Brilliant People

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Clarissa

August 11, 2025

People see what they want to see and are eager to confirm their biases.

Still, there is a kernel of truth in this observation. Very brilliant people who ace school and college often never learn to grind. They exhaust the opportunities they can access on sheer giftedness and fade once serious, backbreaking work becomes necessary. Failure is unfamiliar to them, so the first time they fail, it becomes an existential crisis. Those of us who are more modestly gifted know from the get-go things will be hard. So we aren’t destroyed by our many failures.

I often sigh over not having an IQ ten points higher but maybe if I did, I’d never achieve anything. Today I felt my intellectual limitations acutely as I struggled with a paragraph that was not happening. I’m still completely stumped but I’ll try again tomorrow. And the day after. And so on until I figure it out. It’s always like this, so it’s fine.

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3 responses to “Brilliant People”

Demotrash

August 11, 2025

My gifts are definitely relatively modest but that was enough to never have to work hard in high school (doesn’t take much.) I still don’t really know how to “study.” I am to some degree learning how to work at things now…in my thirties.

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cliff arroyo

August 11, 2025

“Very brilliant people who ace school and college often never learn to grind”

There’s a definite profile of Polish student who did very well in high school (which is far more rigorous than any NAmerican high school I’ve ever heard of) without much effort and then when they have to make an effort they’re kind of lost.

Sometimes they’re surprised when they fail a test (for the first time in their lives) most then do figure out how to apply themselves but it can take a while.

There’s also a kind of very brilliant person who’s just plain bad at a lot of the more mundane aspects of life (including studies).

There’s also the idea that the people the post is describing are…. fast plodders? That is they breeze through conventional education by following directions but then are kind of helpless when they have to find solutions on their own and they really don’t do well in unstable changing job markets.

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ed

August 11, 2025

“I often sigh over not having an IQ ten points higher but maybe if I did, I’d never achieve anything. Today I felt my intellectual limitations acutely as I struggled with a paragraph that was not happening. I’m still completely stumped but I’ll try again tomorrow. And the day after. And so on until I figure it out. It’s always like this, so it’s fine.”

It’s almost like putting in the effort to over come challenges is a key part of success.

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