Wow. What you wrote struck me so deeply. I know what you mean and I know how you feel. As a person who grew up truly believing I was just a little bit dumber than anyone else in my "brilliant" family, and only finding out late in adulthood that my problems weren't necessarily stupidity, but simply different brain wiring, your thoughts on how you feel your success in class might have been perceived by others is profound to me. I honestly don't know quite what I feel about it yet, but it gives me much food for thought.

The children I grew up with from ages 6 to almost 12 never seemed to judge me too badly one way or the other, at least to my memory. (That is, the children I went to school with. At home was a different story.) But we moved across the country just before I turned 12. There I met a new group of kids, and it was horrible. There were a few quite popular bullies (they bullied any- and everybody, not only me), and it was quite unpopular to be "smart" in school for some reason. Bright kids were routinely ostracized and... well, bullied, that's all. I remember trying to be friendly with the main girl and having her shout out to the rest of the crowd, "Listen to her talk! Who uses words like that? Who do you think you are, anyway, the dictionary-writer?" I had no idea I was using "big words" or whatever, but apparently the way I'd been used to speaking was foreign to her and boy, howdy, she did not like it. I learned that lesson quickly, at least, even if I was socially-inept in most other areas. You couldn't get me to use words with more than 2 syllables after that to save my life. Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy to deal with the acne and frizzy hair I developed, so I was still bullied mercilessly for that, along with being clouded with ADHD & Asperger's.

Ya know, I guess if you're really brilliant and good at what you do in school, there will always be others who will feel intimidated by that. Should you stop working & studying as diligently as possible, and dumb yourself down to make others feel better about themselves? I mean, did you actually do so well in class in order to make those people feel badly? Umm... I don't think so. You have an area in life where you excel. On the other hand, perhaps unbeknownst to them, you need to work harder at it behind the scenes? So what? That is a talent, too. To be able to apply yourself, to recognize that you require longer study and work time, and then to do it? What is wrong with that?

I don't see you as arrogant. I saw great humility in what you wrote, as well as much pain for fear of having caused others pain. I get that. I don't say I fully understand it, but I get it about how you feel. I get the confusion and angst. Don't give up. We're all in this together. We'll try to help you figure it out, and if we all can't completely figure it out, at least we'll still be here together trying.