Best Posts in Thread: Being Smart, good or bad?

Being smart is the ability to learn without difficulty and adapt to anything knowledge wise thrown at your brain.

Everybody is smart (in a way but except @RaidByNightOnly he's dumb) , because we all have something that we're good at & that something is easy for us to learn and adapt to. Some people just have trouble figuring out what makes them smart.

Grades don't determine intelligence at all. I hate when people say "I get straight A's" or whatever 1. because I've been there done that 2. nobody cares 3. Grades determine how well you're able to work, not how smart you are.

There could be dumb people in this world that graduated who just studied before every test and did all their homework in school.

The only exception to the "smart" factor is that people with higher IQs (a countless amount of studies show) tend to be more intelligent.

TlR: you're all idiots

 

You have to define smart in this case.

Smart as in, able to play the school game?
Smart as in, you know what you're talking about in an area of study?
Smart as in, understanding rocket science?
Smart as in, being able to interpret and understand people (i.e. a good businessman)?

 

Well, the obvious pros are:
Being able to figure out stuff
Possibly getting yourself a better lot in life because of it
Probably being resourceful

Cons:
It might be better if I speak from experience. Growing up in a household and world being told that I'm smart and brilliant etc etc. has led me to quite a few problems. Firstly, my conflict with humility. I learned to hate being praised for two reasons: 1. I stood out, was ostracized, and picked on for it. (big deal, right? pssht), and 2. because the things that I was being praised for were unfair. I was naturally better at reading than my brother, but he was chastised for not being as good as me, while I was praised for being better than him. For me, reading was easy. For him, it was hard. So it wasn't fair to praise me for an easy task but him for a hard one. In fact, it made me quite a bit lazy.
It also made me want more praise, for something I felt I actually deserved. Enter perfectionism. I was just thinkin bout this earlier today, actually. Perfectionism, at least in my case, seems to come from the desire to be perfect, because you feel inadequate. So, the more I was praised for something I felt I didn't deserve, the worse I felt about it. Guilty, inadequate for not finding a more difficult task, etc.
I missed 5 questions on the ACT. Out of something like 140. When I got the scores back, I was bitterly disappointed in myself.
The feedback loop starts there, see. Because you know you shouldn't be disappointed, this is great! But you are disappointed. So now, you're upset with yourself for being disappointed. And then you become more upset because you know you shouldn't be, feel bad for being, but are /still/ disappointed. And it just builds.

And I'm serious when I say the guilt is real. I feel horrible for mentioning the ACT scores, because I also fear making others feel inadequate. Do you know the feeling of watching your best friend's face fall when she asks you what you got on a test you felt you did badly on, and you can't lie because you know she saw part of it?
Maybe it's just my personal issue with socializing, but I would much rather either be surrounded by people who I can't make feel bad by being "smarter" - which I hate, because it's not necessarily true. All the time... There are some... *ahem* - or just be like everyone else.

There are pros and cons. And no one's pros or cons will be the same, because each personality is different. Smart people can better the world by creating inventions, whatever, but, you know, they could also be a genius serial killer. I say it depends on the person and what they do with it.

 

Well, obviously not every intelligent person is going to experience the exact same cons, but some cons that I've experienced are:

-Laziness: I grew up being able to learn, understand, and remember things very easily, which caused me to be lazier later on. For instance, elementary and middle school were a breeze for me, as everything was easily done without having to try much, if at all; however, when I got to high school and my school work actually began to feel like work, I became lazy with it.

-Overthinking: A problem of mine is that I always end up analyzing what could go wrong in situations, thinking up obscure possibilities of what could be wrong based off of tiny little things that aren't actually an issue (such as worrying that a minor bodily pain is a symptom of a dangerous medical condition), etc. This often prohibits me from being able to fully enjoy could-be-dangerous activities the same as others can.

-Loneliness: Another con of being intelligent is that you don't often particularly fit in (This a rather cliché thing to say, but it remains true). I'm a pretty socially awkward person, which definitely doesn't help one to fit in (lol), but regardless of that, I've often felt disconnected from others and that most people I've talked to are, for lack of a better/less-conceited phrase, below me (Luckily, I have family members and friends that are also intelligent, saving me from this happening with everybody that I know). I don't know, I do enjoy being intelligent and feeling unique/disconnected from most other people, but at the same time, this could be considered a con, so I thought I'd go ahead and mention it.

I can relate to this a lot (Not specifically with the ACT, because I haven't taken it, but just in general).

There are many times that I do well on something and I shouldn't be disappointed because I know that I did better than most people, but at the same time, I didn't do as well as I wanted to. For me, this happens with just little, random things that are related to intelligence as well. For example, I'll often get disappointed when I just forget a little, insignificant thing or fail to understand anything at all. Even though I know that the little, insignificant thing is something that nobody would be expected to remember or expect me to remember, that nobody understands everything immediately, and that the thing could've been explained extremely poorly, I still feel like I should've been completely capable of remembering the thing and understanding the other thing. Furthermore, this leads me to doubt myself: Am I actually that intelligent? For me, self-doubt goes along with the perfectionism, because whenever I don't do great on something that involves intelligence, I begin to immediately doubt that I was ever as intelligent as I thought I was. I know that I'm just doubting myself and that I am intelligent, but at the same time, since being intelligent is a part of me and it affects my opinion of myself, whenever I fail to do well on something like that, the doubt always comes back.

I can relate to this in some ways, but not in others.

In some situations, I have to admit that I enjoy being around people who are dumb, because it fuels my ego (lol), but in situations concerning close friends/family members, I do prefer being surrounded by people who are around my level of intelligence. This isn't only because I don't want to make them feel bad, but also because I can't really connect with people who I find to be dumb.

I would never say that I just want to be like everyone else though, because being intelligent is great and it's part of what makes me who I am. I haven't mentioned any pros of being intelligent because they're all mostly things that are understood to be pros; however, I will mention the biggest pro of all right here, which is simply the fact of being intelligent. In my opinion, intelligence is very important and simply having it is a bigger pro than any other pros that come along with it. Furthermore, any cons that come with it easily pale in comparison.

Hopefully everything I said makes sense - It's 4:00 A.M. and I'm too tired to check for errors.

Edit: Wow, I feel so conceited after writing all of this. I'm sure someone will read this and feel like I just wanted to boast about being intelligent. Idk, hopefully it doesn't seem like that.