I have a high IQ, and I'm failing high school

Get off message boards and do your homework.

The first thing to realize is that someone truly educated or truly intelligent is not defined by what you "understand" but how you apply your knowledge creatively. Regardless of you being "book smart" or "street smart" or anything inbetween, if you can't demonstrate what you supposedly "know", then you are giving them no reason to think that you are "smart."

It sounds like you want to be defined by some IQ number and not by Wechsler's definition of intelligence, which he defined as "... the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment." And right now, your post indicates you're not applying this material purposely, definitely not thinking rationally if you're hurt by being called "slow," and certainly are not adapting to your environment since you're not demonstrating what you're learning in school.

You got two options: ignore what everyone is saying and just keep assuming you're "smart"...or take on the challenge presented and prove them wrong... either way, quit your whining and start doing something about it.

I am a smart enough guy, but I have an incredible amount of trouble focusing on anything that doesn't interest. I did poorly in high school for that reason, but once I got beyond high school and was able to focus on subjects that interested me, I did quite well.

The "high school is so easy that no one should struggle" idea has been brought up on this thread. Ironically, I think that this very idea is what makes high school so difficult for many of us. Reading assignments and projects are designed to be doable by anyone and thus tend to be completely insipid. It was not the challenge of high school that made things difficult for me. Rather, the utter vapidity of it all made it nearly impossible for me to spend more than 5 minutes at a time on most of the work that was given to me.

hope you're not a teacher wrote:

Honors classes should not be easy for people with high IQs, at least not if they are taught correctly by people with high IQs themselves.

Einstein failed out of school. It is not unusual for people with high IQs to perform poorly in school because they learn in different ways and are not adequately engaged with routine course work. Any teacher of an advanced placement class should understand this point and teach accordingly.

You can't teach a class at any high school (except perhaps an elite private/magnet school) at the level appropriate for a 99th percentile kid. All the other ones would flunk out. Even at really great schools, the average IQ is still probably only around 115 or maaaaaybe 120. My IQ was "only" measured around 130 and I breezed through AP classes and multivariable calculus without trying hard. Other kids I knew who really were 140+ material were taking linear algebra and higher level math at the local university a few times a week because they'd finished calculus when they were about 15.

Also I hate to break it to you but very, very few teachers have IQs of 140. The average teacher comes from the bottom third of his college graduating class, and has lower SAT scores than the average college grad. People with very high IQs go to grad school, become professors or businessmen or doctors.

This is pretty accurate. While you can't teach to the 99+ th percentile, my experience is that the very few teachers who are in that 99+ find it fairly easy to keep those kids somewhat interested with challenges: "try this ..."

I was always bored with the material but I had two teachers intelligent enough to throw more interesting puzzles or concepts at me.

I teach sr math (and some occasional phys/chem/CS) and the students who took the math education classes with me tended to be very weak. It's a little embarrassing to have people think of me as a math teacher because how demeaning that is.

hope you're not a teacher wrote:

Honors classes should not be easy for people with high IQs, at least not if they are taught correctly by people with high IQs themselves.

Einstein failed out of school. It is not unusual for people with high IQs to perform poorly in school because they learn in different ways and are not adequately engaged with routine course work. Any teacher of an advanced placement class should understand this point and teach accordingly.

If Einstein failed out of school (I am not sure that he even did at all, I think you may have made this up), it wasn't because it was too hard. It was because he was unable to focus, or to do the (to him, really easy) work, or something else.

gotta be a testing/performance prob

excess wrote:

You don't have a high IQ. Like everything else the IQ tests have been dumbed down especially the online IQ test which inflate scores so you and others will feel good and recommend their site so they can get more "hits" and eventually sell ads. The true medium IQ is 100. The medium IQ of these bogus online IQ tests and the new dumbed down ones are close to 135.

Regardless, intelligence is relatively worthless in comparison to factual and usefull knowledge. Even worse people thinking they are intelligent and being told they are intelligent is very detrimental for kids. When kids hear "you are so smart" they confuse that with knowledge when in fact the know nothing or less than nothing.

