideas will have burst forth. Camille Paglia : Exactly. The seeds are being planted now. Interview mag. Aug. 2004 ...Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays -  by Camille Paglia <Amazon.com>  <Powells>  <Amazon.ca>  <Amazon.co.uk>

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.. .. Michael Stipe : So is your writing like a diary? Is it marking time? Macaulay Culkin : I stay away from the typical terms of a diary. It's not like, "Today I woke up and had a piece of toast." I write a lot of essays, short stories, dirty poetry, things like that.  It's something I do for myself. I'm not interested in making an industry of it. That's what it was like before, when I was 9, 10 years old. People were making an industry of me, and I don't want that anymore.

I did 14 movies in six years, I had a cartoon TV show, and I don't want to do that again. I just want to make unique pieces of art.  That's why I quit everything when I was 14 and sat around for eight years before I did another movie.  It's not like I didn't get offered teen movies or horror movies, but I didn't want to do those things.  Because of what I did when I was 10 years old, I'm not living from paycheck to paycheck, and I can do things because I want to do them. Technically, my lawyer got paid more for Party Monster than I did, but I love that movie and I'm so glad I did it. Michael Stipe : You're in charge now. You're leading your own destiny. Macaulay Culkin : Exactly. And I'm not in a rush. I can do one project a year and feel satisfied with that. from Interview mag., Feb, 2004

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What's the point of doing television or any art form if it's not going to be confrontational or if it's not going to make people think? It's something that maybe offends them a little bit, but I think that's the only way we get to question the world and our lives and learn things.  Amber Tamblyn- about her series "Joan of Arcadia" [ET Nov 21, 2003 - posted on joanofarcadia.com]

*related pages:**awareness / thinking............spirituality

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Just as uneven profiles often characterize the abilities of high-IQ individuals, uneven profiles also characterize individuals gifted in music or art, who may have a strong gift in the presence of an unremarkable IQ. ... Csikszentmihalyi et al. found that the artistically gifted adolesents they studied had poor academic skills. from article [PDF file] : Giftedness: Current Theory and Research by Ellen Winner, PhD,  Current Directions in Psychological Science, October 2000 ...Talented Teenagers : The Roots of Success and Failure by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi et al photo: Johnny Depp dropped out of school at 17 in hopes of becoming a rock musician [imdb.com]

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I went to an arts high school and I did some theater there... It just didn't work for me. I don't think there's one set way you can teach somebody to act.  And I don't know that you even can teach somebody, I think it's something that's in you or not. You can learn to be good, but I don't think you can learn to be great unless it's in your soul.  I think that's how it is for all arts. Clea DuVall .. [Checkout interview - posted on The World of Clea DuVall site]

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When she was 15, Christine was asked to share her views on what it means to be a gifted adolescent.  "The thought did cross my mind," she said, to write profoundly on the topic, but I quickly dismissed it. I'm trying to cut down on the number of deep and meaningful thoughts I have before breakfast."  Instead, Christine talked about herself and her giftedness by posing a series of questions, including: "Why is giftedness linked to achievement -- that is, what I can or cannot do -- instead of what and how I feel?" "Why do teachers act as counselors if they can't listen or stand not having a quick solution?" "Who says that growing up gifted necessarily means wanting to get high grades, going to college, getting a good job?" "Have you noticed that adults expect kids to wear the label 'gifted' when they won't?" ~ ~ ~ Mark is not an underachiever, despite grades that indicate otherwise. He is a selective consumer: a student very much in touch with both himself and the world of learning but unwilling to do much of his assigned work because he sees little purpose in doing so.

.. .. Passion vs. Achievement - by Jason, 14 To some teachers, passions are as important as achievements. Thank heavens! Some of us just don't seem to be able to make high grades like we should be able to -- for whatever reasons -- but we still have passions. ...  If you have an IQ of 160 and if learning every bit of knowledge and going to college at age 12 and making straight A's is your passion, then go for it.  But if you are like me and find that being with people, playing video games, reading about stuff that is interesting, having fun, and laughing a lot is your passion, then I think we should be allowed to do that without feeling guilty that we are letting society down. ...quotes from  When Gifted Kids Don't Have All the Answers:  How to Meet Their Social and Emotional Needs  by James R. Delisle, PhD et. al. photo: Edward Furlong at a video game inTerminator 2 [dvd]

