We recently had a good thread relating to this topic on one of these forums called, “How do you define Intelligence.” Anyone interested in the topic should be able to find it easily enough. I don’t remember which of these forums it is in.
But relating more to the question posted here: When I was young, I had many adults in my life who delighted in having my intelligence evaluated by one expert or another. The end result is that I seem to be at least three standard deviations above the mean, which is an IQ of 145. They said that the population was too small in that range to accurately standardize a test over 145. What does that mean to me? Absolutely nothing, except that it put me into special classes with very intelligent kids, where I always felt like I was the dumbest kid in the class. I do not relate any of that to how I judge my actual intelligence.
How do I gage my intelligence? Frankly, I don’t. But if I did, I would look to see how successful I’ve been at doing the things that I have a real passion for. My answer would be the same as just about anyone else because everyone does well at the things they are passionate about. If their passions correspond to what the tests are testing, then they will do well on the tests. If not, then they will be judged not so intelligent. But in actual fact, they are no less intelligent just because they do not do well on standard IQ tests.
When I was in school, I had a passion for all things relating to mechanical engineering, so that is what I studied and I did well. If I had followed my parents’ advice to go into medicine or law, then I would have done very poorly, because my passion level for that was near zero. Now nearly four decades later, I still have a passion for mechanical engineering, and I’m still doing well. People call me “brilliant” and “smart” all the time. But they would be calling me something much less nice if I had gone into medicine or law, because I would have performed poorly. But if I had made the wrong career choice, would that have made me any less intelligent? Certainly not. It just would mean that I made a poor career choice based not upon my passion but on the advice of others.
So my advice to you would be to make sure that you love what you are studying so much that you lose all track of time when working or contemplating that subject. If you have not found that subject yet, then keep looking. Then once you have been working in that career field long enough to be stuck in it, you will have no regrets about having chosen it. You will be happy to be stuck. You won’t be simply counting the days until retirement. I’ve seen many people counting days, and they are all the people who perform the worst in their jobs because they have no passion for it. I want to be like a guy I work with who is 85 years old. He is still an excellent engineer, and he is still making plans for the future with no interest in retirement.
One more point of advice: Judge yourself as extremely intelligent. People seem to manifest a level of intelligence that corresponds closely to their own self evaluation. People who think they are stupid normally act stupid. People who think they are intelligent act that way. I’m not talking about the hypocrite who tries to act intelligent when he believes in his inner soul that he is not. I’m talking about people who know from the depths of their heart and soul that they can get this done, even if they currently don’t know how. Those are the ones who accomplish the things they want to accomplish, and they have whatever level of intelligence they need to do it.
