I was in gifted, and transferred through a number of public schools too. Unfortunately I don’t remember much from those years except for them being very disorganized and being made very aware by teachers and others that we were supposed to be “different”. Whatever that meant.

One thing I do know is that the outcome of kids that were part of the gifted program was very normally distributed. Some people made out just fine when they got to adulthood, and some of them absolutely ruined their lives.

I still think the whole thing was ridiculous and instilled the wrong ideas and lessons to us.