People Explain How The Smartest Person From School Turned Out
Reddit user After_Crab_1921 asked: 'What happened to the smartest kid in your class?'
Every high school had the popular girl, the favorite jock, the weird kid, and the smart kid. Whether or not they were the weirdest or the smartest, the population always seems to come to an agreement about who should carry the title.
But sometimes what the smartest kid in school winds up doing with their life isn't what everyone might have expected.
Or, they might excel beyond even their peers' wildest dreams.
Redditor After_Crab_1921 asked:
"What happened to the smartest kid in your class?"
That Darn Mind-Gut Connection
"He got sick with a rare stomach disease and isn't doing too well."
- VoxMendax
"So, ironically, the smartest kid in our class was me (the bar was low) and my sisters and I all have a rare stomach thing."
"I presented first, got the shish-kabob treatment, and had a very sucky five years. Then it stopped, right around the time my older sisters started dealing with it."
"It will rear its head every few years for a month or just a weekend but overall I’m completely unaffected now (either that or my ability to adjust to a baseline is way op) but my sisters both deal with it daily."
"Their symptoms are less than I went through but have stuck around longer, I figure I speedran it on hard mode."
- Mimovich
"The stomach is closely tied to the brain. (Believe it or not)."
"Kids who underperform or overperform are often under extreme stress at home, and as a result are more likely to develop diseases related to the gut."
"It's a weird thing that has actual scientific studies going into it."
- Character_Tower_3893
Going Above and Beyond
"I believe he works for NASA."
"He deleted his Facebook a while ago (like the smartest kid in our class would do), but that’s what he was doing last I checked."
- gingeritis90
Double the Smarts
"There were two. They were twins."
"They're both geneticists now with PHDs, and they work at the same university."
- iARTthere4iam
It's Not Rocket... Oh, Wait.
"The smartest guy from my high school became an actual rocket scientist."
- TheKaptinKirk
Invented Themselves
"The smartest kid in my school was really popular and was one of my closest friends."
"But when he graduated he left everyone and everything behind, including his family. He even changed his name."
"I found out this little bit of information because a friend went to an academic conference and showed me a group photo and he was in it."
"I exclaimed, 'That’s my friend Pascal!' He kept his first name but his last name was an anagram of his original name."
- whittlingcanbefatal
"I knew a guy who did this! He was one of my best friends' older brothers. He got a degree in German and moved to South Korea for a little while."
"Next thing we knew, he had moved back to his native state but to a small town and had taken on a whole new persona. Different name and all. Apparently, he spoke with a German accent in his new life."
"We met a guy who only knew him as the new version. That conversation was wild."
- Zebulon_V
Too Tragic to Imagine
"He got a full ride to Harvard."
"He did an internship his first summer at Intel and was killed by a drunk driver a few weeks after arriving in California."
"I f**king couldn’t believe it when it happened 25 years ago. I still can’t really."
- bg-j38
Successful Careers
"There are two. I remember one of them crying when they got an A- on a test in seventh grade."
"One of them (the one who cried) is an executive in a Fortune 500 company. Nothing special but making a lot of money."
"The other one is a brain surgeon."
- iamacannibal
Important Medical Research
"She worked at John’s Hopkins doing research with Psilocybin for treating mental health conditions."
- ActorMonkey
Making Big Moves
"He moved to Poland and became a Molecular Biologist."
- AJCleary
Happy Ending for the Gamer
"He went to MIT, works for Apple, and has a very expensive home in California. He also has a wife and four kids and seems to be very happy."
"I remember he was programming games in high school and was valedictorian."
"A big nerd who became a wealthy big nerd."
- BullHorn100
A Unique Trajectory
"My best friend (at the time; we drifted apart and speak only rarely now). He got a Ph.D. at Harvard, studied science in Antarctica, and now teaches at an Ivy League university."
- TriTri14
Eternally Confident
"He's a superstar pediatric neurosurgeon."
"He's also the most confident person I’ve ever met. (Guess you’d have to be, to cut open a little kid’s skull and operate on their brain.)"
- Rainpickle
"I saw some interview during a documentary when a surgeon said something to the effect of, 'Yeah, I come off arrogant at times, but do you want a surgeon who’s not extremely confident in their abilities?'"
- followedbyferrets
"The gift is self-awareness here. I’d trust him with my life."
- Hormone_Monster69
"Yep. There's an infinite difference between narcissism and actual confidence."
- adamjfish
Going Down Different Paths
"I had such a big crush on her and told her."
"We dated, and then she moved across the country to study and is now a Doctor."
"I'm so proud of her even though our lives changed paths."
- No-Plantain8212
An Honest and Kind Life
"He dropped out of college to marry and support the much younger woman he got pregnant (he was 23 and she was 18, but he clearly loved her)."
"Now (30 years later), he owns a boardgame store with a large back room for mini painting classes and games, and he plays dad to half the neurodivergent kids in town."
"He's still married to the same woman, too."
"It's not a high-flying life, but he makes a difference to so many people."
- Yinnesha
Best Friends Forever
"He just accepted a full professorship at a big university in the States. He's a particle physicist."
"He's also my bestie."
- wscuraiii
While the nerds and the smart kids often get a bad rap during middle school and high school, it's wonderful to see how being true to their minds and their passions could truly pay off in the end.
Where I went to school there was a special program that the super smart could enroll in.
It was called 'The International Baccalaureate.'
It's an intense program of elite classes, taught by the finest minds, and triple the homework of everyone else.
It was assumed that every student in the program would go onto rule the world.
