Did you acquire intellectual humbleness once you got into college?

I went to a mid-tier school and towered above my classmates, most of whom abided by a "Cs get degrees" philosophy. Constant reminders that I didn't attend a top50 and my post-graduation inability to find a real job have kept me mildly humbled/depressed, however.

there are two women in their late 20s with degrees in english and psychology who work alongside me for minimum wage caring for people with challenging behaviour, they are spat at and occasionally hit by them, they clean up their poo. whenever the black agency staff(who can't turn a kettle on) approach a particular resident he screams "get out you black bastard"

Huerco S?

Modding Veeky Forums is not a job

>with degrees in english and psychology
those are equivalent to not having a degree,

>be teenager me
>brightest student of the only high school in midwestern town
>socially awkward sperg with a single friend
>no sexual experience at all
>had no problem accepting that: "all genius are weird, you can't have both"
>graduate with honors and several recommendation letters
>get into MIT to study math with relative ease
>first semester
>most students are very similar to me: twichy, uneasy, scrawny nerds
>feel relatively at home and able to ace most classes
>end semester with an almost perfect GPA
>next semester, apply for TA position in linear algebra
>professor applies test for about 16 students, both veterans and freshmen
>a hour or so afterwards we have the results
>I ranked 2nd
>guy in 1st place (let's call him Brad) got a perfect score
>I had no idea who this Brad was, which was weird
>"hey, I got in"
>right behind me is a tall, muscular white dude with a girl
>find out he was just transferred from Canada where he was a top student and also played hockey
>whatever
>a few weeks into the new semester, this guy already got a reputation around campus
>party-goer, hyper-NT and easily 6 inches taller than me
>we had two classes together that semester
>professors always look up to him; his input is always timely and constructive
>able to crack jokes while talking advanced math

When you get to see a human being that is, to all effects, an improved version of yourself, there's no way not to feel distressed or humbled. The mere existence of this dude threw me into a deep existential crisis.

i think you're just stupid if you think intelligence is anything besides savviness + shit memorized

wired

tired

how fucking pathetic. you should have made it your goal to surpass him, weakling.

theyre actually pretty useful degree, but most people who pursue them are not very proactive, and exceptionally idle.

asperger's can only carry you so far in quant fields. it's an animal skill and animals can get better at it if they apply themselves, which your retardation tricked you into not doing

>tfw still superior to everyone even my teachers
Feels normal

Undergrad made my ego go to my head.

Law school humbled me. Even at a shitty law school everyone around me is smarter than me in some way. I've worked with people at firms/officers/bars/etc, and sure you can have street smarts. But fuck man, law school has completely obliterated any notion that I am smarter than the average bear. So much time and effort put into studying for such little return. So many friendships left to rot in exchange for this little taste of power.

Couldn't be done. The guy was simply smarter than me. He graduated and went directly to some Wall Street firm to work with algo trading. He probably makes over 7 figures
And even if I actually managed to surpass him with my intellect, he would still be taller, more handsome, charismatic and neurotypical than me. You just have to accept it and move or commit suicide

nice

>And even if I actually managed to surpass him with my intellect, he would still be taller, more handsome, charismatic and neurotypical than me. You just have to accept it and move or commit suicide

What a defeatist attitude.

>even if
>he still

no, motherfucker. if you surpass him in intellect that's it, you win. you can also develop your charisma, work out, can't get taller but who gives a fuck, and nuerotypical? really? jesus dude. If you become smarter, you are then free to use that superior intellect to win more money or influence or whatever it is that you value i dont give a shit my point is that the fact that this dude shook you by merely existing is very sad

I'm a lawyer now but my opinion on most college majors is not very high. Listening to "college educated" individuals talk is often nauseating as they think they are so intelligent and interesting.

College just depressed me because it revealed to me how much potential I'd in my youth and how hopeless it was to even try to catch up to people who are less intelligent than me but posses more motivation and stronger work ethic.

You're really shitting up this thread.

top bantz

Yep, it is one of the most valuable things I learned. But then I also realised that I am actually kind of good (for an undergrad) once I got to my final year.

You sound like you have the healthy attitude for being an out-of-shape pseud that won't ever really amount to anything nor ever be admired by others..

Kudos.

(Checked)

Defeatism is Nirvana. The Buddha told me when I wandered out of samsara and met him.

Because of crippling self-esteem issues, I was always intellectually humble.

I only managed a semester and a half of college and then I ended up in a psychiatric hospital (misdiagnosis, simple partial seizures thought to be psychiatric issue prior to 36 hour telemetry EEG, fun times all round.) Got an agrotat pass for the last half of that year, but haven't been back.

