posted on Aug, 23 2022 @ 08:38 PM
Over a decade of lurking and I feel compelled to post here.
I was in GATE starting in 2nd grade (1988). Remained in it through middle school and junior high. There was no GATE in high school. You mostly just
took AP classes if you wanted to continue more ambitious academic pursuits. I was given an IQ test. I think IQ scores are kind of asinine but,
according to the “experts”, I’m in the mid 130’s. Whatever.
I was a painfully shy child. Son of a high school history teacher and a graphic artist, I was a voracious reader. My dad would bring me to his classes
all the time before I started kindergarten. His classroom was lined with shelves containing hundreds of issues of National Geographic. I’d sit
quietly and read through every single one. I also had full access to the garbage-paper bin at the end of the Xerox machine so, I also had plenty of
paper to draw on. My first book (the first book ever given to me as a gift) was “The Great Book Of Modern Warplanes”. For those not familiar with
it, it’s basically a coffee table book full of amazing “modern” (in the 80’s…) jets. I carried it everywhere as a child. My aunt remembers
that my favorite bedtime story was an potential armament list for the F4 Phantom. It was a gift from my grandpa.
My grandfather was a bombardier/navigator on a B26 Marauder over Europe during WW2. After the war, he went to college on the GI Bill and became a
mechanical engineer of prominence (directorial role for a lot of his career), held top secret clearance for all of the Cold War. Worked for NASA on
Apollo and was asked to come back as a consultant after Challenger. He was a wonderful and kind man with a strong dislike for war but, we never asked
what grandpa did for work. My father didn’t know much about what he did. It was a different time. I’ve learned that he spent a lot of time
traveling the country with Colonel of the Air Force. He was at Wright-Patt a lot. I knew better than to ask him dumb stuff about alien bodies but, I
casually asked him one day if he had ever “been out to groom”. He told me “A lot of times… we would also go to the Nevada test site to do
test-drives with the Moon Rover”. He led a very interesting life and I wish he were still here so that I could ask him about more things, alas, both
my father and grandfather died in the last several years. I have nobody to ask.
Although, while having lunch one day, I was talking about the V2 rocket/NASA/etc and my grandmother just casually drops in a comment about how “Von
Braun and your grandfather knew one another. He respected your grandpa very much”. I don’t really know how to begin to unpack that because my
grandpa made damn well sure that I grew up knowing how evil Nazis are.
I digress. I’m off topic. Apologies.
Back to GATE.
My memory of the program was constant testing of all kinds. I remember the auditory tests others have mentioned. I also remember a lot of puzzles.
What always stood out to me was that we spent a lot of time doing visualization exercises. I guess we would call it guided meditation today. This has
proved invaluable in my work-life as I can visualize what I need to do and trouble shoot a lot of potential issues in my head before working them out
in real life. Not saying this is any kind of amazing ability. Just that it’s something I learned early on which has helped me in life.
What I’ve always found odd about the program is that, I can’t remember a lot of the classes themselves. It’s fragments. This isn’t usual for
me as I have a pretty good memory. Our classes were also in a windowless room. It was actually in the band space behind the stage in our auditorium.
This meant you walked into the classroom through theatre curtains. In my mind, I can see myself walking through the curtains and then it’s like
things cut to black.
One particularly odd memory is that we went to Brookhaven National Lab on a field trip. For those of you not familiar with BNL, look into it a little.
It has some strange lore behind it and is also home to it’s own particle collider (like CERN). Taking a class of gifted students to a government lab
isn’t all that strange. I’ve just always thought it was odd that all I can remember is being in one building. Large interior. Slate blue-grey
walls. Lots of pipes. And a lab-coated scientist showing our class something on a screen. Do I think it was some CERN-satanic-cabal doing rituals with
gifted kids? No. Do I still think it’s a little weird? Kinda. Yeah.
Another thing about the program: I think we were allowed to give ourselves projects a lot of the time and our teachers tended to treat us more as
equals. In 3rd grade, they had just found the Titanic. I was absolutely fascinated by this. I was sitting in class with my regular classmates
practicing cursive while I’m obsessively reading about what crush depths are and how submarines work. I obviously still had to do my regular class
work, but, my teacher (regular class) basically told me to write a paper for her about what I’d been reading and what I gave her was a lengthy paper
on the aforementioned topics. She ended up coming to me with questions because she found the topic interesting. That was nice.
Come to think of it, I also cannot remember who my teachers for GATE were. I can remember every other teacher I’ve ever had.
Maybe it’s all nothing but, I’ll always be curious about what the program was.