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

J.R. wrote:

An intelligent person is going to be bored with dumb things and is doing to do something else.

It is a waste of time to study to learn things that are hypocritical and just flat out wrong.

what the heck wrote:

What exactly is flat out wrong? Why don't you start with your idea that carb loading is false?

I am bored with your inane questions and am going to do something else.

And once the OP moves into the working world, no one cares about IQ, potential, that whatever is boring, stupid, etc. you either put out or get the boot.

aberrance wrote:

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.

dsafsdf wrote:

Good point. I left out the word "be" while I was typing fast on an anonymous online forum. I'll never have any success at anything I do.

At least you were humble enough to admit your mistake. Many people will not do that.

Putter in placer wrote:

At least you were humble enough to admit your mistake.

*You're mistake

"My point is just that I don't think anyone outside of a Good Will Hunting type is going to make straight As at a good high school while taking a bunch of AP classes without putting in some effort. I mean, if nothing else, one has to do things like homework, projects, participate in class, etc., which are going to take at least some amount of time."

Your point is well taken. My point is just that my friend, a 150 iq type, pretty much never did any work at home, and got more or less straight As. He would do projects/hw - to the extent he did them - during class, while also listening, and he always aced the tests which made up for his shoddy homework/project performance. And yeah, he listened during class and just absorbed everything. He wasn't at Good Will Hunting's level, or even close really, but he was way smarter than the rest of us and HS was mad easy for him. (Including APs, he did mostly AP classes the last two years. If anything they seemed easier for him, because the tests were harder for everyone else but not for him.)

It sounds to me like we pretty much agree. But I think it's unrealistic for someone at this level of intelligence to be really struggling and getting Bs/Cs. Even with minimal effort (and doing no schoolwork at home) my friend was getting pretty much straight As. There could be some differences though, like not being able to pay attention or some other form of learning disability, certainly, but barring that...

So it's possible, but to me it just seems a lot more likely that a student does not understand the material quite as well as they think they do. Especially because this is so incredibly common - it's one of the most common things that I hear students say.

I don't actually know the IQ of the two guys I'm thinking of, and I won't share my wife's IQ, but suffice it to say her's is VERY high, and I suspect the other two have super high IQ's also...I've heard that they do.

To be clear though, I wasn't insinuating that if you have a high IQ that you risk having trouble...I was just suggesting that just because you have on doesn't mean you will be successful.

I'll bite.

I have an exceptionally high IQ. I don't know my score. When my parents went through an ugly divorce I spent about a year in therapy and my dad had it tested. I vaguely remember what the test(s) consisted of. I struggled focusing in high school. All I wanted to do was to run. I had visions of being the next mid 9 two-miler to make a name. I trained vigorously. I worked for the family corporation at nights, therefore slept through school. I graduated with a mid 2 GPA. I would set the bar on standardized test scores; it used to blow my teachers mind. You guys might dog him however, I think the lack of competitiveness/challenge/imagination in the public school system leads to a lot talent leaking through. I failed calculus twice in high school and made a 35 on the ACT in math. I'm not trolling. I now have harnessed my lack of focus. I completed two under graduate degrees with a B average. I'll always remember my collective professors reaction when I blew away the GMAT. I now assist my family business in setting the standard in a majority publicly owned industry. School is a means to an end.

Getting good grades has to be a goal for any smart person in order for them to do it. Many geniuses don't care about their grades and therefore don't set it as a priority. In your case, you had even less reason to get good grades, because you had a family business to fall back on.

J.R. wrote:

J.R. wrote:

An intelligent person is going to be bored with dumb things and is doing to do something else.

It is a waste of time to study to learn things that are hypocritical and just flat out wrong.

what the heck wrote:

What exactly is flat out wrong? Why don't you start with your idea that carb loading is false?

I am bored with your inane questions and am going to do something else.

Thanks for finally letting us know that you are a troll

could be wrote:

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.

I agree. My standarized test scores consistently placed me well within the top 0.1% of the population, but articulating my thoughts, especially under any significant time pressure, was very difficult. It's terribly frustrating to feel paralyzed when faced with the task of communicating about matters of which one may have profound understanding. I'm not an expert in this area, but the possibility of something like dysgraphia or adhd should be considered.

could be wrote:

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.

