I was told I was gifted at a very young age, and people expected a lot out of me. But by the time I hit 9 years old, I had already convinced myself that school

I was told I was gifted at a very young age, and people expected a lot out of me. But by the time I hit 9 years old, I had already convinced myself that school was too easy -- I didn't value my grades at all. I would fail regularly and say "I don't care about a mark on a paper." I barely graduated high school. But the problem here wasn't that I thought I was gifted, it was that I didn't compare myself to my peers at all. Getting an A was easy, so it meant nothing to me. The other students who did well were not people I aspired to be like. I spent all my time working on things I enjoyed for myself, and those challenged me to work independently. I failed Algebra because I spent the whole semester reading a statistics book. I failed an English class because I spent the whole time programming on my calculator. (I had run out of classes to fail, and had to take classes at college to make up the credits.) But once I started studying physics, math, and computers, I've been happily over-performing ever since. I remember moments where I turned away from challenges, but I always turned toward something that mattered more to me. And there are challenges there, too. You will be challenged no matter what you choose to do, so long as you aren't doing only what has already been done. So I can't say I'd agree with you. People are often just awful at measuring success.