My grade 5 teacher sat me down after we had our provincial aptitude (IQ) tests done. He explained that I was smart in a way that would make people angry at me. He said, Eve, you’re not math smart, and that’s a smart that people respect. Someone who gets good grades in school is considered smart, and everyone respects that. You don’t get good grades because you aren’t a ‘reading books and doing math’ style smart. School is geared towards those kinds of people, and people like you are left to be bored at school. You are a tactile learner, not visual, not auditory.
Let’s say there’s a pile of furniture pieces on the floor. There are 5 different instructions thrown in that pile. Most people will have to look through all the pieces, organize them, figure out which instructions go best with the pieces listed, and then build, following the instructions without knowing what they are building. You will just start building because, looking at a pile of parts, you’ll know what to do and what you’re building just by looking at them without even needing the instructions. It will be difficult not to take that ability for granted, but it will embarrass other people who have always thought they were smarter than you, and they will resent it.
What a crazy thing to say to a young person, but it did help with prepping me for some unwarranted rage from certain adults in my younger years.
Eve Di Potenza 
Leave a comment