Some did. Some most definitely did not.
Others cracked under the pressure of the program and fell apart by sophomore year.
So you never know.
Redditor Desperate_Bluejay330 asked about all the about the students who scored all those A's.
"What happened to the smartest kid at your high school?"
I'm not sure about my smarty pants people. Now I have to go look them up.
Physical
Get Out Love GIF by T-SeriesGiphy"He was actually quite overweight. When he left for college, he was studying physics. Couple of years later, I learned that he lost 175 pounds, became super into fitness, dropped out of college and became a gym trainer."
Apprehensive_Bet_438
Into the Sky...
"He's a NASA scientist, while I just come on Reddit."
superdupernumnuts
"I heard that the smartest guy in my class worked at NASA. I just looked up his LinkedIn and he's a mechanical engineer who works in manufacturing. Nothing aerospace related. Still much more impressive than anything I've ever done."
NativeMasshole
A Good Life
"He lives in the same small village he was living in when we were in school, is married with kids and apparently works in an office in the nearest town. He had aspirations of becoming a surgeon when we were in school, it didn't happen, but it sounds like he's living a good life regardless."
zerbey
"Similar. Top in our class went and got a masters in math, then moved back home and became the local librarian, but they have a wonderful family. Didn't change the world but they're happy. That's the real dream."
Futurenazgul
Who Knows?
"I couldn’t tell you what 99% of people from my high school are doing now."
okay11654
"Lol... I got ya beat. I can honestly say that I have zero idea what 100% of the people I went to HS with are up to now. I graduated 22 years ago, the moment I was done… I was done lol."
Regular_Sample_5197
"I guess that shows that my high school friends were truly good friends and we got along because we have a Christmas gathering beer exchange each year since like 2011 or so. There’s like 30 of us."
LordNoodles1
Career Changes
Season 2 Lawyer GIF by MartinGiphy"Became a doctor, decided it wasn't for her and went to law school. Is currently a barrister as far as I know."
Barnaby_Cuckoldsniff
"Sounds like my paternal uncle! He became an electrical engineer, decided it wasn't his thing, then became a patent attorney."
PM_ME_YOUR_WEIRD_PET
Doctor and lawyer? I type. Lord I'm lazy.
Nefarious
Season 9 Phoebe GIF by FriendsGiphy"Completely fell off the radar. I assume he's running some sort of nefarious think-tank for a huge tech company or something."
ckuiper
Friends
"I still talk to him. He's a good friend of mine, still. He's an engineer at Google now. I am not."
Endymian
"Smartest guy in our class (finished Calc BC in 10th grade, ended up going to a local college to take discrete mathematics and linear Algebra, graduated from CalTech, etc.) ended up working at Google and Facebook as a data scientist. I would be shocked if his net worth wasn't in the mid 7 figures at this point just off of equity."
Amyndris
The 3
"There were 3 I would argue were the smartest. They were all neck and neck for the valedictorian and salutatorian title. 2 of them I was never really close to so I have no idea what they're doing exactly. One of them moved out half way across the country and had a child and the other was a Jehovah's witness and there was something about them not being allowed to go to university for what they wanted to do. Other than that I don't know what they're doing."
"The other was actually a good friend I knew since the 3rd grade but we fell in and out of each other's lives. Life changed directions for them as far as aspirations go. Originally he was part way through a master's program for human kinetics but he realized it wasn't going to pan out as expected so he went into teaching. Now he's married, has a kid and overall happy I believe."
wert989
Still call him...
"Valedictorian of my high school is still one of my best friends, I was even the best man at his wedding. He went to the Army after graduating from Yale, became a Ranger then went into JSOC or something. Now he has a wife and two kids and works at the Pentagon. I stayed the nerd route and became a chemical and petroleum engineer."
NinjaGrizzlyBear
Fit as a Fiddle
Working Out GIFGiphy"He's a scientist (something related to nutrition) and a big fitness Youtuber."
"As an interesting anecdote, he might have started go to the gym during the last couple years of grade school but was still unassuming and tiny. I removed him from Facebook shortly after and was pretty dumbfounded when I stumbled upon his channel years later."
"It's not hard to believe he was that successful but didn't expect to see him jacked or on Youtube."
"Also we lived in a relatively small and pretty redneck town. There were social groups and cliques like an 80's movie - Of the popular kids or jocks he was the only one to actively oppose his friends bullying people."
Digrug
Harvard Bound
"She got her Ph.D in Chemistry from Harvard and is now Dean of the Science Department at our local state university, of about 20k students. Went to a high school in a town of about 4,500 people. Still see her occasionally."
PhillyCSteaky
Double Major
He went to college and double majored in business and biomechanical engineering at a very good school. Graduated, and is apparently doing research for some big company. Dude is smart AF.
BrilliantWeight
Flip The Script
"Not my class, like 15 years after I graduated. I visited my hs to see an old teacher who was retiring. While talking to the principle he tells me about this student who was legit one of the most brilliant students the school had had in decades. He wanted to be a chef. (I am one). Cut to the graduation and he is due to give his speech."
"The one they approved was totally dropped. He gave a scathing tirade against all the teachers for not supporting him and kept pushing him to not follow his dreams and to just go to regular college. I heard it was brutal."
"(Kid had a scholarship to several top culinary programs already, his family owned a successful restaurant).
"He is a happy chef. His family doesn’t support the school anymore."
"My years smart folks are all married and grandparents by now."
MissMurderpants
Well it's nice to see that studying pays off... sometimes.