My university felt like I switched to a high school that had a focus. It's well known for my state, but it isn't one to brag about. If anything, it made me realize how precious time can be, because I worked about five hours short of full time during school. It was hard to spend the appropriate time on all my work.

huerco s is trash tho

I've only gone through community college and will be going to a real university later this year. community college felt like high school but I imagine being a university student will be more demanding

You should have read Brave New World to understand what to do

what do you mean??

why the fuck don't you just see him as someone you can learn from? it's one thing seeing him as such and another to put it into action but christ that's pathetic

God I feel so much about this.

I remember one of the slower kids in my class, it was fucking obvious I was more intelligent than him, I remember seeing him every time I went to the library. Just studying, completely focused, for hours, every day. He ran slow but steady and got average grades.

What I don't understand is why people proudly talk about why they're "Smart but lazy". You should fucking loathe admitting that. It's admitting you have life easier than other people but are an amoral piece of shit and ruin it for yourself.

Like fuck, being "Smart but lazy" is like saying "I'm beautiful, but I never bathe". It's such a weird fucked up paradoxical humblebrag where you first talk about some quality you have and then immediately disprove you have that quality.

Who the Hell is arrogant *before* they actually accomplish something of merit?!

Kids?

I love working with engineers. About 90% of them seem to confuse
>"I can read procedures, do math, and remember standards"
with
>"I am the smartest man in the room"

agreed. if you're lazy, there's no way you're smart.

Here is what happens
>Media depicts geniuses in a stereotypical that rarely matches reality
>Some youngsters that seem to match the stereotype do OK in early grades and conclude they are geniuses
>In later years their grades are average so they claim to be 'smart but lazy' as a screen for the fact that they are merely mediocre but have an inflated self-opinion

I just acquired a deep appreciation of my parents
>Homeschooled along with my brothers [I'm oldest]
>At 14 my parents said 'our goal is to teach you to teach yourself. All you get now are goals for each quarter. Here. Ask for help if you need it'
>Spend youth assuming kids in public school know a shit ton more than me - after all, they do school 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with teachers - I just spend a few hours here and there on it, half on hobbies
>At 16 I apply for and get into community college. Parents are proud I am taking charge of my education, I am doing it because I fear I am missing out
>BE in electrical engineering in 2 years. 4.0 GPA. Figure 'all my public school friends tell me community college is a joke'. Still feel like I know little.
>Get into Georgia Tech. 4.0 my way through E.E. while working
>Take electives. Find out not everyone knows Latin and Greek. No one has read philosophy before. One kid can play an instrument, and she's a music major from UG. No one can dance or talk to girls but me.
>Realize how much my parents did for me
>Apologize to them for thinking they were cheating me
>They laugh it off, warn me I am still just learning, haven't even done anything yet but learn.

>I'm strong, but I'm starving myself
>I'm fast, but I don't run
>I'm gregarious, but I don't talk to people
>I'm great at climbing the career ladder, but I'm unemployed

I believe part of the problem is we conceptualised IQ as synonymous with intelligence, and IQ has no correlation with work ethic. It also has no correlation with creativity. So schools will give kids these IQ tests, tell them they're smart hooray, and then when half of them turn into lazy fucks that ruin their lives because they're such massive dipshits, they go "Sob sob, I'm smart but lazy!"

19 year-old college cuck here. was a NEET for 9 months after high school and before college.
Always thought I was "smart but lazy". College showed me I'm actually just lazy. The only reason I got this far is a combination of luck and the adrenaline that kicks in when I feel that my lifestyle is threatened. I was hit with the crushing realization that I have the willpower of a wet tissue paper. I feel like I'm destined to accomplish great things, yet I still haven't accomplished anything and feel like I'm wasting my youth studying economics.
Any advice?

Most people that accomplish great things work 70+ hour weeks, and in a field like economics, they're also 2intelligent.

Accept being a mediocre cog in the machine or put your nose to the grindstone with constant fervor if you ever want to achieve anything.

