I asked the Stanford students I knew to reflect upon their experiences of being labeled as “gifted.”23 The twelve Stanford students who speak in the film give a consistent message—they received advantages, but at some costs. The students talk about feeling that they had a fixed thing inside them, and when they struggled, they thought it had “run out.” They say they learned that they could not ask questions; they could only answer other people’s questions. They say that they tried to hide any struggles, in case people found out that they did not have a “gift.” At the end a student named Julia
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