Article | Magician
I am a "gangster", a "gangster" who can't get along with myself. Am I smart or not? I have been arguing with myself on this issue for many years. Finally, I came to the conclusion: My absolute IQ is not high, I just have a good memory and am good at drawing inferences from one instance and drawing analogies, that's all.
Why do you think this way? Because I was really "smart" when I was a kid. On the first day of school (there was no kindergarten at that time, there was preschool), the teacher asked us to count before class to see who could count more. I could already count from 1 to 100 at that time, and most people had less than a few people. This is how I started my first day of school. I didn't study much for the next two years, but my grades were still excellent, and I easily took first place in the class. It was probably from that time that I hinted that I was smart.
Later, in the fourth grade of elementary school, I transferred to another school for the second time (there were few students at that time, schools began to merge, and some with too few students were closed). After I came here, there were more students, and this also started my career of living on campus (many people don’t start living on campus until they are in high school or even college, but I started to be independent when I was in elementary school). I can't remember whether I was the first in the class or not, but I'm sure I was among the top in the class. At that time, there was a habit of reciting the day's text (sometimes Chinese, sometimes ideological and moral) in the last class in the afternoon. Those who finished the memorization first could go to the canteen in advance. I remember that I was not among the first few (top 10). ) left the classroom after reciting, although they were also at the front, but I vaguely realized that my memory has declined. Maybe I have become stupid (because I feel that memorizing is not as fast as before), or it may be because there are more students and outstanding students. There are more people.
By the time I was in fifth grade, I had realized and accepted that I was not the smartest or the best, because there were other people, and there was a way. There is one thing that I remember very clearly. It was a night self-study. We were endorsing on campus (our teacher was very loose at that time and allowed us to endorse outside the classroom, and there were often off-campus activities). I observed the third student. One person found that he read loudly, was very focused, and memorized very quickly. What I feel is most inferior to him is concentration.
Later, when I entered junior high school, the difficulty of learning really went up a notch. If you review the questions in elementary school carefully, there will be basically no problems. However, in junior high school, learning becomes more difficult, and it becomes more difficult as you go to the back. By the third year of junior high school, I obviously felt that I was not that smart, or not that good. I was in the top ten of my grade in the second year of junior high school, but by the third year of junior high school, I was never in the top ten. Even the first place in the class could not be guaranteed (because I was assigned to the worst class, I ranked first in the class). Here is another thing that impressed me deeply: There was a classmate with whom I had a good relationship at the time. He had a characteristic that he could solve problems very quickly. I started to learn from him, doing questions with him, memorizing together, and eating together. After a period of observation, my judgment of him is: he does things very quickly, but his accuracy is not too high (as reflected in the mathematics test paper); he memorizes quickly, but he forgets it quickly; he eats quickly. It's also fast. He said that speed was developed since childhood. For me, this speed is indeed not something I can catch up with in a short while. During the endorsement process, I made a new discovery. He endorsed things very quickly, but he also forgot them quickly. Most people also conform to this rule. Compared with him, my recitation speed is not faster, but my memory time is longer than his. I am a person who can remember things for a long time once I remember them. Regarding this point, I also made a special induction and analyzed memory according to two dimensions, one is the time required for memory, and the other is the time for memory retention. According to the permutation and combination, four results will be produced. Most people fall into the category of people who take a long time to remember and have a short memory retention time (referred to as: slow to remember, quick to forget). Slightly smart people belong to the category of people who need a short time to remember, but also have a short memory retention time (referred to as: remember quickly and forget quickly). And I belong to the category where it takes a long time to remember (relatively), but the memory retention time is long (referred to as: slow to remember, slow to forget).
In fact, I can remember some knowledge for a long time, and once I learn a point, I can draw inferences and draw inferences about similar situations, including but not limited to learning.
After finishing junior high school, my summary of myself is that I am a bit smart, but among a group of smart people, I can only be considered average. But I have my advantage, that is, once I remember, I can manage a lot of things. It takes a long time and I am good at classifying. This is the fundamental reason why I can draw inferences from one example to another.
When I entered high school, I couldn’t understand the first math class. I basically listened to the book from heaven. I once wondered if I had become stupid. In junior high school mathematics, I could score more than 110 points (out of 120 points), but for high school mathematics, it was difficult for me to get 90 points (out of 150 points). High school mathematics made me realize that my absolute IQ is not high, because mathematics tests a person's talent, which has little to do with whether a person works hard. So I spent nearly three years studying mathematics. In the end, I got a three-digit score in mathematics in the college entrance examination, but I was very poor in Chinese and English. It was really not worth the gain.
In the first semester of high school, I was divided into classes. I was directly assigned from the parallel class to the small class. There were three small classes, each with 60 people. They were composed of the top 180 students in the school, and there were more than 1,600 students in the whole grade. At that time, I Ranked around 120th. I was able to get this rank mainly because I did well in other subjects except mathematics. Here is an episode. When I was in the parallel class, I ranked first in grades, but before the midterm exam, I was inconspicuous in the class. Even the teacher thought that another person should be first, but after the results came out, there were many Everyone found it incredible, especially my classmate at the time. She didn’t expect that my grades were so good (in a parallel class). If you were to ask me how it felt to be number one at that time, I would say it was nothing, even a little intrusive. Some people attach great importance to ranking, but I have experienced too much. I have been the first place in many places, and I have also experienced going from the first place to falling off the altar. I was even caught by the teacher as a "model", and now I have another one. First, what surprises can there be? Besides, being number one will attract a lot of attention from all sides, and I don’t want too much attention.
After I arrived in the small class, I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be number one, or even among the top ten in the class. But this does not affect my study, nor is it a blow to my self-confidence. My confidence comes from the books I read: "Zhuangzi", "The Analects of Confucius", "Mencius", and the "Harvard Girl Liu Yiting" series. These books were the books that had the greatest impact on me in high school, and they also established my life values ??and worldview. Books that have had a profound impact. The book "Zhuangzi" taught me to have a good mentality, and "The Analects of Confucius" taught me how to recognize people and deal with the world. "Mencius" is an expansion of Confucianism. It was probably in this book that I read that a gentleman should be able to perfectly interpret his own virtues (roughly this is what it means, I can't remember the original words clearly). At that time, I first I feel that "I am born with talents that will be useful", which is also the fundamental source of my confidence. The "Harvard Girl Liu Yiting" series talks about scientific education and ways of doing things, which gave me a dialectical perspective to think about traditional education and traditional thinking. Although my grades are no longer among the best, I definitely have what I am good at. Isn’t it enough that I do what I’m good at? Why do I have to compare my results with others? "I don't try to get over a seven-foot railing. I look for a one-foot railing that I can climb over." This is a quote from Buffett that I later read, and I am even more certain that "I am born with talents that will be useful." .
After graduating from high school (in 2013), I no longer worry about whether I am smart or not. I know clearly what I am good at and what I am not good at. My summary of myself is that I was smarter when I was a child. As I grow older, just like Fang Zhongyong (refer to "Shang Zhongyong"), my talent gradually declines, even though I have received education.
What I am thinking about now is whether it is so important to be smart or not. In modern society, intelligence does not seem to be one of the criteria for measuring a person's success. What if I get into Harvard? Jack Ma’s math score is still 0? The ability to acquire wealth and power is the focus of people's attention.
The ability to do things is the most important thing. Smart people can only do things a little faster, but life is a marathon, not a sprint, and the test is endurance. Now I am more and more aware of the weight of the saying "Where there is a will, there is a way."
The purpose of my writing this article is not to explain whether I am smart or not. They have a relatively objective understanding.
---- 2020-01-05