The Talent

 If you don’t do well in academia, that does not mean you have no talent.  It means you have no vocation for the classroom.  A gift is never developed in a classroom, except maybe the gift for being a good college learner.  You might learn a skill like computer technology or in a blue collar trade you might learn plumbing or electricity.  A gift is discovered once you get the chance to exhibit or need it.  John Vianney was a French priest.  He was a terrible student in the seminary.  Latin was too difficult.  He was poor and thus poorly educated before the seminary.  He barely got ordained and then put into a very small nowhere parish in France.  Good riddance to this dummy!  Except, he discovered a gift for hearing confessions, reading hearts and making suggestions for the sinners.  Trains packed with people began to come to this nowhere place.  His gift would never appear in the seminary.  He could not yet hear confessions as he was not yet ordained.  So you may have yet an undiscovered gift or a discovered one that asks to be used for the betterment of those around you.  I was a mediocre student all through school.  I had no vocation to be a seminarian.  I use very little of what I learned there today in my vocation.  And unlike computer technology, it never goes obsolete.