I used to think and behave that way. What changed was that I had some events in my life show me once and for all that my supposedly great intelligence doesn't allow me to control my life any more than unintelligent people, or people who I perceive of as "average" in intelligence.
I've had my brain objectively looked at, and I am still allegedly pretty intelligent, but did it stop my dad from having a heart attack? Did it keep my grandparents from dying? Did it keep my lover from deciding that distance was too much? Meanwhile, am I the smartest or most successful person on earth, or am I one of many people on the same tier of intelligence as myself, with many more people much more successful? Am I not still a broke college student living with my parents? Am I, as a pre-med, not still below the very bottom rung of the health care totem pole?
For my ability to get to the root of large-scale problems, I also found myself caught up in idealism on every front, looking for ultimate solutions to the world's many problems. In truth, I probably did find a lot of good answers to many things, but what I also learned was that my idealism caused me to dislike the non-ideal world as I saw it, and that all of the depressing bile and venom I walked around discussing didn't help my lover's affection for me or my friends' patience. I allowed myself to get caught up in a delusion of grandeur, you could say, and start thinking of myself as a sole purveyor of truth in a world full of idiocy and disorder.
Our society is kind of funny in a way. Modern society pays no tribute to the natural selection, evolution or hunter-gatherer lifestyle we evolved from. There was a day and age when being smart meant outwitting enemies and prey animals, and it meant almost immediate gratification and the taking of a leadership role among your little tribe. Now, as has been wired into us since the beginning, we still value intelligence so highly, but it has been uncoupled from success. I once met a guy who had ten million dollars, but he was an absolute dunce to talk to. Even in the non-financial elements of success in life, how many people have we all known who have a brain that processes information at a B+ level at best, yet know precisely how to behave so that they are the pinnacle of popularity, loved by all and envied by most?
It's strange, but once you really get down to the nuts and bolts of our current human existence, your attitude, your work ethic and your social savvy mean more than your intelligence, by a wide measure, especially in medicine. So you're going to be applying to medical school, as am I, and what is the process? AMCAS primary, hopefully a secondary, then an interview if you're lucky or just plain qualified. What do the applications screen for? Well, the primaries tend to screen for statistics - MCAT and GPA. We all know by now that your GPA is more of a measure of your work ethic than anything else, so your MCAT is the closest thing to an intelligence test that you get. Your secondary application and interview, if I'm not mistaken, all focus almost exclusively on your attitude, ethics and social savvy.
In other words, they screen us initially for having brains that function at some baseline level, but then after that almost all selection is done by attitude. Just ask the folks trying to get into OHSU! Go look at the thread and read about how their interview process works. They rake you over the coals and see what you're made of, but at the end of the day, your grade in their eyes is comprised 20% of your numbers and 80% of everything else - personality.
I know I'm smart enough for what I'm trying to do, and that's okay. At this stage in my life, I'm about ready to hang up my spurs when it comes to number-crunching and intricate strategizing. The only things I'll dedicate my brain to are expanding my memory and expanding my creativity, because nearly every day of my 22 years of existence has taught me that the only practical applications of intelligence are to remember what you see and coming up with the most novel and effective ideas, either as directions to pursue or as solutions to problems. The rest is 100% work ethic and attitude, as far as I'm concerned.
I hope this helps you, or somebody.
Over and out.
!