>go to college in a first world, predominantly white country.
>Brown guy from the third world
>Smarter than everyone in class
>Philo prof says he's never given anyone a grade as high as me.
>Realize that white people are dumb af
>Speak and write better English than everyone in class, even native speakers. Especially native speakers.
>Everyone alienates me
>Hardly talk to anyone on campus
>come home for the summer.
>Befriend female lit student who attends the top uni in my city.
>Smarter and read more than her. Deeper than her and more philosophically inclined.
>Realize that Veeky Forums is the only place I can go to for intellectual stimulation
>Realize that everyone on Veeky Forums is much smarter than people I know irl
>Arguments on Veeky Forums often blow me away, and opinions are informed, articulated and carrying conviction
>Tfw when I realize you all are the closest I ever had, and will have, to actual friends.
>Ily guys

please tell me more. my son is about to start school next year and i'm seriously considering to homeschool him instead. i don't want public school to make him think learning is boring and mind numbing.

he's rather far for a first grader (he can read and write, can count infinitely, do substraction and addition up to 100, understands the concept of multiplication and division), so i suspect he will be bored to death (from what i hear, they spend the first half year of first grade learning the alphabet and addition/substraction till 20) and might start acting up, which will get him shut down my teachers, and so on.

i just see that he has such a huge drive to learn new things. he asks pretty complex questions all day and somehow it hurts me to think that this might stop thanks to him going under in a class of 27 kids and having to spend hours doing pointless exercises.

would you recommend homeschooling? what mindset your parents instilled do you think was the most helpful?

i think i learned humility on Veeky Forums. i never encountered someone irl who blew my mind and here it happens almost daily.

Worse
Most schools do NOT actually give proctored IQ tests. Teachers simply opine as to whom they *think* is gifted. Then they tell them they are gifted.
Many aren't

>economics
>accomplish great things

My parents tell me this
1) Homeschooling is a lot easier than people think. Once the basics of math, reading, and writing are down 90% of the work of the parents is getting materials for the kids and they do the rest
-Since kids can indulge their temporary obsessions they learn focus but by requiring a certain minimal amount of math, reading, and writing they also learn self-discipline
-The goal is to get the child so he self-teaches at 14-15 and then just aims for the goals of the requirements to graduate HS as minimums
-It is cheaper than sending them to public school.
You'd have to ask them for more

Any precocious child will hate elementary school.

Send your son to school so he can socialise but make sure you help develop his mental and social capabilities by taking part in activities with him that will be social and mental. Make it a once per week or one hour per day kinda thing. Your son will excel in highschool and feel superior to everyone else, it will be great!

sounds good enough for me. my plan was to send him to public school and see if he likes it. i remember my own school time fondly, so he might enjoy it.

if i see that it's not doing any good, i'll take him out again.

how have you coped with the fact that you weren't part of a big class? iow, did your parents make an effort to get you to socialize otherwise, by doing sports or something?

he's not precocious, he's just a little boy like any other boy. but i guess he always loved to ask questions and i took the time to answer them, even if that meant to interrupt what i was doing to google a picture that compared the size of the sun to the size of uy scuti.

kids only get precocious if you tell them they are SO SMART and if you make them talk like little adults. that's very annoying and won't help them in any way unless being entitled and snobbish is helpful.

Public school kids are less well socialized that homeschooled kids

I barely have parents and I certainly wasn't given this. I envy you.

Bullshit

i just feel like sitting still during hours of boring classes is very tempting to act up. we could use that time more wisely. i would definitely make sure he properly socializes. maybe i'll propose the idea of him being homeschooled but attending public school one day a week to the authorities. i'm not sure they will cooperate, but i can still ask.

if he stays in public school i wouldn't stop taking the time to find informations about the things he's currenty interested in. the kids i know that have been in school for a few years just stop being interested in learning, that's what i want to avoid.

unnecessary information:
studies found that student's brain activities during lectures was lower than during sleep. makes me think...

This, existing purely to earn a lot of money is a waste of your life and ability. It contributes nothing to world and very little to you as a person, except monetary value.

Nah, I've always known I'm pretty dumb, despite my high test scores and perfect GPA. I can memorize and spit information back out with little effort but I'm fully aware how little I actually understand, even if no one else is.

First, which sounds more conducive to preparing kids to interact with the real world?
Homeschooling?
>Kids are with their own parents and siblings; interact with neighbors; go shopping with parents and interact with salespeople, grocers, mechanics, etc.; belong to intramural soccer, little league, scouts, and other groups where they have fun with other kids of various ages, backgrounds, etc.; homeschool groups organize dances, field trips, etc. where they interact with kids of all ages and backgrounds while visiting factories, quarries, etc. and meet with adults
or Public School
>children are strictly sorted by their home location and birth year so that they only associate with people the same age from the same area; spend hours each day in a room where they are permitted almost no time to speak freely with each other; the only adults they are allowed to interact with are professionals trained specifically to interact with them in a similar manner; all while separated from family and children of different ages and areas
?
Second, researchers like McDowell, Smedley, and Montgomery is different studies found that homeschool children are at least as well socialized as public school children and have lower incidence of depression and anxiety. Smedley used the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales to demonstrate that homeschooled kids are far more adept as social interaction than public school kids.
The Brady paper on social development demonstrated that social maladjustment is relatively common in public school but almost unknown in homeschooling.
This is well-known, well-documented stuff.

i forced myself to understand instead of memorize by becoming that person everybody asks to explain what the lesson had been about like i would explain it to a retard.

