You don’t cease being smart

More than once my mother has observed that if I could stay in school forever, I would.

She’s right. If I won the lottery, I’d probably spend my time traveling, reading, and taking classes, because World! It’s so amazing and interesting! As it is, I read voraciously across all different kinds of topics. Right now it’s geology and the sociology of time, both spurred by a recent cross-country road trip (why is the landscape the way it is? and how is time so different in different places?), but in the recent past it’s been the ecology of backyards, introversion, the sociology of emotions, and scores of other things.

And yet, despite all of my love of learning and figuring things out, I hesitate to do it in public.

The cultural construction of smartness

As a child, I was tracked into gifted classes, and while the classes themselves rocked, they made my life a particular kind of hell. I remember being in the 6th grade, when the group of us were bussed to another school one day a week. The day we came back, the teacher tossed us a question the rest of the class had answered the day before. We couldn’t answer it, at least in the time allotted, and both she and the rest of the class mocked us for it. No matter that the question was in context for them and out of the blue for us. No matter that brains work differently. No, if we couldn’t answer it immediately and correctly, we must not be that smart.

There used to be a feature in Parade magazine: people would write in questions to Marilyn Von Santos, whose IQ was ranked one of the highest tested. (It may still be in there, for all I know.) These were rarely (at least in my memory) questions that drew out thoughtful, considered, variable answers. They were more often brain teasers trying to stump her. Again, the measure of smartness was being able to answer puzzle questions immediately and correctly.

This pattern — that smartness had to be proven over and over again, demonstrated regularly through feats of intellectual prowess, lest you get marked as not that smart after all — held in many contexts, with many people, across many places.

It causes just a few issues

If failing at something — or quitting something, or not being good at something, or deciding something just isn’t for you — means your entire identity is called into question, well, that’s not something you’re likely to put yourself in a position to experience.

It’s part of why we resist leaving, even when we know we’d be happier elsewhere. What if leaving means we weren’t really that smart after all?

But you are that smart after all. Leaving or staying has nothing to do with how smart you are. It only has to do with the situation at hand: what jobs are available, how well or ill your values and priorities match up with the market, and what actually makes you happy.

So if that fear is rattling around in your brain, bring it into the light. Look at it. Feel some compassion for the young, scared part of you who is worried it means you’re not special anymore. Sweetie, you are special, and you are that smart. And you will continue to be special and smart wherever you land.