fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2021 ]

[ SECRET POST #2021 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2021 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 110 secrets from Secret Submission Post #289.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sure, it is better in life to have a degree than not, in theory at least,but it's no grantee.

Point in case: I have two degrees but I'm jobless (again), while my bf dropped out of college but has never been unemployed for the last 10 years.

We're getting to a sort of critical mass where so many people have degrees, the value of a degree is not what it used to be either.

We're getting to a sort of critical mass where so many people have degrees, the value of a degree is not what it used to be either.

Just because an A grade's been downgraded to a B grade doesn't make it any less higher than a C grade. I'm guessing that your boyfriend's job is rather menial and doesn't have much of a prospect in the future. That's what I'm doing without a degree, anyway.

To be honest, I wasn't arguing that degrees are the be all or end all of life. I was saying that intelligence is defined by academic accomplishment, so to call someone 'smart' when they don't have a belt load of academic qualifications is as true as saying someone's a brilliant gamer just because they've bought a billion games, but haven't passed the first level.

Whether the game is unfair to them or not is another issue, but the game is still the defining issue here.

My bf is a computer programmer/web designer actually - so not so menial.

I don't think intelligence is defined by academic accomplishments, it just happens to be one of the most convenient ways we have to measure it.

However things like creativity or problem solving are also a huge part of intelligence, but are underrepresented at least in some branches of academia. Some diploma's you can pretty much get simply by drilling the subject matter and parroting that on test.

Now, obviously even managing to parrot a large amount of knowledge takes some intelligence and skill (but it's one very particular subset of intelligence). So while I'd say that most people who manage to finish college are relatively intelligent, not all people who drop out are unintelligent.

Intelligence is also about potential (but you can't know potential unless you had the chance to develop it).

In you gamer example: Someone could have a really great talent for gaming, but if they'll never owner a console, they'll never know - but that doesn't mean they do not have the potential. In that same way, someone who never went to college might be intelligent, but never got the chance to prove it (but might use their intelligence for non-acedemic things).

As a liberal myself, you sound incredibly liberal. This belief that intelligence is there, but it's the systems that are holding it back?

When we remove the barriers of race, wealth, gender, sexuality, age and cis-ism, you know what will be the last thing that will decide a person's place in life? Their intelligence.

The state has deemed me too thick to achieve what I wished out of life, so I've stopped wishing. It's the human condition. The stupid will always fall to the bottom, no matter how much that pains the liberals who seem to think no one has to.

It sounds like you're determined not to change your mind, but I agree with kallanda_lee.

That's because you two have probably never had to dealt with being of low intelligence. I envy you greatly, but no one can change the brain I've been born with, so I have to accept the cards I'm dealt and move on.

It just irritates me when people of higher intelligence try to console me into thinking I can still achieve. When you are thick, you will have less opportunity in life. It's just a fact and people need to stop lying about it.

Look, you're a anonymous person on the internet, and obviously I don't know how smart (or not smart) you are.
I have given my opinion on this matter, but you seem very convinced of your own thoughts on this matter.

No, not everyone can achieve in college - I do not know you enough to know whether you could or couldn't.

But honestly you sounds already defeated by life. I'm convinced you could achieve in something . That something might not be a doctor's degree, but perhaps you'd be a very talented woodworker, or interior designer, or hairdresser (there's actually a lot of creativity in those jobs.

I don't know what your talents are - but you do. Not all talents are academic. If you're good with your hands there are ways to get out of menial jobs. If you're willing to learn, even just in an evening course, there are ways out too. But it seems you have resigned yourself to never amounting to very much, and that's sad, because you only have one life and it's a pity to give up without a fight.

But it seems you have resigned yourself to never amounting to very much, and that's sad, because you only have one life and it's a pity to give up without a fight.

When everyone in your life has told you that you can achieve, then you try and you fail not once, not twice, but every time, why the hell should you continue to believe it? It doesn't hurt so much if you keep your head down, work 9-5 and accept the most you can hope for is to retire someday and not die in the cold.

I can't achieve in anything because everything has an academic component. It's woven in. Woodworking requires mathematics, interior design requires economics (in the running of a business). Even hairdressing requires college courses which I cannot attend because I cannot pass exams because of my learning disorder.

For us thickos, there is no hope. Just be happy you have intelligence and forget about us, okay? Someone has to make your burgers.

Maybe people are telling you you can achieve because they can see you're smart while you refuse to see that in yourself.

Do you think everything comes easy to everyone else?

I dropped out of 2 high schools, and eventually ended up graduating with my country's equivalent of a GED.

I went to college even though I had a shrink specifically tell be I wouldn't be able to because I had some serious issues.

In college I flunked a year and I had to redo it because two teachers basically hated my guts and didn't think I was a "team player". But I took that as a chance to take different subjects the next year.

Then after I graduated I haven't been able to hold a job for longer than 6 months.

Trust me, I know about failure. I know much more than I'd like. But I know that believing that you're stupid never fixed anything.

This. I have a college degree and three years later I still don't have an actual career job. I went two years being unemployed after I graduated, had to move back in with my parents, before finally managing to scrape enough together to move to a different part of the country where the economy wasn't quite so bad. Since then I've been working two jobs pretty consistently and while I do excellent at my current job and love it, I still only make $9 a hour and its seasonal so once it ends I go back to making minimum wage and have to scramble to find a second winter job in order to support myself.

