Humble Intelligence?

I’ve been mulling this around for a couple months now for a couple of reasons. 1) I haven’t been in the right mood to write this. 2) I’ve wanted to be very careful about some of my wording. The nature of this blog could seem very attacking and pointing fingers at others, and I really don’t mean for that at all.

So, if you don’t know me (or know me very well), I have the tendency to be very argumenatitve and I have to be right all the time. That not only affects the people around me or the relationships with those people but also things in my own life like school. It wasn’t until senior year of high school that I really realized how big of a problem it was with me and I started acting. It wasn’t until this past year that I’ve really begun to think back to why I am even this way.

Growing up, I was always considered to be one of the “smart” kids in school. I always got outstanding grades and I was a nerd. I loved to read. I remember one time in 2nd grade I went to the dentist. It was over around 10 or 11 in the morning and my mom asked me if I wanted to go back to school then or go home and have lunch with her first. I opted to return to school. I enjoyed school.

Now, being labeled a smart kid, whether appropriate or not, is not necessarily good for a kid. For example, I had to get the best grades of my class. If a person (at least others that weren’t labeled smart) got even a point better than me, I got made fun of or simply put down by other students. This isn’t great for a developing child. My peers put a drive in me to “know it all” and to be the first one done with an assignment or test and get the best grades. It really wasn’t fair. That began to change a bit in jr. high and high school but only a little. Tests were still a “prime” state of measure, but people knew by then I didn’t do assignments often.

A great example to how this affected me is the ITBS. I figure I can publicly say this because it was a long time ago and really that test can go suck it. I don’t remember exactly what grade I was in but I remember taking the math section and not being able to answer one question: 6 X 6. I left my answer blank, remembered the question and pulled out a calculator at home that night. The next day after I had finished that test, I went and filled in my answer for 6 X 6 which was against the rules.

My peers weren’t the only ones that have affected the way I am. How I perceived (and sometimes still do) the way my parents thought of my brother and me shaped me as well. I remember getting grounded and getting in huge fights and getting in trouble because of my grades. Now, I mind you to remember this has been MY perception of my parents; don’t go calling them bad parents just yet. I thought for a long time that it was simply because of our grades that got us in trouble. It seemed to me that C’s and even B’s were not acceptable in our house. If we got A’s, wonderful. Anything lower and I was grounded for some amount of time.

The truth about it, though, is it was the work ethic that my parents were disappointed in. As I said, I had problems with homework (not that I couldn’t do it…I just chose not to do it). One of the best examples I can give is Calculus junior year. My teacher weighted homework 20%. With an A in tests and literally only about 3-8% at any given time in homework, my grade dropped drastically. My parents weren’t mad I was getting a C+/B-, they were mad because I could’ve been getting an A with ease, with about 20 minutes work a night.

I know that, and I understand that. I had teachers throughout high school that knew what I was capable of and they told me so. My french teacher and I constantly got into conversations about how if I did any homework I would be getting one of the best grades in the class. My Oral Comm. teacher showed how even doing half the homework could boost my grade. But, grades didn’t mean much to me then. Honestly, they seem pretty ridiculous to me now. Do I have a better system? No. But it’s how I feel. Maybe because of how it’s affected the past 15 years.

Now, my parents expectations of my “intelligence” have crafted me a bit as well. Even as I’m really beginning to understand that, I feel like even stripping away grades, I should be able to do and handle anything. I should know it all and I should always be right. I’m intelligent (honestly, I’m smart enough to know that I’m wrong a lot…I’m still too prideful to admit it to your face 90% of the time, but I admit it in my head) and therefore should not struggle with understanding anything.

This has truly caused some problems for me in college. First and foremost, I haven’t actively been seeking knowledge and understanding as I did when I was younger. A lot of that is that little I read now and the amount of crap I watch on tv. But, because I am smart and I do understand things (and I am always right), I don’t struggle. So when I do struggle, something is wrong with me. I refuse to go ask a professor for help. Instead, I skate through not doing the homework or just barely grasping enough of a concept to make some stuff up for a test.

One of the reasons I’ve been thinking so hard the past couple of months is because I’ve had to buck up this semester and humble myself. Now, I wasn’t going to talk about this here because my parents read this, but I’m going to. I was really struggling with one of my math classes this semester and just stopped going. For two weeks I didn’t go to my class, and because that professor talked with my adviser (about me and about other things) a lot, I stopped going to my weekly meetings with him. After two weeks I knew I had a test coming up and really needed to decide what to do. At that same time my adviser sent me an email wondering what had happened to me.

It was then that I decided that I would do the unthinkable: I would go to my profs office. So I sent and email to my adviser telling him I would see him at our meeting and explain things then. We never really did talk about it, just worked on my research, but as I was leaving down the hall to go to my professor’s office, he said I should go talk to her. Good thinking. I simply walked in, no walls and told her the truth. I was struggling and frankly just decided not to attend class. She said she understood and I got an idea what we had covered and got some information from her so that I could hopefully prepare myself for the test. Needless to say, I failed (which thankfully she drops the lowest test score) and knew I needed to buckle down. Since then I’ve been to her office a couple times since to get some extra help and have truly humbled myself into learning again. I thank God she is a very kind and understanding and intelligent woman.

Basically, I’ve grown a lot the past few years from where I’ve been. Jessie was the person that really made it clear to me how big a problem my rightness was. Since then, I’ve tried being conscious about how I act towards others with it. This past semester I’ve learned how much it has really been affecting me individually and have begun to take steps to humble myself. I don’t know it all. I never will no matter what I wish. I do know that I am smart, at least in terms that I do absorb information very easily and can usually use it and understand it.

I don’t want this blog to sound like I am blaming classmates or my parents for the reasons I am the way I am. I have treated people like crap in the past, and will often still not accept losing an argument even when I’m wrong. This blog is more of a reminder of where I’ve been, some things that got me there, and what’s happened since. It’s for people that know and don’t know me to understand who I am and why I am the way I am a little more.

Something tells me that I’ll be getting a call from my parents sometime this week…