When the school decided I should skip first grade.
Oh, and at 18 a good example of it was when I got a handfull of Distinction grades in Computer Studies with next to no effort And most of the rest of my group got passes and merits.
In all honesty, I never “realized, vis-a-vis other kids” that I was “smart.”
Kindergarten, I knew I was the dumbest kid in the class, because the teacher told me that everyday. Left-handed people were stupid and I was stupid for continuing to try to write left-handed. Also, according to other kids, I was a dummy because I was in speech class. Nevermind not having my two front teeth, whistling or lisping meant I was stupid.
First grade, I was a dummy, because instead of doing my work the right way, I wrote everything mirror-image. If I weren’t so stupid, I wouldn’t waste my time doing that, when I could be passing notes and talking.
Second grade, I was obviously stupid, because I thought I knew how many syllables were in the word “supercaliflagilisticexpealidocious.” Even though the teacher verified that I was correct, only a dummy would even think about something like that.
Third grade, my teacher announced to the class that I was “obviously retarded.” If a teacher says it, it must be true. Her reason for that? I refused to do any homework. Yep, nothing says retard like making straight A’s while throwing homework away. :rolleyes:
In fourth grade, I was told that my third grade teacher was correct and I was retarded. I was tested to “prove” it. I was put in the “gifted program” after the testing and my teacher ended up quitting at the end of the school year. I heard that she attempted suicide, and that makes me happy. Bitter? No. Vicious? Yes.
After that, I still never “realized, vis-a-vis other kids” that I was “smart.” I realised, vis-a-vis standardised testing, IQ scores and research that I was in the “high genius” level of intelligence. What I did “realize, vis-a-vis other kids” was that I was an outcast. I also realised that I was a weirdo because I liked reading, and – despite the fucking moronic cunts who “taught” me during my formative years – loved school.
Ya know, I watched this thread, knowing where it was going to go, and I have been impressed by a few posters who didn’t go there. Just because I’m not a mouth-breather, I could easily say I am smarter than some people I know – but the truth is, some of those people totally make me look like a drooling moron when it comes to their personal specialty. I mean, if I had the motivation, I could easily learn how to rebuild an engine, but lacking that motivation, I don’t look down on someone for whom that is their one genius ability. It is my firmly held opinion that motivation means way more than skill and intelligence these days.
Wow. You just said in one paragraph what I couldn’t say in two excessively long posts. Vis-a-vis me, you’re damn smart. 
I’m pretty dumb but I’m smart enough to know this thread is ridiculous vomitron.
Well, now you know why people beat up nerds.
Fourth grade. Individual quiz on multiplication tables: perfect. (No, I’m not so old to have memorized “twelvesies”, as they did in days of yore. It was the sixties, so we only went up to 9.) Didn’t think that was a big deal until my teacher told me. 
I probably should have picked up on the fact that I could read before kindergarten. :smack:
Reinforced in the sixth grade when I got perfect "9"s on some achievement test or other.
IQ test in high school had me at damn-near-Mensa level.
My ACT under the system at the time was 32/36. A school record, and 3 points above the second best in my class. SAT was 1200(?)/1600.
Been downhill the last few years, though. Now I feel dumber than a box of rocks. 
Oh, and it is not a good thing to know that one is smarter than one’s peers, and think that one is smarter than one’s teachers.
I don’t understand how one can hang on to this feeling of intellectual superiority beyond childhood. I was an arrogant brat when I was a kid, right up until maybe 5th grade. I had a classmate who could do amazing things gymnastically that I could not dream of ever achieving. I had a classmate who knew how to break horses. I had a classmate who could paint beautiful, heartbreaking works of art and who could build just about anything with legos. My illusions of being superior to anyone else pretty much died right there. They weren’t fully destroyed until I reached college, and frankly the older I get, the dumber I feel.