A lot of life is simple perseverance. I dropped several of my college classes and struggled A LOT in college but I managed to pull through and graduated with a 2.9 with only having to take an extra semester and a few summer classes (which were required anyway).

Point is, people with degrees will still know a great deal about failure too so saying, "You have a college degree so you don't know what it's like to fail" is a gross overstatement.

Not everybody has a talent or is good at something you're lucky if you are, but some of us are literally not blessed with talent or intelligence. The fact depresses me but it's a fact nonetheless. I realized this years ago and came to terms with it. I have a job that's kind of stupid (but then so am I lol) but it's a job I can handle and a steady paycheck but it's really annoying for people to come in and try to tell me that I'm just not trying or looking hard enough.

I'd try and explain myself more, but to quote you "you seem very convinced of your own thoughts on this matter" and honestly I'm not very good at explaining myself. So I'll just leave this here.

DA

If you're able to show up for work, do a job (even a crappy one) with competence and get along with your coworkers, those are talents a lot of S-M-R-T people don't have.

Society has brainwashed us into thinking we should all aspire to be rock stars or millionaire CEOs, but look how many of those people are miserable. If you're happy, or at least content, with what you do, that's nothing to be ashamed of. In reality, most of these so-called menial jobs are a lot more necessary to the smooth functioning of society than the glamorous careers are.

Jumping in to say that I agree. It sounds like these others are intelligent people and have no idea what it's like to not be intelligent. I'm not smart. I'm average with a few learning disabilities that will throw me to below average on tests. I get so sick of people, usually people with degrees, telling me that I'm putting myself down and if I just applied myself and that it's not hard to get a degree and how a degree doesn't matter that much blah blah blah.

It matters. You're smart, I'm not. Stop trying to tell me otherwise.

You can work a computer. You can make coherent, logical arguments. You can follow a discussion. You can make and defend your position. You don't need to be "smart" to function in society. It fucking helps a lot, but let's be honest, the "smart" people aren't even the majority of the world. Then how do the rest manage?

Society/the government/people with money/etc. are trying -and succeeding- to brainwash the population into believing that you have to ace tests, memorize the shit out books, be a smooth talker, pretty, charismatic, have a college degree, have a high-paying job, being on top of the command chain, not taking orders from anybody, etc. to be successful and/or happy in life. And that's... frankly not true.

Don't fall for those lies. The economy is shit right now, and even the "smart" people are struggling to find a job that pays them enough to pay for actual basic expenses, so "smartness" is not the defining succeeding-in-life factor that people want you to believe it is. It's tempting to blame it on your perceived lack of intelligence, but from talking to you right now, you're not "not intelligent"; school tests as they are now check for your ability to brute-force memorize information in the long term; that's only one type of "intelligence" out of many more, and it sucks that school only focuses on that one for all the big decisions.

I'm not liberal, but I'm European, and to local standards I'm centrist at best.

Intelligence is largely genetic in fact (have a look here for a quick summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ).

I don't believe the system is "holding it back", I just do not believe that being able to parrot a test particularly proves intelligence. I do not believe intelligence per definition floats to the top, either.

And yes, obviously even an intelligent child could be fucked up to a degree they go feral - but I'm talking about people in relatively normal home situations.

I didn't say that everyone is intelligent - I said the potential for intelligence is not necessarily linked to a college degree. That is not the same thing.

And frankly I'm speaking from experience.

At the risk of getting shit for this: I've been a member of my local Mensa since age 16, and you honestly don't want to know how many college dropouts with 130+ IQ's there are. Hell, you don't want to know how many of them drop out in high school . Or how many ridiculously smart people work menial jobs like being being bus driver or a supermarket employee. And yes, these people have in fact been tested in ways you'd call "academic". A great number of them got de-motivated even before high school, some have learning disabilities or are in the autism spectrum which makes it difficult for them to function in full-time education or hold certain jobs.

Edited 2012-07-16 01:04 (UTC)

I'm European too and in Europe "centrist" is as close to liberal as we get (in the UK it's defined precisely as such, but you might be from the mainland, which I'm not so sure of).

I didn't say that everyone is intelligent - I said the potential for intelligence is not necessarily linked to a college degree. That is not the same thing.

And I am not saying potential for intelligence is intelligence. I'm saying that intelligence is linked to academia because that's the way it's tested. What you're saying is like claiming a centimetre isn't a centimetre, even though the ruler defines it as such. Academia is the ruler and this definitive "intelligence", by whatever name, is the result of that ruler.

A great number of them got de-motivated even before high school, some have learning disabilities or are in the autism spectrum which makes it difficult for them to function in full-time education or hold certain jobs.

As someone with a learning disability, I'd have no hesitation in saying they have been defined as unintelligent, as I define myself, according to the state. The state does not use IQ as a definition of intelligence, otherwise you wouldn't need degrees - you'd just need your IQ to apply for a job.

Wait, what? The state does not define intelligence!

The state doesn't even hand out jobs (well, except government jobs) and there are still employers who value ability and resourcefulness over a degree.

You have defined yourself unintelligent based on your chosen criterion (i.e. getting a degree). That doesn't mean you are unintelligent - it just means you choose to believe that. I'm obviously not going to convince you here, but you basically made your own definition of intelligence and decided that you don't fit into it.

Anyway, best of luck either way.

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[ SECRET POST #2021 ]

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