( + 16 more! (I'm proudest of the final one, so keep reading down.) )

 Yes. I know how stupid that sounds. Am seriously considering that many difficulties in "gifted" people come not so much from being ~different~ in a world that ~doesn't understand them~ so much as being able to function for an abnormally long time while lacking basic life skills and any grasp of many Obvious Things, such that no one (including themselves) realize that they are hopelessly dysfunctional time-bombs just waiting for a challenge that they can't bullshit their way through off of raw potential alone.

I am dumbfounded at my own stupidity. 

(Before you ask what I was doing BEFORE - try "looking at the exercises, nodding, and going off to do my own thing based upon them". I really didn't understand, for instance, that step-by-step instructions in How To Draw books are meant to be COPIED rather than used as occasional reference. And math textbooks? ...Don't even ask. Good GAD, I am stupid. I literally want to run back and apologize to every professor in every course in which I didn't get an "A".)

This has kind of been the Summer of Self-Help for me. I've been doing a lot of navel-gazing -Er, introspection- to get my act together, and... I think it's helped. I'm more organized, more internally motivated, and generally much further along to being the Great American... Moderately-Independent Adult than I was at the start. *fidgets* Now I actually have to put that into practice. Oh, bugger...