At the elementary school Gifted program I attended for four years, one of the most important and time-consuming activities every year was the Independent Study Project (ISP). The ISP consisted of picking any topic of interest, and using all of the Bloom’s Taxonomy cognitive objectives as guidelines for understanding, thinking, and communicating about the topic in more depth than we would normally do so in the traditional school system. These cognitive objectives included, in order from simplest to most difficult: knowledge (e.g. facts), comprehension (e.g. understanding of ideas), application (e.g. applying known facts/ideas to solve new problems), analysis (e.g. analyzing relationships between ideas), synthesis (e.g. using known ideas to create something new), and evaluation (e.g. making judgments about ideas).

In terms of the ISP, we would be graded on how well we met each of these objectives (if at all). During your first year of doing an ISP, in Grade 5, students weren’t expected to have met the synthesis or evaluation objectives. However, it was the hope of the teachers that students would be meeting all of the objectives in their ISP’s by the end of Grade 8. In case you were wondering, my project topics from first to last were the Brain and Nervous System, Flying Machines, Genetic Engineering, and Stem Cell Research – so I guess it’s previous obvious that since early on I have been interested in science, but particularly topics dealing with ethical issues.

Admittedly, before I was even identified as gifted, I already had a bit of insider knowledge about the ISP because my brother had already been in the gifted program for two years. Not only was I aware of my brother’s projects, but I also attended the annual ISP showcase and got to see the different projects and how the students already in the program approached meeting the six objectives for the ISP. This information would prove invaluable later on when I started doing my own ISP’s.

Not Knowing How to Succeed

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I don’t claim to know the meaning of life because I don’t know whether such a thing exists, and even if it does, I don’t know how one could discover it. Every type of opinion on the meaning of life is essentially a belief – an idea that you might live your life around but not necessarily have concrete evidence to prove that it is true.

What can I say? I am a scientist by nature. I believe in logic. I like rational arguments. I like having reasons for things.

And for those reasons, I find it hard to believe that we could ever find a true meaning of life: Why are we here? What is our purpose?

To believe that there is a true meaning of life implies that this meaning must be universal and applicable to everyone – yet how could we ever find such a thing?

Fate

Some people believe in fate or destiny – the idea that everything that is going to happen was meant to be.

I don’t like to believe in fate because it implies that I really don’t have free will. It implies that I am not really making decisions because it was already pre-determined that I was going to take those actions.

If you believe in fate, how could you ever blame someone? A criminal could argue that it was fate for him to commit a crime, and since all of this was pre-determined, it’s technically not his fault. Yes it would be fair to jail him since he is a danger to society, but if you believe in fate, how could you justify blame?

If you believe that everyone on this earth was born with a set purpose, does this not suggest at least some aspect of pre-determined events? Then again, I guess you could argue that we may all have a purpose but we don’t necessarily all complete our “life mission”.

If you were to vanish right now, would your life have mattered?

I am content knowing that I will never know what the true meaning of life is, if there even is one. What I do know is that if you choose to, you can lead a meaningful life.

It seems by nature that humans are social creatures. So to me, we have the most meaning by impacting the lives of others. And in that sense, it’s hard to lead a meaningful life if you live a solitary life.

If you were all alone on an island, with no contact with other humans, how could you ever impact someone’s life? To the rest of humanity, you essentially never existed.

Thus, you can’t lead a meaningful life if you live a solitary one. That being said, at least for humanity’s sake, leading a meaningful life is not necessarily better than leading a solitary one.

Positive Impact

It’s true that many of history’s tyrants have led meaningful lives, though their actions are not things I would personally encourage. And although it would be wrong to downplay the impact of their lives on humanity, it doesn’t mean they led lives we should aspire to.

Personally, I want to live a positively meaningful life. I want to impact people in a way that makes them happy and improves their lives. If I am ever remembered for something, I would want to be remembered for doing something positive.

I think deep down everyone wants their life to matter. Not necessarily that they existed for a reason, but that their existence mattered.

And if you choose to positively impact those around you, then your life definitely matters.

When I was in Grade 4, I was identified as “gifted” by my school board. As a result of that, I started going to a separate gifted program at another school for one day a week from Grades 5 to 8. It was a great program that allowed me to explore many neat things not really provided in the regular school setting, such as creative group projects, puzzles, logic games, independent-study projects, etc.

When school boards administer these tests to identify students as gifted, it affects students emotionally and mentally. The main reason for this is because it creates labels, and subsequently, it creates an imaginary divide between students: “gifted” and “non-gifted”. A lot of people seem to associate the term gifted with intelligent, and so to some students, it’s almost as if you are saying that they are not intelligent because they are in the “non-gifted” group. Conversely, students in the gifted group are often expected to do well in school because people now assume they are “intelligent” – so anything less than academic excellence is a disappointment.

I don’t really want to go into a whole discussion of intelligence because that’s not what I want to focus this article on. What I will say is that I am personally a believer in a form of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. I believe that everyone has a distinct combination of different types of intelligence, which is why humanity has been able to produce and do so many different and amazing things.

The test that my school board used to identify gifted students largely rested on analyzing only a student’s logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic intelligences– and not surprisingly, these are the types of skills that help students do well in traditional school subjects. It’s nice that school boards help develop these particular skills for students highly gifted in those areas, but at the same time, it could also be argued that students who excel in other intelligence areas aren’t receiving equal treatment.

Unfair Expectations From Other Students

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Many people would agree that an essence of being human is our need to form meaningful relationships with others. We are born into a close knit group known as a family, consisting of very strong relationships of many types. Spouses depend on each other for love and support, and sometimes, to work collaboratively as parents in raising children. Often similar in age and growing up in the same conditions, siblings form a very strong bond and sense of understanding that they can’t share with anyone else.

When we leave the family for a second and enter the rest of the world, we form many new relationship types. Doctor and patient. Teacher and student. Coach and player. With these new relationships come new roles, experiences, and types of understanding.

One of the most important, and seemingly necessary, type of relationship between human beings is friendship. But what is the purpose of friendship and what is necessary for genuine friendships to form?

Common Interest Theory

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Some people have a poor understanding of risk. Much of the public tends to look at risk only in an absolute sense. They call certain activities “risky” and other activities “not risky”. As such, people tend to completely avoid “risky” activities at all costs while preferring activities they consider “safe”.

According to many sources, such as Dictionary.com, risk can be formally defined as, “exposure to the chance of injury or loss”. People don’t like risk because they fear loss. The actual probability of loss is often irrelevant – any hint of a potential loss, and some people just run for the hills.

The problem with this mindset is that it demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of risk, and in doing so, prevents individuals from maximizing their opportunities for success.

Risk is Inherent to Most Activities

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