No, kids interact with each other in the school yard, in the corridors.

The only problem with it is (especially in america) a very cruel social order where those considered to be different are severely ostracised and bullied, even to the point where some of them become mass murderers :P

Hmm, I've always felt I tended to understand the material better than the grades reflected. I felt quite envious in school of people who could just drill through flash cards and get awesome grades with seemingly little effort. There is also a certain power in it, I gave up on chess when I realised that to become high level at the game you needed extreme rote memorisation capabilities because people had worked out insanely long series of opening moves people play out without thought.

I think one of the keys is being able to repeat what you learned forwards, backwards, in as simple language as possible, with plenty of jargon, and avoid rote learning.

I'm not the person you were replying to, I just thought I'd share my input.

You seem to be neglecting the part where I said "send him to public school but school him from home yourself too".

The whole point of sending your kid to school and homeschool at the same time is so that they can mature faster than kids who just go to school.

You can't be selectively reading like that, it leads me to believe you need to the one going to school, not your son.

Also read this:
Times have changed, kids can be especially cruel if you don't arm your kid with the social skills he needs to survive in an American high school. Basically he has to blend in, play sports and be smart. He'll be fine then, hell, he'll thrive there with additional home schooling.

No, showing up one time a week will make him stand out, unless he can charm the other kids he will be bullied. The idea is to have him go there full time to experience it as it is for everyone else. He needs to waste time with other kids, he needs to have fun, he needs to get into confrontation (and settle it on good terms), and he needs to learn with them. Thats what the social thing about school is, it will arm him with an array of social utilities he will rely on in the future.

>corridors
for 10 minutes at a time?
>Schoolyard
really?

They spend a lot of time socialise. I have nothing more to say if you are going to be silly.

i didn't overread this. but i don't think you understand my concern about this approach. it's about him wasting time in school that wouldn't be necessary.

maybe he would mature faster, but then what good would it be to go to boring classes with people you already passed by in maturity?

it's also that i don't want to overload him. if he goes to school all day, maybe plays sport and spends time with friends and has homework, it seems like overkill to also want to homeschool him in addition. he should also have free and down time.

i agree with your concern. the argument i held against this is that he already has etablished a rather big social circle in which he's well liked. if i send him to soccer training, he will spend time with almost all the guys from his class. i also already know almost every family in the area and we often meet up in our free time, so i do think that he would be able to learn the social aspects even if he wouldn't go to class.

there's no doubt that it would never be the same. after all, stuff like joking about your idiot teacher bonds. doing forbidden stuff at the school excursion does the same. having a crush on the girl two tables behind you is exciting.

the only thing i haven't been able to answer just yet is, if learning and experiencing social skills you can't emulate with homeschooling justifies the downsides of public school and missing out on the benefits of homeschooling.

Always been humble, known forever i'm not that smart. I'm one of those knows a little about a lot people, so I just don't talk much.

I fucking hated school with every fibre of my being and didn't focus and barely showed up by the end. It felt like a prison and bored the hell out of me. No interest in university either, would rather be an urban poor than follow that shit.

There's definitely something wrong with the very idea of a school. It is like a factory for people, it is nothing like how children would be raised in nature.

Maybe a school socializes children properly for being "normal" people in the modern world, but that doesn't mean it's healthy for the kids.

>Did you acquire intellectual humbleness once you got into college?
The opposite happens to most people.

Nah, to be honest, no. I have a bachelor's in Computer Science and I'm currently studying for my Master's. I'm surrounded by so many talented people that I feel like a wimp.

>They spend a lot of time socialise
I went to public school
No, we didn't spend a lot of time socializing

i've just read a book about the history and concept of school and it was pretty interesting. basically, the schoolsystem we know today is still the same that was etablished after the industrial revolution.

the goal then was to produce workers who are able to do small and clearly instructed tasks. so the focus of schools was to teach children to comprehend instructions, do the same thing over and over again without tiring and do as they're told without asking questions, internalizing facts without understanding the concept and maybe develope it further.

nowaydays that's not guaranteed to secure you a mediocre job anymore since the importance of solution oriented creativity and intrinsic motivation has significantly increased.

the book was "most likely to succeed" if you're interested.

i also went to public school and despite the teachers attempts to stop it, we spent a lot of time socializing.

