Intelligence
When I was growing up, everyone always said, “She’s so smart. She does so well in school.” To me, that kind of praise is about as silly as praising someone for being born beautiful (which I got a lot of as well).
One of my friends spent a summer working in a box-folding factory.
Yeah. Where they ship the unfolded boxes to this big warehouse and these people. . . . they sit around and. . . fold the boxes. That’s all they do.
There was a guy there, my friend says, who was kind of “slow” (were his exact words). He had been there for years, and he was the only one who knew how to fix the machines in that factory. If you had a problem, or if something broke down, you called him, not the manager, because as “slow” as this guy was, he knew what he was doing.
Intelligence doesn’t guarantee success. In fact, sometimes it inhibits it.
When I worked in McDonald’s for summer, I saw a cute quote downstairs in the little hole that they allowed for us to eat our free fish sandwiches:
Press On*
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
*Ray A. Kroc’s Favorite Signpost
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Another quote, stolen from RyanC_umudgeon’s xanga site.
| You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on into eternity, you don’t have to have a high IQ. You don’t have to have good looks or riches, or come from a fine family or a fine school. Instead you have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things–or one great all-embracing thing– and be set on fire by them.
– Piper |
If you disagree with me, that’s fine, but please don’t post a comment here. Post it on your own site.
*****Note to cynter and dingus5: It is always amazing to me how many people on the Internet feel familiar enough with total strangers to joke with them about a topic, thinking that people are posting for their amusement. This post was not really for either of you, but for those whom I care about who are upset because they didn’t score that well on their silly SAT.
An SAT, ACT, or even the GRE really has no bearing on how well a person will live in the future. What they choose to do with what they have been given has much more weight.
