>Much like this writer, I ended up okay anyway.

Don't leave us hanging! What happened?

I too was a (white) latino kid in GATE in the early 90s. I definitely didn't succeed at everything - i'm more athletic than a lot of nerds, but not compared to actual athletes, but school was easy enough that by the time high school came around, I completely stopped caring and just read a lot of books.

My study habits were bad though, so by the time I stared tackling harder subjects on my own, I lost a lot of confidence and had a pretty unimpressive career as a middling software engineer all through my 20s.

Eventually I learned some things were hard regardless of how smart you are, I learned to self study harder things, and now i'm doing well with lots of really smart coworkers at a FAANG.