(no subject)

[kyrasantae]

I got Internets back in my place. It was actually kind of nice, though, to have to trek to the library twice a day to poke around online, once in the morning and once later at night. So it's time for another quote!

Problems of Adjustment to Occupation: [...] So far from being one-sided in ability and interest, [highly intelligent children] are typically capable of so many different kinds of success that they may have difficulty in confining themselves to a reasonable number of enterprises. Some of them are lost to usefulness through spreading their available time and energy over such a wide array of projects that nothing can be finished or done perfectly. After all, time and space are as limited for the gifted as for others, and the life-span is probably not much longer for them than for others. A choice must be made among the numerous possibilities, since modern life calls for specialization.

The dangers in development with respect to work habits are, therefore, that the child may not develop any habits of sustained effort, and that he may fail of success as a worker through being interested in too many things ever to accomplish very much at any one of them.

--Leta S. Hollingworth, in "The Development of Personality in Highly Intelligent Children" (1936)