I placed little importance on education, achieving both below average and average grades. Revision was foreign, I don’t think I ever revised, I favoured playing recreational sports over anything. Unfortunately, I gravely regret not taking school seriously, not so much that my current self is affected, but more so I never tested my true potential, so can I consider myself as not being smart?
Judging someone based on their smarts is a superficial act that causes unnecessary judgment and forms preconceived opinions. The level surface of an individual cannot be associated with the basis of their intellect. One’s character may have foolish tendencies unintentionally affecting perspectives. Ignorance causes this belief to perpetuate further while the individual hasn’t demonstrated their area of expertise.
We have become victims of the IQ test. Placing a number on individuals determining whether they’re capable is an immoral test that produces little benefit. If anything, the comparisons cause unhealthy judgments among the masses. Such a test ignores expertise in fields that do not directly translate to abstract reasoning, pattern recognition, and deductive reasoning.
Testing potential
If you’re like me and you haven’t tested your ability, breezing through life in dead-end jobs is the wrong place to be. Placing yourself in difficult situations in hopes of progression or academic achievement is a unique reward we should opt toward. The sense of achievement is an enlightening feeling that may propel you into further endeavours. Once we know what we’re capable of we may decide to pursue avenues we never thought to. Despite this, we will still be subject to laziness as maybe the reward of self-enlightenment doesn’t coup the expenditure of effort aka you don’t care and you’re happy with where you’re. I have an upcoming blog post on ‘value as humans’ that may trigger an unexpected paradigm shift.
The Polgar experiment
In the 1960s, father and psychologist, Laszlo Polgar wanted to prove his belief that geniuses are born not made. “When I looked at the life stories of geniuses, I found the same thing…they all started at a very young age and studied immensely” – Laszlo Polgar
The details of the experiment are lengthy, allow me to summarise it so you don’t lose interest.
Polgar’s wife Klara gave birth to three children: Susan, Sofia, and Judit, respectively. The skill Polgar decided to teach was chess; the ranking system was definable and there was no ambiguity in terms of a clear winner. The sisters were living and breathing chess as intended by Polgar, each individual achieved world-class chess player status through intensive training by experts and their father. At the age of a mere 5, Susan was winning against children double her age and beat several adults in the process. Sofia participated in a tournament in 1989, she won the event despite the presence of several top chess performers. The experts rated Sofia as the fifth-best in the history of chess in that tournament. Although, the three prodigies attained greatness. Judit became the best female chess player in history, earning a grandmaster title (an award by a federation called FIDE) at a record-breaking age (at the time) of 15 years and 4 months. She was the youngest player to break into the top 100 players at the age of only 12.
Laszlo Polgar was an amateur chess player, some may say genetics played a part. However, even if they didn’t have a ‘genetic advantage’ I’m positive they would have still succeeded by the means of their talented teachers and unrelenting dedication.
To conclude, if you’re improving in any skill, if you’re learning and progression is clear and definite, does it matter if you are not ranked high? The purpose behind this post is to show that your potential is greater than you think, put the work in, dedicate yourself to anything for 6 months and you’ll see terrific results. Decide your approach, whether you learn better through reading, videos, studying 1 hour a day or 3 hours a day, there is no one size fits all. You’ll never know your method if you don’t test yourself.