I’m Stupid, And I Have Finally Come To Terms With It.

I’m bad at math, I’m not a doctor, and I don’t know things.

Smart people. Those are the people who have lucrative careers, right? Doctors, probably. Or ones who sort out the Rubix cube by the time you get out of the bathroom. Smart people are quick to remember and quick to come up with plans. I have embraced my stupidity. And it was a hard one. I guess I always feared someone would call me stupid and really mean it. My boyfriend in college used to give me mini-quizzes about unimportant trivia that stumped me half the time. Because I attended a private college, and he went to a public university, I think he had a chip on his shoulder. He told me he had been accepted to Stanford, UCLA-Irvine, and Harvard, but he couldn’t afford to go to any of them. I took his quizzes as a way to act out his contempt that I could study at a prestigious private school although he thought he was smarter than me.

We dated long-distance while I studied abroad in South Africa during my junior year in college. One night, I called to tell him I had gotten the top score, along with another student, in a class of 230 students in my psychology exam. He said, “Why are you surprised? I always thought you were smart.”

I was confused and proud. He thought I was smart? But he was always telling me I didn’t know anything. Looking back on it, I can see it’s problematic that I needed someone to declare me smart for me to believe it. And also, why does scoring on a test mean you’re smart?

High scores on standardized tests are smart

I always hated quizzes, tests, and having to “come up with the answer” on the spot. I learned something early on. The world believes that smart people have “the answer” right away. It’s like people who store countless facts, who make your team win at trivia night. They are deemed smart.

So, let me tell you why I’m stupid by explaining the classic smart person. It seems to me, the quintessential smart person has a good memory. You can tell them something, and they repeat it word for word. Even after a looong time has passed.

That’s why they get good test scores. I’ve seen these smartypants. They preach about the unimportance of test scores, and then throw in, “I mean, I got a 340 on the GRE, but that was without even trying” in the same scruffy breath. Who remembers how much we pained ourselves trying to get high scores on the SATs to get into a good college? I sweated reading over the “average SAT score” of students at my colleges of choice. Ugh.

I did very poorly on the SATs. My mom showed me an article in the newspaper that explained that minorities (as they called us back then) and girls do badly on standardized tests. I took it as an in. I thought, I’m a girl, I’m black, that explains everything! I didn’t feel as bad anymore. But, I didn’t feel smart, either.

Rich people are smart

One night I met with a Japanese-Peruvian friend in a hipster-wanna-be restaurant in Lima. The subject turned to our ideas of intelligence. His was “Rich people are smart.” I sensed an argument coming on, but I was curious so I asked, “Really? Why do you say that?” He replied, “Because they must have been smart to get so much money.” I retorted, “So, Donald Trump is smart?” I added, “And I guess I’m stupid because I moved here to Peru to volunteer and now I make $500 per month.” He swallowed his ají de gallina, and shame-facedly conceded that maybe he had to think more about it.

But, his thinking is not far from what most people believe about money, status, and intelligence. Who comes to mind when you think of a job for a smart person? You’re thinking doctor or lawyer, right?

Doctors are smart

Back in Lima again. My boyfriend and I went out to lunch with a group of sophisticated white women, all but one from the USA. One of whom was writing a book about critical thinking. The doctor started making chit-chat while we perused the menus. She had attended a party and found out that the hostess’ husband had recently been imprisoned.

She told us, “I can’t imagine being anywhere in the US where someone’s husband was in JAIL!” I responded, “Well, it happens so often in the US, especially with black people. Even for no real reason. Just for being black. It’s common.”

A long silence settled in as spoons clanked anxiously against teacups. The doctor said, “That reminds me of a movie I saw, the Boy Who Chased the Wind.”

My boyfriend and I quickly exchanged a look. Seriously? That’s your comment? Yes, and the other ladies nodded, oohing and ahhing at her contribution to the subject. The doctor knows best.