Yeah right, kiddo. Money is the only thing that matters. Cash talks and bullshit walks.

Economics isn't a STEM-tier practical field. It's not on the level of something like accounting, either. It's a general field and at best can be compared to something like "business administration" unless you're pursuing a career in academia.

>got accepted to study history and international relations at Oxford University
>ever since I got my degree I feel like a mediocre ignorant pseud

Life was better when I still had a sense of intelligence, false or not

I got into Oxford, going at the end of summer. Preparing to feel very dumb, as I already feel dumb now.

Reminder that you won't make it unless you become obsessed with your major and spend nearly all of your free time independently studying it.

>"I can read procedures, do math, and remember standards"

Imagine how fun it is being an engineering grad student who's awful at all of those.

Imagine bragging about being a STEM

They are a rather arrogant lot, aren't they.

I don't consider myself smart or average, but that's because of my crippling self-esteem issues. Does it count?

>crippling self-esteem issues
Are you a teenager? If you still have self-esteem issues and you are any older than 20, you should probably grow the fuck up already

this is true

I go to a shitty state school and obtained a complex about being smarter than everyone else here (there are a lot of dumb people in this place) and I spent the majority of my first two years just getting drunk and high all the time. My first semester in particular was really bad; but I've brought my GPA up to a 3.6-ish range now. I get it that there's a lot more to education than going through the motions. Hopefully I can distinguish myself well enough to continue post-grad studies at a better university, with some more money in hand.

I'm poor as fuck right now, which is part of the reason i'm going to this mediocre ass school. Though I did get rejected by the really nice liberal-artsy type colleges like Kenyon and Oberlin, so i'm surely not outstanding by any means.

You can only get "humbled" if you're an arrogant shit to begin with, just work with what you have and learn from others.

i'm in a similar situation; reared in a flock of international baccalaureate 'highbloods' i sort of assumed my intelligence or as words it, 'intrinsic motivation' would be enough to secure a place at UCLA/Vanderbilt or at least some mid-tier (eg Case Western) but I found myself practically scrounging for scholarships and none that actually mattered

so here i am, eternally miffed by my own slight incompetence yet somehow still convinced i'm above those with actual work ethics putting themselves through more than just the motions to graduate from this shitty public school; at least you've managed to restore your GPA, mine's still resting at the sub-3.0 range and my full ride's just left the station lmao

>Graduate from a rural high school six months early with the top GPA
>Get accepted to semi-prestigious business school while the rest of my class chooses between the local community college or the military
>Start reading Ribbonfarm, Wall Street Playboys, Paul Graham's essays, and upwards of thirty books from January to May including The Moral Animal, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Antifragile, Zero to One, and other business related books
>"What other 18 year old in America understands this much about business? I'm going to become a billionaire."
>Had official graduation ceremony and decide to read Meditations, Homer, finish the Divine Comedy, and pick up some Plato, start getting arrogant
>"I'm going to be smarter and have more culture than every other freshman, who else is studying the classics the summer before their first year in college?"
>Stop talking to everyone, including family members, with this aura of smugness radiating off of me
>Read yet another Veeky Forums thread about IQ tests, debate taking one
>"At the very least I'm smarter than my peers, what do I have to lose?"
>Take several as I was unable to accept the original result...100
>Hade to accept I'm no smarter than any individual and have been given no inherent advantages over anyone, everything I achieve in life will have to be earned
>Inadvertently humble myself

It's been a strange few days coping with the IQ test results. There's no eye opening experience like having the rug pulled out from underneath your superiority complex. At least my humbling came before college and I was spared alienation. Imagine the scent of preteniousness coming off a guy from the middle of nowhere who just read Homer and believes he knows everything.

I'm glad you had the experience in high school. It is a shattering the the psyche when it happens in undergrad, graduate, or at a real world job. You'd be alienated from classmates, clubs, coworkers, bosses, etc.

Remember user, study as if your life depends on it. Not for good grades, but for absorbing the knowledge from the overpriced texbooks and the overqualified professors. What you will be learning is the basis of conversation at any place of employment. Network. Make friends. If you're going into business your classes are basically going to be either 1) entery level communication theory classes that teach you why power distance and wageslavery are the best and how to do it better; and 2) business maths that have no real world or logical application eg. statistics, finance, accounting. Just make sure to read for class and do the work. If I had put in the effort I'm putting in for law school in anything else in my life I would be in a completely different place. I was a lazy piece of shit. Learn from other's mistakes. This experience with the IQ test is not determinative, but being the humble midwesterner is a surprisingly deceptive and useful quality to have and embrace.