Bio -
I'm 19 years old, living in New Zealand. My family is academic with both parents having doctorate degrees, in psychology and literature, for mum and dad respectively.
My childhood up until about 11-12 was quite difficult as I was very different to other kids, had a lot of anxiety issues, difficulty socialising. I still had a very good systematic collection of knowledge and facts, with a passion for learning. Things really picked up when I was 12, as I shifted to a Montessori college (like the philosophy common in preschools of self-directed learning, except with older kids). I was only there for a year, but loved it, it was very small with a roll of <100, I developed an interest in chemistry, and would spend whole days with the science teacher there constructing my own experiments, having discussions, getting further immersed in the flow of learning. How many other 12 year olds have prepared Liquid chlorine at school?
The school closed from financial issues, so at 13, I moved to a large high school. My social skills and general common sense was still fairly undeveloped, so my first year was a bit hard. My personality began to shift towards an INTJ-ness and lead to bilateral conflicts with a couple of people. The interest in chemistry, lead me to a new system to study - drugs. I found the concept of psychoactive drugs fascinating, this complex system of receptors and chemical structures that map to states of consciousness. I had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of psychopharmacology. Tried ritalin recreationally at 13, and this lead to a strange rumination, which I'll talk about later.
At 14, I did senior chemistry two years earlier junior to everyone else. This made school a lot more interesting for me, and my Ne was beginning to mature. This lead to my social interactions gradually beginning to normalise, as well as accelerating my scientific learning. At this year, I truly embraced chemistry, thought about it constantly, had a youtube channel about it, added to my cache of knowledge everyday, and even did experiments at home. One bizarre anxiety I had (related to obsessive compulsive tendencies) was about the ritalin and other drugs back when I was 13. Even though I still was fascinated by drugs, and still had an overall positive aesthetic appraisal of the idea, for almost a whole year, there was an intense disquiet and rumination about the drug use the previous year. Like how many people who do that at such a young age become successful in later life, and just a sense of carrying a secret. A very odd cognitive dissonance and I still don't really understand where that came from.
My neuro-plasticity I think peaked when I was 16, was far more organised, efficient, and got a lot of work done, and learned a tonne of biochemistry stuff in a single year, reading papers on pubmed everyday, and gaining a very good systemization and comprehension of psychopharamcology. My mind worked very rapidly, and my energy internal and external was high. It lead to respect from people at school as I was seen as a genius and a rare synthesis between the studious and the rebellious. While my 'theoretical' intelligence was good, I was very naive, immature, almost simultaneously an idiot and a genius.
I slowly began to lose interest in pharmacology/chemistry, and at 17-18, my new found interest programming took over, leading it to become my choice of degree. As I've gotten older, I've become more intelligent but in different ways, less of a domain specific intelligence, but a greater general competence, practical common sense, and a greater degree of abstraction of concepts. One negative shift I've found, is that I think I'm more lazy and have less grit than I once did. Like there is a 'fog' to the external world, and much more prone to Ti-Si loops.
I believe I possess quite high intelligence (well above average, but by no stretch, genius), but my difficulty is applying to the external world due to poor executive functioning and apathy, so even though I've done reasonably well at school, I am something of an underachiever.
I've only been at university (bsc computer science) for a year + 1/2, and each trimester, my motivation, engagement, and performance improves. I would like to see my internal mind apply itself with a greater magnitude of external world momentum, as if that were the case, I could easily get high grades.
One last note about my bio, I'm only 19 but it still sort of bothers me that my whole school life was devoid of any form of intimacy with girls. I have a cognitive dissonance about this, I would like to be in a relationship for the relationship itself and also because I don't want to progress so far in life without so much as even a first kiss. The dissonance is that I have both the INTP apathy, as well as low self confidence, especially because of the lack of experience.