Knowing ‘things’ is smart

No, I don’t know a lot of things. I saw a walking encyclopedia in South Africa, we shared a house. A fellow study abroad student who attended George Washington University. For an hour straight, she rattled off facts about South Africa like she was reading a textbook. She also added that her mom would kill her if she came home with a black baby. That was a fun time. My other housemate was from China. She constantly followed me around, thinking I had stolen something from her. At one point, I just had to say loudly, “Stop harassing me.”

My stupiddar singled me out when I worked as a camp counselor back in college. I took a lunch break off the campsite with two white counselors. One said excitedly, “Did you know X (a fellow camp counselor) is Al Sharpton’s daughter?” I was like, “Who is Al Sharpton?” She said, “Don’t you know anything?” That stung. But, yes, I do know some things, I just don’t know everything, and shame on me, I didn’t know who Al Sharpton was in my young days. Looking back on it, I’m like, “What?! I worked at a camp with Al Sharpton’s daughter????”

Being good at math is smart

I sucked at math in high school. I still do. I loved geometry, but I often had a headache with algebra. That made me think I was stupid. Only smart people are good at math. A mathematician could say any ridiculous opinion about politics, science, social issues, and everyone will think, “Well, no matter what nonsense they say, they are smart.” I used to wish I could be reborn as someone good at math to be able to have people think, “Oh, you must be smart” no matter what idiotic things I said or did.

When I felt smart

The moments I have felt smart usually come from people telling me I’m smart. I hung out after college with a group of top Zimbabwean students in their annual conference. Brilliant minds tried to make self-deprecating comments about themselves while at the same time sharing the news that they had found the cure for a disease, or received double doctorates. My friend told one of them that I had graduated magna cum laude in psychology, and he said, “Oh, so you’re smart!” I felt happy about that, especially coming from a smart person.

I had the opposite experience in middle school. My teacher used to lean over my desk as I did math problems. One day, as I was in the middle of a timed test, she loomed over me as I worked. I fumbled my pencil and lost my concentration, nervous because she stood there like a disapproving statue with no sense of pedagogy. When the time was up, she exclaimed loud enough for the class to hear, “Oh my, MJ, you have no idea!” I still remember how she stressed “idea.” I blushed, and blurted out, “Yes, I’m not so good at math.”

Final thoughts

Smart people solve the Rubix cube. Smart people make snap decisions with confidence. They pump out facts, information. They are mathematicians and doctors. But reading all this, I see a few things that are signals of smartness, but maybe aren’t a good measure of it 1)status 2) memory 3) test-scores 4) math

The father of critical thinking, John Dewey, reminds us that thinking requires not a state of spontaneous combustion, or “ahas,” but reflectiveness embodied by two subprocesses.

(a) a state of perplexity, hesitation, doubt ; and (b) an act of search or investigation directed toward bringing to light further facts which serve to corroborate or to nullify the suggested (Dewey, 1910, p. 10).

Thinking is methodical, slow, and cyclical. Of course, memory is involved, but being a doctor? Not necessarily. It depends. Thinking is not about following formulas but developing habits of mind. The Foundation for Critical Thinking notes that health care workers have paid dearly for following patterns in care without critically assessing the needs of their patients.

Tests? Well, all critical thinkers will tell you that you can’t quantify thinking. And knowing things? Not knowing is the best frame of mind from which to learn. Can math save you from not understanding politics, society, issues of ethics? As Socrates said, an idiot is one who doesn’t take relevant concerns into account. So math can’t save you from the folly of ignoring what is important in the world.

Maybe society doesn’t like to consider reflecting, pondering, or thinking as “smart.” We love showing results, being speedy, wowing people. I mean, when was the last time you heard people refer to a writer or a painter as “smart?”

Ok, so I don’t know a lot of things. I am bad at math. I can’t memorize trivia, and I work in mental health. I’m trying not to know things, but to think things.

I guess that makes me stupid, but I’m thinking that the assumptions of smartness, maybe that’s what needs to get reframed.

Thanks for reading,

~MJ