@gemiwing, since you asked, I think it is a combination of things. He is a very fast learner (but more right-hemisphere than left) and starts out being right on top of or ahead of everything. He can also be a very diligent student. But then some kind of setback—almost any kind—causes him to lose his grip, and it’s all downhill from there. He falls behind, can’t catch up, sees the A disappear, and quits. Until he gains some positive experience, he is probably not going to overcome this pattern.
He was also bullied in grade school, was taunted and mocked and marginalized in middle school, failed eighth grade despite an off-the-chart IQ, and didn’t really go to school again until junior college. He missed the high school experience completely and got a GED as soon as he turned 18.
Examples of setbacks are so wide-ranging that it is hard to see a single pattern:
1. A very green novice language arts teacher in middle school gave a completely inane assignment with incomprehensible requirements, and he struggled so hard with trying to understand it that he just got disgusted and ditched it. A less compulsive student would have turned in something. He went from an A to an F in the class.
2. A middle school math teacher had the class cut out circles for one math period. He thought this was kindergarten work and challenged the purpose of the assignment, which the teacher declined to state (“This is your assignment. Just do it.”). A minor confrontation ensued, and after that he did not want to go back to the class or do any more work in it. He has not made it through any math class since.
3. In a junior college English class, the teacher asked students to pick a topic and a position to defend in a paper. He chose a topic that excited him and decided to take the unconventional stance on it for the challenge of it. She approved all the topics. At the last minute the teacher said “Now—whatever position you’ve chosen on your topic, switch sides and take the opposite view!” This was supposed to stimulate them. Gene had already switched sides, so reversing his position mean taking the bland conventional position, and he completely lost interest. He did not have the confidence to ask the teacher if he could keep his position since he’d already reversed it.
4. In a psychology class the group was divided up into small teams for group projects, and he wound up in a threesome with two young women, one of whom he was attracted to and both of whom, it turned out, were attracted to him. I probably don’t have to spell out the kind of mess this turned into or how he wound up doing the project alone for a grade two of them did nothing to earn while having to sit down three times a week with two young women who started out hating each other and ended up both hating him, to the point of falsely accusing him behind his back.
It seemed as if he might thrive in a private, individually paced tutoring relationship, but there were never the means to provide him with that. Finally he did get referred to the county for independent study in lieu of some high school program, and this went well until he quit keeping appointments and simply fell through the cracks for several years.