To be completely honest, I have conflicting feelings towards gifted programs. I was first placed into one after moving to State College during 4th grade, and was consequently pushed 2 years ahead in math classes in 5th grade. I undoubtedly benefitted from this: it secured me spots in the gifted programs at the middle school and high school, gaining access to special academic counseling and allowing me to take harder classes that granted me acceptance into prestigious programs and scholarships. On the other hand, it’s caused me a great deal of mental and emotional strife, falling into existential depression and dealing with constant perfectionism and self-consciousness. Many fall into the same pattern as well: they excel in elementary and middle school, only to burn out and lack any motivation or study skills to prepare them for college or adult life.

Everyone wants to be gifted because gifted kids have it easy. We laud child prodigies because of their effortless talent, their ability to excel while barely trying. However, giftedness is often a double-edged sword. I remember back in elementary school, I would always describe myself as “smart” because that’s how my friends, family, and teachers told me they perceived me as. I held that to be synonymous with school being easy; I should be getting A’s on tests without having to study. But then high school happened. I started slipping behind my close friends in math — one of my insecurities used to be never having qualified for the American Invitational Mathematics Exam. It didn’t matter that it was an extremely rigorous test that most adults would have trouble completing, I told myself that I was a failure. I was no longer smart, I was no longer gifted. Being in a gifted program had developed perfectionism, something that continually haunts me to this day.

A Greek study found that gifted students regularly underperformed academically against their peers later in life. To me, this isn’t much of a surprise. As the situations we face grow harder and harder, no amount of pure intellect will be sufficient to overcome these obstacles. And without the prior experience of having to perservere through challenges, it becomes easier to quit and stick to what you’re good at. It severely limits your ability to grow and have a successful career.

Dr. Alok Kanojia, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, goes so far as to say gifted kids are actually special needs kids. Not in the colloquial meaning of having learning disabilities, but having a special set of learning needs that typically isn’t properly addressed in the public education system. Much of the time, gifted kids aren’t challenged enough in their classes and are simply assigned more work to do, resulting in frustration and lack of motivation. They need to be taught to have grit and to be able to fail to reduce the immense pressures of high expectations. Just because they get good grades doesn’t mean they’ll be fine on their own and that we can ignore them.

Recent years have seen huge leaps in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, with the infamous ChatGPT program launched in late 2022. With its incredible ability to hold conversations and complete tasks, many students have unfortunately leveraged its power to plagiarize essays, write programming scripts, and pass exams. Due to this, many school districts have banned access to the chatbot. However, not all educators are shying away from the latest technology.

ChatGPT undeniably has its uses. Even in my research lab, we had a group meeting presenting on methods we could harness the power of artificial intelligence to speed up manual tasks — with a slidedeck completely generated by an AI. My friends have used the program as a study tool to make sense of the chemistry concepts taught in lecture. It can serve as a method to overcome writer’s block, and inspire ideas that we might have not thought of. Many educators recognize the benefit a powerful AI like ChatGPT can bring into the classroom, and are seeking to minimize the risks of implementing it in schools.

Softwares such as TurnItIn have already developed technology to combat the rising number of cases of AI plagiarized essays. Although not perfect, it’s a useful tool that can detect potential essays with academic integrity infringements. OpenAI, the developers of ChatGPT, have also announced that they were working towards curbing plagiarism as well, through an unnoticeable watermark in AI generated essays.

As detection algorithms become more powerful, we should see classrooms change to adopt AI’s functionalities to improve student learning. Just because technology is new doesn’t mean we should shy away from it. Take for example, the world of chess. The game is a battle of strategies, where you set traps and exploit your opponent’s weaknesses to gain a tactical advantage. The only things influencing the game are your preparation and skill in the game. This largely remains true to this day. When you go to chess tournaments, no one’s consulting the engine, they’re thinking the position through and trying to find the best move for themselves. The engines are simply a tool to analyze your games and various positions to offer insights into your gameplay.

