disinterest: people who can't admit when they're wrong

[sab]

Faux pas #78636; turns out you can only select one of the radio buttons on that last box, and one can't edit a poll! And so, go ahead and just check one.



[Poll #626294]



And then I'll stare at these answers and do some highly unprofessional analysis and post some more questions tomorrow, along with some general rambling on people who admit they're wrong and people who ARE wrong and people who are dumber than other people. Watch this space!

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

Swarthmore dramatically changed two radical parts of my self-image (so radical that it meant a changed self, too): my understanding of how attractive I was to other people, and my understanding of how intelligent I was in comparison to other people.

I grew up under the prodigy's morphine-drip of adult attention. When I met someone new, I knew I'd have to wait for a few moments, after I gave the basic smalltalky exposition of my life, for them to get over being impressed with me so that we could get back to actually talking. I was raised by a mother who said things, utterly sincerely, like "You're the most intelligent person I know," "you're the best writer I know." I know, of course, she's my mother! But she's also a creative writing professor at UPenn, and including herself and her colleagues in that statement-- I don't explain this in order to give authority to what she'd said, but rather just to show the scope of her sincerity. She was my most intense intellectual mentor; she championed me like a second self.

Swarthmore taught me that I was stupid about most things, and the things I'm not stupid about, no one probably cares about my thoughts, or believes that I do have authority. A completely different person won the prizes, published, edited, visited Germany on scholarship. I'm slightly below average here. It's hard to remember that I'm capable of doing what I did, now that it doesn't seem easy.

... so, college got me laid, and gave me the first peer-group of friends I'd ever had. And it gave me humility, which is no small gift. But it did take away my bravery. I have some residual arrogance, but no courage. I wish it'd been gentler!

The point is, anyway, that I didn't answer the "Compared to the rest of my friends/trusted compatriots, I am smarter/less smart" question, and I can't even touch the "the upper eschelons of mediocrity" poll. I have no idea how to quantify my own intelligence, much less my friends'; Swarthmore's made me decide that that's an utterly worthless pursuit. All I know is that I'm good at grasping some ideas, and that I am really, really bad at grasping others (I get worse at mathy stuff every year. It's horrible) that there will always be someone better than me in every sphere.