I got into an argument with my husband the other night about whether I would have been capable of getting a 4.0 in college if it weren’t for all the crap I was going through at the time. He tells me that he doesn’t believe anyone he knows would have been capable of this even under the best of circumstances. I was offended, believing he truly didn’t understand my full capabilities. I tried to explain to him how vastly he was undercutting my obvious intellectual superiority, and then I realized what an arrogant douchebag I was being. I thought of our friends, many of whom are brilliant and creative geniuses, and started laughing at my own idiocy.
It’s an easy road to travel down, this masturbatory self-congratulation, but it’s ultimately unfulfilling. I believe my greatest gift is my willingness to keep learning, always… it is also my greatest joy. That’s all that really matters anymore.
Because they are jealous of our obvious superiority. Duh.
I wanted to clarify. I don’t consider myself a genius. I never felt smarter or superior. I am terrible at math, It always made me feel like a complete idiot. But I was pretty good at other subjects and I felt that balanced it out and I was just slightly better than average intelligence. I didn’t really think winning an award for being the best out of 20 or 30 kids in reading or science was any indication that I was a genius. I never felt superior, I always had my incompetence in math to bring me back to reality. I felt older than I was supposed to be and the watching Nixon resign was an example of my thought processes as a kid. I always felt out of place because I actually liked learning about things (other than math). Now I realize I was a nerd.
A math hating nerd, but a nerd nonetheless.
The day I picked up that bone and hit that bigger kid over the head with it so me and my friends could use the Jungle Gym.
I beat the smart kids! I beat the smart kids!
ow
[sad voice]
I bent my wookie!
I agree and yet disagree.
I’m actually glad that I have no idea how “smart” I am. I’ve never taken an IQ test, and my SAT and GRE scores contradict themselves dramatically. I’ve always done well in school, but never without a lot of hard work. I’ve had people heap praises about my intellect AND call me retarded and stupid. I’ve been in both remedial and advanced classes, and I’ve been both the top and the slowest student. It really is a humbling experience to experience both “worlds”.
But it’s funny. No joke, but I felt my absolute stupidest right after I successfully defended my Ph.D. The entire process broke me down to the core and I’m still dealing with the aftermath on my psyche. With time and lots of rumination, I’ve come to realize that I did the whole grad school thing not just because I liked school and learning, but because I wanted to prove to myself that I was not of inferior intellect and that I was smart, if not smarter, than all those “gifted” bullies who picked on me in school. I thought I needed the letters behind my name to help me shake off the inferority complex, but alas! IT DID NOT WORK. So a little bit of arrogance is something I wish I had.
There’s smart, and then there is smart. It’s the 'compared to the rest of the kids part that matters here for me.
I started going to the best private schools in the country when I was 3. That was at the University of Chicago. Everybody was smart, and no big deal was made of it. I knew other kids went to other schools, but they weren’t the kids that I was with academically, so I didn’t feel smarter than them. I did well in school, but so did pretty much everyone there. I was a nerd in high school and got pushed around and all that. I was not spared the ‘learning experience’ of personal humiliation. But being a nerd had more to do with having neither money nor clue. Everyone I graduated with went to college. Good colleges.
I went to a very good private university. Again, my peers were very smart. I did well (except for this one class, that I won’t talk about) and they did well. Compared to them, I wasn’t exceptionally smart. I knew we were ‘smart’, but that had no real meaning.
I worked for a while, but at a University, and the people who I thought of as my peers were mostly MD/PhDs. Even though I was doing admin work, that’s who I hung out with.
Then I went to Grad School. For the first time, I was on the high end of the curve, among my peers. That was a strange feeling. I finally understood that I was ‘smart’.
But the thing is, ‘smart’ mostly just is. Like pretty is. Since I was never taught to make a big deal of it, I have a very unemotional attachment to it. It’s just a part of who I am. I didn’t achieve it, and I’m not sure that it is achieved. Education is achieved, and it’s great when smart kids are put in accelerated programs that challenge them. But I think that too often ‘smart’ gets associated with ‘better’, on the part of the smart person. And that’s not so. Better at doing homework, yes. Better as a human being, no.
