Barbara A. Kerr

Smart Girls is a book compiling over 20 years of the author's own research and thoughts on the development and lives of gifted girls and women. This revised edition was published in 1994, and is now quite dated in my opinion, however there is as till a lot of relevant content. (Apparently the author has since written a new book on the topic called "Smart Girls in the 21st Century".)

The descriptions of the various stages of life that gifted girls and women go through match my own experiences an my gifted friends' experiences quite accurately for the most part. I have definitely experienced the insatiable curiosity typical in childhood, followed by a loss of confidence in adolescence and the conflicts between career and relationships that followed. I have definitely been frustrated at what seems to be my own inability to live up to the potential that my parents and teachers saw in me as a child. So I think Barbara A. Kerr is doing really important work, writing about and examining this topic.

She gives some suggestions and practical advice for gifted girls and women, and their parents and teachers, although it is sometimes vague. But I think that's fine, since it is probably difficult to give universal advice to a group of people who vary so much in their talents, interests, and circumstances.

Kerr does advocate for gifted girls to attend women-only institutions for post-secondary education, which I think makes sense for the time this book was originally published (1985), as she states that there was still a lot of sex discrimination in schools back then. However, with statistics from the last few years touting that more women than men are pursuing higher education, as well as the mainstream social and political shift towards feminism, diversity, etc., I think coed schools are probably fine.

The best, most practical advice I got from this, which is also the conclusion that I came to myself in the last year, appears at the very end of this book, in the appendix where Kerr answers some frequently asked questions. She writes, "A job is something someone gives you to do in return for money; a career is something only you can give yourself." She then goes on to say that we can conserve our energy on the job, dont get overly involved in the social relationships there, and don't exhaust yourself as it's a waste of time. We gifted are generally good at reaching a level of competence at whatever we're doing, anyway. Instead, focus your efforts on whatever it is that interests you, spend your time there and develop relationships in that realm; that is where fulfillment will come from. (Of course, if you can make your career into your job, better yet.)

Anyway, this was a really interesting read and I highly recommend it to all gifted women. I'm sure you'll devour it as I have, and find yourselves in these pages.… (more)