I grew up being the smart kid at school. Always top grades, constantly bored during elemantary school, because it was way too easy. Class mates sometimes called me names for always having good grades. I didn't like it, but I didn't care that much. My grades went from good to bad thoughout high school.
First, some friends where surprised, than they sort of forgot about it. Teachers started to ignore me or went from praising me to "What on earth are we going to do with you?"
I lost my good grades and my status as the smart one, but did I lose my intelligence?
It's something I've been asking myself ever since this happened to me. I stopped counting the nights and days I spent crying because "I've lost my intelligence".
I know that grades have nothing to do with how smart you actually are. And still, in a world where people are constantly thrown into categories depending on their university degrees, accepting that I'm still incredibly smart despite my lack of academical success, is one of the hardest thing to do.
For the past 5-7 years I've been convinced that I turned into a dumb person. Less smart, less intelligent and definitely less successfull than pretty much everyone who graduated from high school the same year I did.
They're studying, some probably got their first degree a year ago and I'm still sitting here, not knowing what my life is about. Not knowing who I am. Failing over and over again. Telling myself that all of this just happens to me, because I'm not good and smart enough.
They're all better than me. They study. They gain knowledge. They HAVE to be more intelligent than me.
But is knowledge the same thing as intelligence?
I can't get all these questions out of my head anymore. Like I mentioned before, I've been struggeling for years now. But it all turned around when a friend of mine messaged me out of the blue and told me what an amazing and intelligent young woman I am and that I have very mature thoughts. She came to that conclusion from reading my blog. I felt honored in a certain way (I can't really deal with compliments...damn, what sort of issue do I NOT have?), but my overall reaction was "You gotta be kidding. Are you insane? Me? Smart? Thoughts like a grown-up?"
I asked into it and what I got back was very thought-provoking. In my opinion, I write a lot of ridiculous things on this blog. Most of the time it's just something random I want to push out of my head in some way. And of course, sometimes I write a blog post because I want to say something. State my opinion.
And still, even my "thoughtfull posts" like the one about finding your battlefield are usually written within one or two hours. It's easy, because I'm just writing down what I'm thinking about day in and day out.
It got crazier when my therapist called me an intelligent young woman as well. What makes it so crazy for me, is that she said that about 10 or 15 minutes after she met me for the first time.
And I was back at "You gotta be kidding. How can you tell if someone's intelligent after such a short period of time?"
After that I started to ask some of my closest friends what they think about it. It's fascinating to talk about what people think of you. And how they see you as a person. What they see. How they describe you.
It's interesting to explore yourself. Go deep inside of yourself, throw out every thought you have, question everything about yourself, get opinions, fire back even more questions and end up with the realization that you're intelligent after all.
I'm still not convinced about it (I told myself I'm stupid since I was 14, I can't simply throw away this thought over night). It takes time.
But not having gained all the knowledge I could have gotten by going to university, is by no means proof that I'm not smarter than some of those who did. You need a certain amount of intelligence to learn things, but I think there is enough living proof out there that even the "dumbest" people can succesfully go through university.
Intelligence on the other hand, is something you can't learn. You could call it a gift, if you want to. And I believe that you look at people who know a lot differently than at people who are intelligent. Or people who have both qualities. I'm always extremely impressed when people seem to know everything. I love it and I always wish I knew that much myself.
And then there are people who impress me by being intelligent. It's a very wide spectrum. From daily life tasks to the way someone treats and talks to people. You can find intelligence on every corner of life.
Drawing this clear line between knowledge and intelligence makes it easier for me to deal with my "failures". It's a new adventure for me, to get to know my smart side and accept it the way it is.
Intelligence is something you can't label with a degree. And thinking about it, I'm glad you can't...
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