I know some true Geniuses. I grew up with a few, have worked with some. And then there is my Father. I thank God that I am not a genius. With perhaps one or two exceptions - which may reflect hard work+really smart, it is not a happy thing to be a true genius. I have a hard time finding friends and potential SOs who can keep up with me. Imagine how lonely you would be if no one you knew could keep up with you? And how hard that would be as a kid. You would know you were different, but not know exactly how, or why. My experience of that as a child- for a different reason- is such a powerless feeling. Could be that the only place that feels safe and real is inside your own head. (Maybe that’s why they’re always working …) Anyway, I don’t know many well-adjusted geniuses.
If you’re smart, be glad that’s all it is.
I always knew, because I came into school reading already. But a particularly memorable moment when I was about 8, I think…I used the word “voluptuous”, and all the kids insisted there was no such word, I was making it up.
My frustration persists.
For particularly painful reasons recently, I have found myself relating very strongly to Holly Hunter’s character in “Broadcast News” - Her producer says, “It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room,” to which she replies, genuinely pained: “No. It’s awful.”
Amen.
When I was five (which is the first year of school; we didn’t call them grades, so I’m not sure where the alignment is) I was sent to see the Principal. And we spent a few lunch hours playing maths games, that were designed for the eight- to ten-year-olds.
At that time I was also about five levels ahead in reading comprehension, and was sent to the library, on my own, to read the books intended for the ten-year-olds.
I could also draw pretty well.
However, having said all that, this was a tiny country school in rural South Island, New Zealand, so the sample I was being compared with was not statistically significant.
Ok, CrankyAsAnOldMan, so how did this thread “go down”?
I don’t understand why being able to read by kindergarten figures so prominently in this idea that you are exceptionally smart. I was able to read by then, but only because my mother was a teacher before I was born, and she put a lot of time and effort into teaching me. It certainly isn’t a reflection of my intelligence, and it’s also not especially unusual.
Yeah, I didn’t get that comment. I never meant/expected this to turn into a circle-jerk about intellect, just that most kids are morons and it doesn’t take a lot to stand above the pack in elementary school. Plus, I remember starting out by simply not making comparisons between myself and my schoolmates until around this age/ area of development. I was wondering if it was similar to others. I don’t understand the need to be snarky about it.
For what it’s worth, the reason I was snarky about it was that it’s always struck me as arrogant to consider oneself smart. It signifies a certain termination of the learning process. In other words, if I were to consider myself smarter than everyone else, why would I listen to them? That’s a very bad thing not to at least hear what others have to say, even if you think they’re complete idiots or jackasses. They might actually have something to teach you if you can get past all the crap.
I must also second the idea that being able to read when you enter kindergarten or other things of that nature (knowing how to add, multiply, etc.) is meaningless. It’s really the ability to pick things up, the desire to learn, the ability to have an open mind and listen through all the glurge that people spout to that one nugget of knowledge that truly allows a person to be smart, IMHO.
I speak, read and write in seven languages now, four of them fluently, and I’m picking up an eighth because I want my son to speak his father’s native language. I read early as well at a high level and have tested significantly higher than a lot of people on my IQ tests, which I only took later in life. But none of that crap makes me smart. The ability to pick up languages is pure luck and helped significantly with my studies as I grew older simply because it made more information accessible to me. My reading levels were what they were thanks to a very dedicated mom who read to me constantly and encouraged me to learn to do so on my own. My IQ? Maybe I was just having a good day because normally I test for shit. I can’t rest on my laurels. And I could never say I’m smarter than anyone else because they probably have something to teach me no matter what I know now.
There’s still way too much to learn and so many other ways I’m not smart at all. Hell, it’s all I can do to calculate a 20% tip when I go out to dinner.
I think the reason Cranky made the comment he/she did was because it does seem awfully self-serving and arrogant to say you’re smarter than everyone your own age. It’s also a very easy thing to say, but how do you really know it’s true? There are so many ways to be smart you can’t really quantify it.