The “S” Word.

You would think that due to the title of my blog I’d be willing to dab into the subject of intelligence with greater frequency.  However I find talking about intelligence to be quite personal for me and thus very hard to talk about. Even now, I fear I will not be able to effectively convey my feelings about this area in which I most often feel misunderstood. I worry that by discussing this topic I will comes across as me being conceited and arrogant. This is probably one of the main reasons why I have many unpublished “intelligence” posts.

Now I have decided to take the risk.  It’s simply too hard to have something that is so personal and such a maor part of me be undiscussable. Yesterday I had a friend tell me that I am “hella smart…like out of this world smart”.  Instead of going on a long tirade about why I hate being thought of as such, I simply said “no I’m not, I’m just lucky”. First of all, “smart” is such a relative thing.  Yes, yes I hate the word. I hate the relativity. I mean, I’m glad there are people who think more AND who think less than me. I’m glad there are people who do some things better than me, and some things that I do better.  But, I don’t like thinking about it from those comparative terms.  I believe in the paradigm of “multiple intelligences”. I hate being called smart, not because I can’t receive a compliment, but because I’ve been burned too many times by this paradox.  Just because I can grasp academic concepts a lot easier, doesn’t make me better than anyone else. When people call me smart, it frustrates me, in part, because I feel like they’ve artificially elevated one type of intelligence. After all as far as social intelligence is concerned, I am most definitely subaverage.

Words like “smart” and “genius” are isolating. Oftentimes I feel like a wide gulf has just been artificially laid between me and the other person when words like this are directed towards me.  You’re smart. You’re different. I admire how smart you are, but it’s obvious we can’t really relate, because you are so far “up there” with your thoughts and ideas.The way I see it is this, Some people are born to be great basketball players (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence), to be virtuoso musicians (musical intelligence), to be great speakers (linguistic intelligence), and I just have a brain that’s really good at test taking. Whoopdeedoo.

Glad I got that off my chest.