June 22, 2007

• "smartser" heh...... You're one of the younger siblings, right? :)
• Aah, you caught my little joke. That only took 47 minutes... :)
• I'm the firstborn, and for years suffered under the delusion that I was the "smart one." Then one of my younger brothers learned Latin and started a fully-funded PhD program in literature. Sigh. He's probably also the "funny" one (despite not being as endlessly quippy as I), and there's an outside chance he's a better musician on his primary instrument (bass) than I am on mine (voice) these days. At least I can still be the "massively-penised" one.
• I'm a first-born who was adopted and became a second. I'm smart AND funny! good looking, too! but with a teeny self esteem problem, which I am working on
• I'm the seventh son of a seventh son. *throws up the horns*
• I'm a middle-born. Am I smarter than the youngest, at least?
• First sign of intelligence: not taking any notice of intelligence tests. I WIN!!!
• I am the first born and I am still the brainiac of the family after all these years. my sisters don't know any Latin, man!
• I've been called the smarter one by all kindsa folks, including my big sister, but she's the one pulling down six figures and driving a Lexus while I toil away at a keyboard for pocket change, ride a bike and run around in the woods for fun. At least I don't grind my teeth at night, and my blood pressure is much better than hers. Aw heck, what's more important, brains or the capacity for fun? 'cuz I'm definitely the "fun" one.
• I'm the eldest, I kicked my 4 younger siblings' asses on the SATs, but they all have more successful careers than I. There's a lesson in there. That lesson: End your sentences comparing you with your siblings with the words "so far."
• I'm 2 of 2, and as kids, I was always thought to be the smarter one. When my sister was tapped for the enrichment program, it came as a bit of a shock -- my mother asked the school if they were sure they had the right one. I went much further in school than my sister did (not that that's a measure of intelligence in itself), and my sis got into this weird competition thing with me, which I was totally oblivious to. Go figure. However, she probably ended up with a 'better' life than mine. But I'm definitely more cute and fun. Obviously.
• And I got my driver's licence on the first try, as opposed to the fifth.
• My mother refused to tell me the results of mine and my older sibling's childhood IQ and aptitude tests. She would just give me a pitying look and gently say, "They were very, very close."
• Sandwich kid. I'm the funny one. "Funny" as in "oh, uh", not "ha, ha!".
• First-born here. Still teases my little bro about destroying the Death Star before he did. His claim to fame is he got his drivers license and got married first. I counter that I don't have my drivers license - but I haven't had 3 car accidents and been divorced either....
• phew,, that's evidently who the zombies are going for first, my oldest sister.
• My older brother's massive IQ came with an even more massive dose of self-centeredness. I love him, but I sure wouldn't want any aspect of my daily happiness dependent on him. But my little sister? Solid damn gold. Worth every drop of drool we occasionally have to wipe from the corner of her mouth.
• My mother refused to tell me the results of mine and my older sibling's childhood IQ and aptitude tests. So did mine, and I aim to do the same. Too much importance is placed on those tests, and there have been recent studies that suggest that kids who are praised too much for their intelligence can actually suffer academically because of it.
• Which is why we've painted "Jack is a dum-dum" on the nursery wall.
• Well, in our case, no importance was placed on them at all. The psychologist recommended we both be advanced a grade and the school refused. They also said they were sorry, but no spots were open in their enrichment program.
• I had the reverse -- the psychologist wanted to tell me my results, and I said I didn't want to know. Parents had to back me up on it. I just had the feeling that there'd be all these expectations coming out of it.
• My parents essentially had two only children, because my sister is so much younger than me that she barely remembers when I was still living at home. I think she's the smartie, but she puts a whole lot more pressure on herself to be academically perfect. (Despite the fact that my high school grades were pretty ho-hum and now I gots me a Ph.D.)
• I'm the first born but my sister is way smarter^[1] than me. She's more intelligent too. This study is worthless. The experimental methodology is riddled with problems and IQ is a bogus concept anyhow. ^[1] I'm growing out of the silly American habit of calling clever folk "smart".
• We had labels in my family: I was the smart one, my younger sister the sporty one, the third sister a combination of the two but not as smart or as sporty, and my brother, the only boy, was also sporty. That's how we grew up and how we still tend to see each other to this day. Our school didn't help because they basically played along with our parents' view of us. When I was a kid, my sporty sister got singing lessons and I was horribly jealous, but I wasn't a singer and my sister was (said our parents). I got my own damn singing lessons when I was 23 or so, and loved every second of it. We all felt a lot of pressure to do well within our respective labels, and all failed due to that pressure. I dropped out of university, my sister sabotaged her wrestling career on purpose, my other sister had a baby at 19, and my brother is in Australia because his relationship with our stepdad, also his wrestling coach, broke down.
