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Comment by tvanantwerp | Hacker News Reader

> I’ve always been average academically, but when needed, simply outworked everybody and got decent grades.

Speaking as someone who easily got good grades without working hard, this is a superpower. Because sooner or later, the "smart" folks finally hit some barrier that they can't brute force with their brains. And when they've gone so long without have to work hard, they haven't built that skill at all. Many never get past the first real hurdle. I've struggled in my professional life to build the discipline I never needed in school.

The fact that you've learned to consistently put real effort into your endeavors will take you much further than any innate intelligence can.

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There's a reason they say it's the "C" students who go on to be the most successful in business, and the reason typically given is they learned how to work to get their grade. When they encounter obstacles at work they know how to work through it. As you say, those who got "A"s are more likely to rely on their brains and so when they encounter obstacles if they can't easily blast through it with their brains then they're stuck. Meanwhile the "C" student will just work through it and get it done. I've seen this happen numerous times.

OTOH, if you're the "A" student who can work hard and not just rely on your brains, wow...

Huh, I always had the opposite impression. The A students weren’t necessarily the brightest but we’re good at diligently following directions, whereas there may be a population among the C students who had the brains, but were off doing their own thing this their grades suffered.

I know someone like this, graduated top of her class at a top 5 CS program without putting in much time working or studying. Super smart. But things that are non academic that just require hard work like exercise or playing an instrument are basically impossible for her because she never developed a work ethic and isn’t used to practicing.

Latching on to this comment, I got "okay" grades, they were "fine", and "I passed I guess" in my mid twenties with a college degree.

However, by that time I realized I had a knack for writing code, a knack that pretty much everyone I've gone to school with in the decade preceding it did not have. They struggled to 'get into' programming, to get into that flow of writing code, to know what to look for.

I consider that my talent. It's been a good ten years now, and I'm still mediocre I think - but that's because I sorta know what I don't know, what I'm not good at.

I'd suck at the currently 'hip' technologies - AI, data science, blockchain - but that's all right because a lot of those are just buzzwords people put in job adverts to try and attract people.

I suck at those too, because I'm simply not interested in them. Don't pursue a career in something you're not actively interested in. It has to click, it has to make sense. And a lot of leetcode or data science just does not click or make sense.

I can manage fine with an SQL database, that's about it.

Anyway, moral of the story is, mediocrity is fine, you're still ahead of most.

Also also, disregard Mensa and IQ tests. Mensa is a company that wants to make people feel smart and better than others so they can flow subscriptions, books with fancy names and shitty dick shaking products their way.

IQ tests only measure how good you are at IQ tests, I'm sure you can practice them. In the end, they mean nothing; if anything it's a weird dick shaking contest where people take one IQ test, get a high score, and live off that high for the rest of their life. They usually get jaded though because a high score on an IQ test doesn't mean shit. It's like being called 'gifted' as a child, it paints you - and your self-image - for the rest of your life, and it can make you jaded when it turns out it's not actually worth much.

Anyway, that's not a problem I had, I was called average once (at a school doctor, in relation to height and weight) and that was just fine by me.

This. I had very loving parents but i often wish they had shut up with the telling me I was special and smart and stuff. It was definitely a detriment to my life to be essentially taught that i could "IQ" my way through everything.

Ironically, this is the reason why I support schools for high-IQ kids. When everyone is special, no one is. If you are a high-IQ kid surrounded by high-IQ kids, the only way to get ahead is to work hard. This builds the right habits naturally. (Also, prepares you better for a career where you will be competing with other smart people.)

If you are a high-IQ kid surrounded by average kids, regardless of what your parents told you, you probably will notice that you can get the best grades without actually trying hard.

Might this indicate a problem with the grading scheme? I see your point, am a beneficiary of such efforts in elementary school, and we’re all on this earth together, so learning how to collaborate across the spectrum seems important. I want everyone to have timely intervention in school so they can all be engaged with their education.

Grading is just the tip of the iceberg. Perfect grades are easy when there is little to learn. Kids with high IQ are wasting their time at school, because they could be conveniently learning at much greater speed and depth. So, on one hand people are happy "yay equality! no elitism!", on the other hand we deprive the smartest people of the next generation of knowledge and good working habits and we make them suffer from boredom.

Collaboration is also important among the high-IQ people; that's what they'll later need to do at the workplace, won't they? Here again, being the only high-IQ kid in the classroom leads to some bad habits. You learn to be the one that almost always comes with the best solution, and the one that usually has to do the hardest parts if you want them to be done well. At workplace, that translates to inability to follow other people's proposals ("too many chieftains, and not enough Indians") and inability to delegate.

Allowing high-IQ kids to be surrounded by other high-IQ kids means giving them the same chance that the average kid is given at the average schoool: the chance to learn how to socialize and cooperate with their intellectual peers. Sadly, this is considered controversial by many people... although I am sure that if you tried to transfer their average child into a school where all other kids are low-IQ, they would strongly object and call it an abuse, and give you pretty much the arguments I gave here (the need to socialize with peers, unlock the full potential, prepare for future career).

I relate to that, as a student who always had a book to retreat to after completing whatever busywork, and am fortunate to have made and kept a few close friends since middle school, bonding over shared interests and resonant mental frequency. I want this for everyone, at least to the degree that they want it for themselves, regardless of intelligence. Perhaps if early childhood education is done well (where parents are guided to help teach the children emotionally and intellectually, to minimize trauma and promote a sense of being part of the whole world), we can all be in school together, interrelating on more levels than simply IQ.

> Perfect grades are easy when there is little to learn. Kids with high IQ are wasting their time at school, because they could be conveniently learning at much greater speed and depth.

In the words of Rick Sanchez: “school’s not a place for smart people.”

Well, I think grading is not really that bad, you have to set a bar somewhere. But I do believe school and grading are just seen as a knowledge transfer scheme, where we could do better. Maybe if grading on PE class or Art, or some projects where team work is important, we could stimulate the kids to do better on a whole array of skills.

Same here. I scored well during my early diploma and slacked off. Then I transferred to an elite college and was swamped. That pain later taught me how to be a lot more efficient when learning, though. I doubt I'd be the same person if I had scored through my final years in college.

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