I am sooo far behind...

DanTheMan

When I was in elementary school, I was considered by my teachers and my beaming proud parents to be somewhat of a prodigy. I was a straight A student, and I really didn't have to work to get those grades. But middle school and high school brought the paranoid-schizo-borderline-narcissistic personality that plagues me to this day (though recognition of the problem is the first step towards recovery LOL), and my grades fell like a brick. I barely graduated HS.

However, while I was in the borg I was generally regarded as being a pretty smart guy by the 'friends'.

Fast forward to today, and my realization that compared to a lot of people here, I am a complete intellectual lightweight. Farkel, AlanF, onacruse, larc, Amazing, Abaddon, Perry, hillary_step, REM, francois, funkyderek, lauralisa, refiners fire, Xander, Valis, metatron, Joannadandy, StinkyPantz, JT (very smart guy evn if speling ad gramer aren't so good), and many others make me feel like I'm so stoopid!

Depressing as hell! I turned my brain off at age 12 and I realize now that I am just so much unused potential. I'm so hungry to catch up on my knowledge deficit that I don't even know where to start. *sigh*

Dan, dumbass-class

freedom96

You are what you want to be. A thirst for knowledge is the beginning.

pr_capone

I know exactly what you mean Dan... I feel much of the same way.

Eric of the intellectual lightweight class

IronGland

Im sure you're a smart guy. However I've come to the conclusion that in order to (i guess) promote self confidence, elementary school teachers blow smoke up their students ass and tell all of them that they are smart and gifted. I was told the same thing. Just about everyone I know has told me they were considered gifted as youngsters and just didn't apply themselves. I imagine most people are exactly the same unless they have some sort of defect.

Valis

Dan...give yourself more credit than that good man! Everyone is "smart" in their own way. Some of those folks can do circles around me in the bible dept, music dept, grammar dept, etc...but you or I can probably do things that they can't or haven't had the opportunity to learn to do...you are in the same boat with us all, just at a different stage of jumping ship I suppose. You have to sieze the opportunity. Did you know that MIT has begun to put a number of their classes online and free to the public? And not just engineering stuff either. Find yourself a topic and consider the prerequisites you might need to pass such a course or even to persue a free learning experience of this kind. Then begin your study and read the lectures, subcribe to newsgroups or discussion groups about your subject of choice and get to it. There are also lots of community colleges/universities that offer distance learning opportunities for adults and can be found on the net like the University of Phoenix.

Also, check out this website for scholarship ops of all kinds for all ages.

http://www.fastweb.com

DanTheMan

Thanks for the MIT link Valis, very cool.

Francois

Your story and mine are very similiar, my friend. I was early considered a "prodigy." I was doing advanced syntheses in organic chemistry in junior high school, playing (should I say attempting) "Goldberg Variations" by the end of high school, etc.

However, the stage whereon I was performing these feats was dominated by a fundamentalistic, cultic religion of your acquaintence on the one hand, and an abusive father whose cruelty, whose maladjusted personality knew no depth on the other. The yin-yang, push-pull of his assurances of love alternated with behaviors proving its denial were too much. And it was this later phenomena that caught up with, and finally destroyed the budding potentials. I was much too much the arch-sensitive personality to continue performing intellectual prestidigitations while struggling to maintain sanity. And I collapsed.

But I have since discovered that this life of the Spirit isn't called the Infinite Path for nothing. It little matters that we may have been delayed a scant few decades on this planet of our origin. Infinity minus fifty years is still infinity, you know. We can pick up where we left off and have at it again. And I'm assured that any path we choose to follow, and for which we have a demonstrable talent, we will be allowed fully to develop in the worlds to come.

I think I'm going to go for the music of the spheres.

What will you do?

francois

rem

Dan,

Your situation is very similar to mine. I did very well in the lower grades, but only did ok in high school in comparison. I think for me much of it was because I bought into the whole JW thinking that I wouldn't really need good grades to get into a good college before Armageddon.

So after high school I basically stagnated - never even so much as read a book. Then a few years later, I found H2O and some of the posters on this board. Participating in these discussions sparked my thirst for knowledge again. I picked up a book for the first time since high school when I was 23 years old, I believe. I may go back to school someday, just for the fun of learning, but for now books and discussion fill my need.

Sometimes when I think about how all of my friends have college educations I feel so far behind too. But through interaction with them I've realized that we all excel in what we enjoy. Some are book smart, some music smart, some dress smart , etc. Just find something you enjoy and go for it. You don't have to be an expert in everything!

rem

joannadandy

HOLY CRAP! I MADE THE SMART PEOPLE LIST??

I am flattered and stunned quite frankly.

Here is a little insider tip frome one of the "smarties"...I only comment on threads and topics I know things about. (And even then, sometimes I fake it) I think possibly the greatest thing "smart pepople" do is drop tidbits of expertise into their conversations. I remember when I first went to college and was blown away by this girl in my English class. She was quoting famous authors, and passages from books I had never even heard of. I thought for sure I was going to flunk out of college. But then I had more classes with her, and she kept quoting the same old things, and repeating all her little trivia gems over and over. I finally spent sometime with her outside of class only to find she was in fact a total DUMBASS! She was just a good faker of intelligence.

Valis brought up an EXCELLENT point which is that there are literally hundreds of different types of "smarts". Everyone has their strengths and areas of interest. My interst happens to be literature. I can go on and on about different movements in literature, but I am usually at a complete loss when it comes to things like economics, or whatever. The only reason I got this knowledge was because of my desire to know more. To study the things that matter to me.

In high school often times we aren't given a chance to study things that interest us. We are forced to take the required courses and we grit our teeth and deal. Very little in our education prepares us to be critical thinkers, and open sponges for new information.

If you want to create some "smarts" in yourself start off by taking an intrest inventory. Do you want to learn about great painters? How about mythology? Maybe theology turns your crank? Whatever it is use it as a starting point. To me, knowledge is weblike. You start on one strand, perhaps with one general book about whatever your interest is, and it will sprawl out and take all sorts of different directions. You might be happy with that surface level knowledge or perhaps that will trigger more interest on a different but related topic. To be a student you don't have to be in school, you just have to have a desire to want to know more. And you seem to have that desire. So go to it!

josephus

been there. felt that way.

look on the bright side, now were small fish in a big pond instead

of big ,, etc etc you get it.

regards

josephus

I am sooo far behind...

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