Even before reading this article, I always have felt that the word "exceptional" was highly overused in our society...meaning that people tend to bestow it upon others too liberally and too conveniently, either as a way of buttering people up or as a way of inflating someone's ego (or other people's perceptions of whoever's being described).

Jessica, a lot of what you've written here seems to echo that premise? We render the word impotent when "exceptional" becomes the perceived norm rather than...well, the EXCEPTION.