Why being good at academics does not necessarily means you’re smart

For a very long time, I've been saying how being good at academics doesn't mean you’re smart and how some smart people may actually be the ones who are doing just so-so in academics. While intuitively we know this can be true, it doesn't really seem very convincing that those first-class elites are actually stupid. Being so well achieved in academics, they must be quite smart, right?

Not necessarily so, a recent conversation with Anthony shed some light in this topic.

I came to the conclusion that education is a tool, a tool to develop and help people to fulfill their potential, a tool that those wise ones back in the ancient time used to impart knowledge to younger generations.

While effective in grooming talents to some extent, education has its limitations. The topic of this post is the loophole of education: practice makes perfect. A rule of nature is that when you keep doing the same thing over and over again, sooner or later, you will become good at it. This is exactly how mugging works. When you spend so many hours a day studying, you are bound to end up doing well in the exams. There are some who, unfortunately, cannot score well no matter how much they study, that is likely because they are at the limits of their potential – at least they tried their best. However, there are plenty who are mediocre-ly intelligent, but yet manage to score colors  This is how pure hard work can make up for their lack of potential; they use hard work to push their performance to the maximum that their potential can achieve. While this is extremely commendable – especially coming from the perspective of a lazy person – that’s the best that they most likely ever can do. They are not particularly smart, they just managed to perform exceedingly well using the loophole in education.

The smart one is not the one who studies religiously everyday and gets an A, it is the one who didn't study yet manages to get by. This is where the education system fails in recognizing talents, because it is impossibly difficult to fish out those real geniuses who scores badly in exams.

Intelligence is a curse

Everybody thinks they are unique, they are special. But do they really know what it means to be different? It means that nobody understands what you say, everybody thinks you’re fucked-up because you act and think differently.

It is tough when your perspective is so different from people, in a way that it’s not about whether the chicken or the egg comes first, it’s about why the chicken is even here, and it goes deeper. It’s not about right or wrong – there is no right or wrong – you see beyond of others’ visions and they are just too superficial to understand.

What’s the point of knowing and understanding things when no one else does? When no matter how you explain, they just don’t see your point? In the end you still have to accommodate to their stupidity because it is arrogant to point out that they are stupid.

Ultimately, the agony falls on you as you try to fit into them. You ponder on others’ feedback, so much that you start to think the problem is with you. Eventually you realize it’s not that you’re living in your own world, it’s that your world is different from theirs.

You see a world that is deeper, you understand a logic which is far more profound. But what’s the point? No one else does. To others, you are just a skeptic, an extremist, a pessimist, an arrogant egoistic snob.

To friends who understand what I’m saying – I thank you – it lets me know that we are not alone. I enjoy our time chatting together, you know who you are. But our numbers are few, the majority others do not understand.

Sometimes, I wish I can be normal . . .