I think the classroom can function in the same way. AI shouldn’t be a way to get all your work doen for you, because then you’ll never improve. But it has a lot of potential to offer insights into concepts we may have difficulty understanding, or offer insights to teachers on how to improve student performance or automate time-consuming tasks.

Four of the graduate students from my research lab are graduating this year, and one of them secured a faculty position at the University of Maine (congrats Phil!). While waiting for one of my prints to finish, I ended up getting into a conversation with him about academia. As per usual, his advice to me was “go into consulting, sell your soul to the devil, and make a s*** ton of money.” He talked about how he was fortunate to have become a faculty without having done a postdoctoral fellowship. Faculty positions have stagnated compared to the number of graduating PhDs, causing an overcrowding of postdocs in the applicant pool for job openings in academia. Research suggests that fewer than 13% of postdocs in the US even secure tenure-track positions.

With the large amount of people who want to become tenured professors, it’s caused a lack of incentive for university to raise their wages. This has become especially problematic over the pandemic, with many postdocs unable to meet their basic needs. Considering that the average age of postdoctoral fellows has risen to the mid-30s, many found themselves having to support their children as well as themselves and their partner.

This may have been manageable with the other partner earning income, however, the pandemic caused many jobs to be laid off. In those cases, it forces a family to completely rely on a small stipend amidst the rising costs of inflation. Raising their wages also is difficult, due to their relative lack of job security and power. Not being students or faculty, they often receive little to no support systems, making their already competitive career path even more daunting.

Given the poor state of academia, it’s not much of a surprise to me that the other 3 graduating graduate students in my lab are heading into industry. A growing number of academics appear to be leaving higher education for jobs with better salaries and benefits. This has already become problematic for researchers at institutions across the globe looking to hire postdoctoral fellows. An invesitgation by Science Careers found that of the 37 researchers who responded with their hiring experiences of postdocs, roughly 75% reported challenges in recruitment. This is being seen in the EU as well, which was traditionally a reliable source of postdocs. Even prestigious scientists are reporting hiring challenges, stating that the number of applications have dropped significantly. Given that postdocs perform much of the labor required for scientific discovery, this could quickly become a larger issue that significantly slows the rate of research.

Last week, my dad and I had a very brief conversation regarding the current GPA grading system in the US. As a professor, my dad was concerned over the academics of a student applying to join his research group. He didn’t like seeing pass/fail grades on a student’s transcript, as he felt that it obscured the student’s true performance in that class. His stance isn’t completely unfounded. During the pandemic, my high school shifted their grading policies to be more lenient. Grade inflation was quite common, and high grades were given to students in classes they didn’t care about or barely put effort into. An even more lenient grading system such as pass/fail would’ve exacerbated this effect and made it impossible to gauge students’ strengths in academics.

That being said, however, the class that I learned the most from implemented a pass/fail grading system. Not having to worry about my grade or performing well on tests took all the stress out of learning, and allowed me to focus on the material. The class opened my eyes to what I believe education should be – driven by curiosity with the aim of learning, not for the purpose of achieving a high number. It must be noted that the class was only available for students who had excelled in and completed all of the other math courses offered by the school. My classmates were all highly intelligent individuals who had already proven their ability to succeed in a traditional classroom environment. However, I firmly believe that this grading system would still benefit everyone regardless of their performance with current grading systems.

The increasing competitiveness of college admissions and job applications has led many schools to inflate their grades, making their students seem more academically talented than students from other schools. Organizations such as the ACT have warned against the dangers of grade inflation, citing concerns over not being able to differentiate students based on GPA alone and advocating for the use of objective measures such as standardized tests. However, a study conducted by Brigham Young University and Purdue University actually revealed that grade inflation actually doesn’t appear to have an impact on how much students learned from their introductory classes. In fact, they found that the only significant difference was an increase in college completion rates. Fully switching to a pass/fail grading system could serve as a way to stop the exclusion of students based on GPA, increasing the participation of historically marginalized groups in STEM majors.

