>Through pretty much my whole childhood and early life, I was considered smart. Someone said I was probably the smartest person to graduate my school. The implication, of course, is that I'd go on to some kind of greatness. I feel like I've spent a good deal of energy trying to undo this expectation. I don't think I'm *that* smart, and even if I am, looking back and nearly always seeing my productivity or progress as below par is not helping.Basically every word of this applies to me as well.
To add on to what others have been saying, I think that "intelligence" is a concept that people have to accept is inherently fuzzy because it includes a lot of disparate ideas that often are only somewhat related to each other (for example, using common sense, why is it assumed that somebody who's decent at doing mathematical equations would be brilliant playing a musical instrument).
I find myself interested in the theory of "multiple intelligences" and think that learning about it is helpful to all:
> https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences.shtmlPeople are inherently diverse and different. Everybody has natural ability and immense potential to do positive things for themselves and the broader world to some extent. Unfortunately, the modern education system and broader population culture has segregated different abilities from each other in terms of intense specialization, which ultimately (I think) makes modern life atomized, dehumanized, and impersonal. There's a lot more to your worth as a human being that being an expert on something particularly mathematical, visual, or whatnot in a way that makes your employer lots of money.
It would be absurd to generalize that taller people are inferior to shorter people due to, say, different health outcomes and lifespans. Or to say the same thing about nonbinary people versus men versus women. Really, all projects to categorize humanity as "inferior" and "superior" due to supposedly "scientific criteria" is doomed to failure. Science doesn't work that way. Humanity at a population level is one thing, but at an individual or small group level brute force determinism is pure folly.
Personally, I hope to continue with my higher education and achieve career goals that, I guess, would fit with the stereotype of being a "smart person". Yet that's for me. I'm not doing it in terms of other people's views of me.