I agree. My standarized test scores consistently placed me well within the top 0.1% of the population, but articulating my thoughts, especially under any significant time pressure, was very difficult. It's terribly frustrating to feel paralyzed when faced with the task of communicating about matters of which one may have profound understanding. I'm not an expert in this area, but the possibility of something like dysgraphia or adhd should be considered.

it is a sign of low IQ not being able to focus and later

make up some excuses for failing.

it is also the disorders that make them fail in life.

Many members of mensa pat each others' backs and say

"if only society had recognized us back then"

there is essentially no talent leaking through since

their disorders will prevent them to succeed anyway (one can compensate to some extent by medication like retalin, but prognoses are generally poor).

Similar issue - advise wrote:

I only have an IQ of 85, but made straight As in high school, Ivy League School. What should I do? My 5000 PR is 15:34.

Shut up, George, you never ran 15:34.

You probably have a unique personality...I'd guess INTP:

http://personalitypage.com/html/INTP.html

A lot of schooling seems to fit other personality types better, such as ESTJ:

http://personalitypage.com/html/ESTJ.html

IN_P (introvert, iNtuitive, perceiver) can be a fairly tough combo in this world. Most IN_Ps that I know struggle in pretty significant ways. Most people would typically categorize them as "smart" and possibly brilliant (especially INTPs as opposed to INFPs), but applying that in real, practical ways is an enormous challenge for these types.

I am an INTP. I always score very, very well on intelligence-type tests, but it was an enormous challenge for me to keep up with school work. I ended up doing well with grades, but at the expense of a lot of other things because it took me so much time/energy/stress to stay on top of things. In high school math, for example, I almost always had the highest grades on every test, but I barely squeaked by with As because I couldn't keep up with homework. I understand things, especially if I work at them, but I never became adept at applying that knowledge to quickly completing required work. I could do it in short spurts, but I couldn't keep pace with the daily grind of homework problems.

IN_Ps struggle because:

-We spend a lot of time just thinking/processing, rather than actually doing. We can't really change that habit completely, but we have to find ways to learn the discipline to get stuff done. And we have to schedule extra time to get stuff done--figure out priorities.

-Sometimes big ideas suck us in and take all our time. These usually aren't the ideas that make practical sense to spend time on.

-We're so independent, we struggle to cater to teachers/bosses.

-We don't value life's mundane details. We ignore them, often to our detriment.

-We naturally see big picture. That's a blessing and a curse: we can come up with brilliant new ideas, but they often can't be applied or don't make sense to others.

On the one hand, it'd be really nice if people appreciated our unique abilities and gave us some space to be who we are. On the other hand, we've got to also understand where our teachers/bosses are coming from. Actually doing things does in fact matter, especially in the working world. That's nice that you have the intelligence to solve complex problems, but until you actually solve complex problems in the real world, who cares?

Intelligence tests strip away all context so that everyone has an equal playing field: no prior information is going to help. But using information in the real world always has context: prior information ALWAYS matters. Which means you have to study and learn things. You may have a better mental capacity to do computer programming than someone else, but if he knows the programming language better than you do, he's going to outperform you. That's just as true in every other pursuit in life.

I don't think Einstein was really all that different from a lot of other INTPs: he put in a lot of hard work in important areas and understood things very, very deeply. He had a lot of setbacks along the way that he fought through. He ended up finding ways to articulate that which was incredibly complex, and then I think he got lucky that a few people responded positively enough for his ideas to gain traction. We don't know anything about Einstein today if some of the journalists of the day didn't latch on to some of his ideas and sensationalize them.

Einstein came up with some great ideas (photoelectric effect,geometrization of gravity...) in contrast to most

self–proclaimed "geniuses", 99% with INTP will contribute nothing to the advancement of science.

an expert wrote:

Einstein came up with some great ideas (photoelectric effect,geometrization of gravity...) in contrast to most

self–proclaimed "geniuses", 99% with INTP will contribute nothing to the advancement of science.

Good thing science isnt the only worthwhile thing in life and our society

sure, but they claim smartness.