With my upcoming audition deadline for the oboe solo in Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf”, I’ve been thinking about music a lot recently. I’ve been playing the oboe for about 6 years now, and I’ve only grown more and more appreciation for professional musicians. I feel like I’m at that stage in my ability where I truly begin to appreciate how much there is to unpack besides simply the notes and the rhythms.

Even in a short 16-bar passage, there’s so much to analyze and think about. I could practice the same section for months, and my professor would always have little details that would improve its musicality. Given the amount of time and practice it takes to master an instrument, it’s tragic that it remains extremely undervalued in the public education system.

Studies have long explored the consequences of cutting music education from public schools. As scientists have determine how the brain functions, numerous links have been found with how the brain processes music and language. A study published by Charlotte P. Mizener determined that implementing music into language development exercises saw positive benefits in the language skills of young children. This fact has been taken advantage of for years by educators, for example learning the alphabet to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” The benefits don’t end there. According to the Texas Music Educators Association, members of their all-state choirs, bands, and orchestra reported SAT scores that were on average 22% higher than the national average and 26% higher than the Texas average over a 5 year period. Furthermore, the New England Board of Higher Education claims that music education also improves memory, hand-eye coordination, problem solving, and mental processing.

However, that shouldn’t be the only reason why we need to keep our music programs well-funded. Back in my sophomore year in high school, I had the honor of having Kirt Mosier as a guest conductor for orchestra, an internationally known composer and conductor. The message he addressed to our parents in the audience right before the concert has stuck with me since: “We don’t play music to get better at math or science, we play music to play music.” While music education does improve the academics of its students, at the end of the day, we’re not playing music to make us stronger students. Nobody plays music with the intention of improving their grades. We play because it’s a way of expressing ourselves, and we enjoy doing so.

Music and the arts have been a crucial aspect of culture to humankind for millennia. Yet we seem to be losing sight of its value and the lessons it can teach us. For me personally, having to play solos as a principal oboe player has helped develop the confidence to speak in front of an audience. It also has given me a way to decompress from my academics in a way that I enjoy and am passioante about. Music is such an integral part of our lives and so music education should not and cannot be the first programs to go in public schools.

Having spent most of my life in a college town, the value of education is something that was disseminated to me by family, my teachers, and my peers. In particular, I’ve developed a strong connection with my math teachers, who have influenced me to pursue a future career in STEM. For that reason, I’ve decided to dedicate this first Civic Issues Blog post to a professor I’ve had recently that I’ve grown to respect and admire: Dr. Nate Brown.

While taking his course last summer, he discussed with our class the importance of recognizing bias within STEM fields and doing something about it — a subject he has studied for years and presented in a TED Talk. Many people have an image of what a “math person” is and don’t categorize themselves as such — even those in STEM fields who work with math much more than the average person. This particularly happens more often with women and people of color due to historical precedents of restricting marginalized groups from education. Dr. Brown argues that this belief that one can categorize themselves as a math person or not contributes to the inequality seen in STEM fields today, and that we should look at math from the point of view as a skill to be developed. In doing so, we allow ourselves to grow in areas rather than telling ourselves that it can’t be done.

I’ve seen this occur in my own life as well. During my senior year of high school, I tutored a girl struggling in her precalculus class. Surrounded by peers who were dominating math competitions and breezing through tests, she had convinced herself that she could never be good at math because she was having trouble with classes while they weren’t. As we met throughout the year, I always tried to end our sessions with an interesting piece of math that had contributed towards my love of the subject. Whether it was a fun fact or a cool puzzle, I tried to show her that the high school curriculum wasn’t the extent of mathematics and that one didn’t have to be a child prodigy to pursue it. Seeing her interest in these, I convinced her to join the high school math club, which she’s now an officer of.

I’ve seen this story play out over and over again. We subconsciously fall victim to stereotypes and compare ourselves with others, causing us to fail before we even try. Rather than categorizing ourselves into labels, we have to consider ourselves as a whole person and focus on our passions and the skills we want to develop.