• I'm the not-so-crazy one.
• I was the smart one, my younger sister the sporty one, the third sister a combination of the two but not as smart or as sporty, and my brother, the only boy, was also sporty. Spice Girls, is that you?
• I find it difficult, when contemplating any collection of three females, to break free from the Charlie's Angels/Golden Girls paradigm: 1. The Smart One 2. The Sweet One 3. The Ho
• When I found a woman who combined all three, I married her. She's smart, sweet, kind of slutty, and all mine. Giggity.
• All of my brothers are smart, probably smarter than me; second in line. The youngest might be the smartest, but what do I know? I'm second in line. Pfft, maybe in Norwegia I am.
• Monkeyfilter: smart, sweet... all mine
• Oldest of five here--I may have the 'smarts' to test well, but I sure have repeatedly shot myself in the foot and done stupid things to screw up my life in the past. I can recognize the pattern, and the amazing thing is: I KEEP ON DOING IT!! I can sit in a college classroom and listen, then test well without having to study unless there's an almighty load of stuff not covered in the lecture. I lubs me some essay tests and writing papers. Pretty mechanically inclined, and practical when it comes to putting things together & figuring things out--building a horse shed or running a sprinkler line. Personal life stuff? Long on theory, short on practice. Here I sit, quite the idjit.
• MonkeyFilter: kind of slutty
• *pays Hwingo for fixing the incomplete tagline*
• Second son of a second son (we even have the same middle name). My older brother is no slouch, but I'm taller, had better grades, completed a PhD program, and for damn sure am dead certain my wife is much more awesomer than his. (Plus, I used to be heavier, but now I'm thinner than him to boot.) Except for the whole "he already has two kids and I have none" thing, I WIN, SUCK IT BIG BRO!
• MCT's wife is also for damn sure dead certain much more awesomer than his older brother's too.
• Higher IQ (Mensa at 19yrs, bloody waste of time that was), eldest sib'. Have never failed at anything i took an interest in. Many things i don't want to take an interest in, boring! That changes regularly tho' - :D Smartest thing i ever did was learn to disguise intellect, and to laugh at meself. Humility comes with the territory too. Every answer just leads to another question. The more you learn, the more you realise you don't know, and understand even less. Smarts is no asset in real terms. Too many expectations, pressure to perform and lack of recognition that 'smarts' is just another difference that pass the ammunition to anyone who can only see the 'difference' and not the person. Have some bitterness - yep, working on that one. A lot of years as unpaid teacher's-help will do that to ya. Can't count the number of times i heard the comment; "You're so good at (whatever) why aren't you good at (whatever)? You must be doing it deliberately/to get attention." Any mistake you make is exaggerated, any emotional difficulty is dismissed as 'attention-seeking'. The so-called 'smarts' isolate, and create resentment, jealousy and envy. We gear ourself to 'fail' in a lot of areas - very obviously - eventually! After all, that makes us so much more "human". Or we find others like ourselves lurking on the innanet. Hooray! Screw IQ, i'll take mediocre in my next life thanks!
• Smartest thing i ever did was learn to laugh at meself. May we assist you in this project?
• Go for it! New tips and pointers needed for rapier. :D
• Is that rapier for a rapist wit?
• Ah, rotate, what you find out eventually is that the halcyon days of mingling with your "peers" does not prepare you for life in the real world. When you leave the exalted ranks, you learn to change your vocabulary and to pick appropriate debate opponents so that you don't piss off perfectly nice people. The rules change, and that turns out to be ok. In fact, you may find hidden gems of a different kind of intelligence who can teach you something. I guess what I'm trying to say is that intelligence is only valuable to the extent that you can find something worthwhile to do with it, and finding out what's worthwhile may take some study if you don't have a clear goal. And that goal should be something that doesn't just rely on intelligence to get you through, because it won't. Find something you love and find a way to do it. That may take a differnt aspect of intelligence than you've fostered, but I'm sure it's in you somewhere. My best advice is to get rid of the notion that you're special because your IQ is high and to just think of IQ as a tool. It doesn't define you.