*related page:**self-limiting behavior

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[People have said that at 20, you haven't paid your dues, that you're too young to be producing a movie.] Young people can do anything they want to do. And let's let that be a new thing. You know, starting at 29 is great. And maybe I should have waited and started when I was a certain age where I was guaranteed to not fail.  But that's boring... I wanted to take a risk... I have a lot inside of me I can do and give. And whether I'll do it successfully or not or up to other people's standards -- hey, maybe I'll fail. But failure is a wonderful thing too, you know. Alicia Silverstone    [TV Guide interview] bio: Alicia Silverstone  - by Phelan Powell, Rose Mary Powell

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I think adults don't enjoy life as much as children do, and they take life for granted. I don't think adults really know what true passion is."     Alexandra Nechita   (painter; born in Romania in 1985)   [from ABC Special "Teens: What Makes Them Tick?", March 8.99]

....**book: Outside the Lines by Alexandra Nechita

[reader:] 'Alexandra Nechita gives hope to a new generation of painters, who fear that "it has all been done before." She provides a fresh, vibrant look at everyday life and emotion. I found her interpretations of Disney films particularly powerful, and in a wonderful way, poking fun at those who might believe this American institution to be a deadening factor on young people. Hurrah to Nechita, for proving that even the most mainline entertainment can provoke brilliant outpourings of creativity."

*related page:**painting***

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"I first realized I was odd when I went to school at the age of five. I thought the teachers were stupid... insisting I drink milk...
insisting on name cards.. insisting you go to the toilet when you didn't want to, that sort of thing.

The reason I felt so odd is because other children seemed to accept that all this was quite normal, but I didn't."

'eccentric female professor, IQ 150' [from book: David Weeks. Eccentrics]
 

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[So what was your ambition? What were you after?]

"Attention. We all have our own ways of getting attention, you know, and being good at music
and having a cool band is definitely a way of getting attention at a certain age, and I wanted attention
like anybody else.

It actually took me forever to get into the music business - I'm quite a lot older than a lot of my contemporaries
and it took me a long time to get started.

I didn't actually start professionally making a living out of it till I was about 23, and it's funny, 'cos I've got friends
who are younger than that - my daughter's nearly 20, and a lot of people her age come up and say 'I'm so frustrated,
I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere, William. What do I do next?'

And I'm thinking, 'Man! You don't realise, there's loads of time to go. Don't hurry it, don't stress on it, don't over-think it,
just keep going, 'cos, like I said, I was 23 before I even got off the ground, and I spent years being frustrated'."

William Ørbit   [from interview: Music365, April 2000]  (Orbit coproduced/wrote Madonna's CD "Ray of Light" etc)
 
 

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Being gifted does not mean being better than anyone else.  So what does giftedness mean?
To me, the gift in giftedness is the potential to make this a better world for everyone.
Every person on the planet has a different job to do.

Some jobs require more years of school than othersólike doctors. Some require greater knowledge
of mathematics or computers or science or languages or art or music or poetry or mechanics or people.

You need to learn all you can so that you can do the life's work that awaits you.
Only then can you make a difference in the world.

When you hold yourself back from learning all that you are capable of learning so that you won't be
ahead of your friends, you not only hurt yourself, you hurt the world.

For the world needs you to fully develop your talents and abilities so that you can do that special job that only you can do."

from A letter to gifted children... by Linda Silverman, PhD,

The Gifted Development Center   - author of book :Counseling the Gifted and Talented
 
 

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Growing up... In the military, it was tough going through as a kid. It was a very tough way to grow up. But I've gained a lot from it, I believe.  You become very adaptable. You become very open to change and new situations and new people. And it really lends itself to the life on an actor, I think, because it's a sort of nomadic existence.*****Jeri Ryan [from interview on The Collective - A Jeri Ryan and Sci-Fi Appreciation Society]

 

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"Since I was a young child they said I was hyperactive, which I was. I had no attention span,
so they had a special class one period where they'd send the kids with emotional problems
or whatever they didn't understand. I felt like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
when I first went in there."

Vince Vaughn  [Movieline, Sept.97]
 

 << related pages: learning differences  ADHD; dyslexia etc mental health
 

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"The culture in general doesn't especially support giftedness and gifted people...
it's not all that different for adults or children. .. part of the problem was
simply that other people couldn't see them for who they are, and therefore
they were subjected to gross injustices. But once you understand it's not you,
it's other people and their inability to accept greatness, it's almost easier.

  from interview with Marilyn Mosley , Director of the Laurel Springs School

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