Off topic, but you should probably look up the Flynn effect. IQ tests are harder than they used to be,

Here's some very important information. Ready? This is golden stuff.

No one cares that you are intelligent. No one. In school and in the real world it's a *complete* non-issue. The only things that people care about are results. I'd advise you to forget that you are supposed to be intelligent because it really doesn't matter at all. Results count. Nothing else.

It's the same in running. You've got the potential to be a great marathon runner? How nice for you. Why don't you try *being* a great marathon runner?

So, quit complaining and produce some results. The teachers want you to prove that you know what you know? Prove that you know what you know. I'm so sorry that you are tired of having to do that, but that's what you have to do.

I agree with dontfeedthetroll. Anyone can say they are smart or intelligent or a 15 min 5kr. But if you don't perform then it doesn't mean a thing. Like the Big Tuna said, "You are what your record says you are."

I recognize where some of you are coming from. You're right, I shouldn't internalize a stagnant score as defining my ceiling, so to speak. It's simply difficult for me to express myself, and I typically take VERY long on timed tests. I'm not sure why I was able to do well on the Wechsler, my SATs only correlate to about 115 IQ. I tend to lose focus and over-analyze ostensibly easy problems. Apparently I do my best when I don't think, as it were.

So were to believe u have a 140+ IQ but cant crack 1150 on the SATs?? Im callin bs on this one. i think its time u accept ur just not as smart as you want yourself & everybody else to think

nah... high IQ combined with adhd or some other disorder

could perfectly well explain this. Something is wrong with OP.

Approach a psychologist to get a diagnosis.

discouraged and unhappy wrote:

Recently I've been having a lot of difficulty with my classes. It's not a matter of learning the material, it's really a matter of demonstrating that I've learned the material. I understand everything I'm taught, and some of my teachers recognize this. Most of my teachers do not. I'm tired of being treated like a moron. Even my parents think I'm half-stupid. This pisses me off. I have abilities at the 99.6 percentile, and I have people telling me that I'm "slow." At this point, I'm beginning to doubt that I'm half as intelligent as the Wechsler test indicates. Tell me somebody can relate????

If you can only demonstrate to yourself that you have knowledge then perhaps you are slow but don't realize it?

an expert wrote:

nah... high IQ combined with adhd or some other disorder

could perfectly well explain this. Something is wrong with OP.

Approach a psychologist to get a diagnosis.

Agreed. It's a common misconception that highly intelligent individuals do not have learning problems. I've seen my share of extremely gifted children who suffer from learning disabilities (adhd/dyslexia/dysgraphia/etc). It becomes an issue where these students truly can't articulate in the ways that you and I can. OP, you seem to write cogently... I wonder if you could elaborate on this "difficulty" of expression. Have you been formally diagnosed?

If you can't get C's in high school you don't have abilities "at the 99.6 percentile."

Stop thinking you are somehow smarter than everyone else because one test said you had a high I.Q and start actually trying in school. Maybe you are smarter (in some ways) than your grades reflect, the school system ain't perfect and some kids don't know how to play the game even if they are intelligent. I'm sure you aren't a moron but your no Einstein either. That story about him failing is a myth anyways.

this topic interests me, even if the OP is a troll:

http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/renzpark.html

This is equivalent to saying you have a tested VO2MAX of 80 ml/kg/min but can't break 18 in the 5k. High VO2MAX and high IQ correlate with endurance racing success and real world success, but neither is a causal guarantee of success in their respective realms.

Just as some guys overperform (ie a guy with a VO2MAX of 65 runs sub 14 and a guy with an IQ of 120 earns his MD/PhD summa), some guys with high test values underperform. Sounds like you're in the latter category. Either get comfortable with it or start striving because them's the breaks kid.

i gotz iq score 173. prs 14:22 5k 8:06 3k. girlfrend is hot tooo yeEaA BoOiiIiI