<p>There is all this talk about smart, gifted, and talented individuals and what kind of potential they have. It's fairly common for these students to be encouraged to succeed in higher education, higher job positions, and internships/research.</p>
<p>What about those students that are just plain stupid? What kind of prospective do they have in life? Jobs that require responsibility also require intelligence so it's very doubtful that one of low intelligence will succeed in that position.</p>
<p>I'm not smart and I know that I'd never succeed in college (already failed once). I've never had meaningful employment. What are the options dumb people can achieve?</p>
<p>Did you write the post yourself? It seems pretty literate.</p>
<p>Do you have a little drug problem? </p>
<p>Did you fail because the academic material was beyond your intellectual grasp, or did you cut class and not turn in assignments?</p>
<p>Can you follow orders or do you have a snarky disregard for authority?</p>
<p>How old are you? It may be too soon to write off intellectual pursuits.</p>
<p>You could go to technical school and learn a trade. What do you like to do?</p>
<p>I don’t really need to know the answers to the above questions. You need to consider them carefully.</p>
<p>You can be be quite a bit less intelligent than the uber geeks who inhabit this board and still have enough smarts to succeed in many fields.
(God how I hate to feed the massive egos here. You know who you are! lol)</p>
<p>Discrimination against the academically unintelligent(not mentally challenged, but innately less “book smart”) is one of the few accepted forms of bigotry that’s actively encouraged these days.</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with blue-collar work, especially if your abilities do not lie in intellectual pursuits. Being an honest electrician is just as good as being an honest doctor.</p>
<p>Once upon a time, higher education was for intelligent people, and usually only the wealthy elite. Now, every kid who manages a 2.0 in HS can get into some kind of college. you don’t have to be smart to go to college or even to get a BA. Plenty of underachievers go to colleges specifically created to cater to students who don’t do as well academically. </p>
<p>Book smarts aren’t everything. only 1/4 Americans even have a Bachelor’s. there’s nothing wrong with good honest work like a blue-collar job if you can’t handle college. and electricians get paid plenty, from what i’ve heard. Interpersonal skills and networking make a big difference too.</p>
<p>Hey aren’t you the girl with DD’s who does porn fetish modeling? marry rich ok just kidding…but you don’t sound dumb to me! but college is not for everyone and you gave it a shot. maybe time to try something new?</p>
<p>It’s irritating that blue-collar work is being lumped into this. </p>
<p>Sargazerlilies,</p>
<p>“…a blue collar job if you can’t handle college.” </p>
<p>Please. I’ve considered going into the military or the trades after college. These two areas of work are often denigrated by intellectuals, and as an eventual college graduate, I’ve heard from others that such work is “below me” and that I “have so much more potential”. But it has nothing to do with not being academically capable. The idea of working as a white collar peon doesn’t appeal to everyone, money be damned. There’s also something inherently satisfying in making something tangible with your hands. </p>
<p>I am probably misconstruing your argument but here it goes. Your first sentence explicitly states that college use to be exclusively for “intelligent” people. You continue to say that today, even unintelligent people can go to college and graduate. Your next paragraph, you say that if a person cannot handle college, they should consider blue-collar work. You insinuate that those in manual labor could not even handle the easiest schools which “cater to students who don’t do as well academically.”</p>
<p>What you’re missing, I believe, is a clarification of what it means to be “intelligent”. Those wealthy “intelligent” elites who use attend colleges exclusively typify only one type of intelligence. Many of those elite college types, I would guess, would not have possessed the spatial intelligence required to be a successful carpenter. </p>
<p>I agree on your main point that college is not for everyone. I just disagree on the tone of your post, which still comes off as slightly elitist. Nitpicking, I suppose.</p>
<p>Vehicle,
there are so many dumb people that are millionaires.
A. Rod is one.
D. Rod is another.</p>
<p>I had scores of students in all kind of math/science subjects and the dumbest students were those smart by nature that loved to press again and again their self destruct button.
Almost everyone else has the ability to succeed with or without a college degree.</p>
<p>I tutored students that were graduating from high school without knowing what is an isosceles triangle and by their sophomore year were able to calculate the maximum forces on a 100 m. athlete’s Achilles tendon.</p>
<p>I’ve considered trade school but I don’t know of anything that I’d be interested in enough to pursue. The fields that I’m interested in require some type of university education, not simply trade school (unless I want to work as an assistant or receptionist for those particular fields).</p>
<p>Even still, trades and blue collar jobs require a type of intelligence that I doubt I have. Even electricians require problem solving skills. I have none of that.</p>
<p>I guess I’m just in a slump because I want to want to do well in the academic setting. I know that I could consider other possibilities in life, but I’m really set on college and higher education. It’s hard for me to let it go.</p>
<p>CCC88 - You cut out half a sentence from my post, took it out of context, and wrote a rambling paragraph on it. What does that say about you? I apologize if i’ve offended you or if you perceived it as condescending. Really, I was just trying to give the OP some advice and thought I wrote it in a light-hearted tone, even joking about her being a pretty model. </p>
<p>Why are you trying to justify your life to me when I never addressed you? You sound so insecure. Maybe I phrased things the wrong way, but I know that there’s multiple types of intelligence. I said college is not for everyone, it’s a path most Americans don’t take. When I mentioned colleges that cater to lower-achieving students, I meant exactly that, nothing more. Just like there’s colleges that cater to overachievers, there’s colleges meant to help the lower-achievers succeed too. I didn’t say people who don’t go to college are dumb. You seem to have missed the entire point of my post and concentrated on half a sentence.
There, that’s half a sentence from your post - is that what you meant? didn’t think so.</p>
<p>Vehicle - what specific professions are you interested in where you need a degree? are you interested in a trade job but don’t feel you’re skilled enough for it?</p>
<p>“Why are you trying to justify your life to me when I never addressed you? You sound so insecure.”</p>
<p>It’s called “responding to the claim of a post with personal thoughts or experiences”. Really, the whole point of the exercise is to stimulate discussion, not to cover up some alleged “insecurity”. </p>
<p>I’ve noticed a trend in the past several years. Calling someone out as being “insecure” is the new pop-psychology phase. Everyone’s doing it, even if they don’t think it through. </p>
<p>But really, continue with your internet diagnosis of me.</p>
<p>“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”</p>
<p>Trust me, I have seen so many gifted kids, with 150+ iqs and 2300+ sats. Often, that has a negative impact, because you think you are smart, become lazy, and show less effort. A number of the most successful people I know weren’t all that super book smart. But they were really hard workers, and achieved everything with persistence, while “smart” people tried to coast only on their talent.</p>
<p>Generally speaking the main difference between “smart people” and “dumb people” is self discipline. A “smart person” will work on that essay/physics problem set/whatever even if they hate the subject because they WANT that A or that knowledge. The “dumb person” will just go screw around if given the same choice. And every smart person that I have ever known does not even think about themselves as “smart or dumb.” They just know they need to put in the time and effort.</p>
<p>Vehicle,
If you were dumb, you couldn’t have written such a coherent post.</p>
<p>College, however, isn’t for everyone. This includes its not being for people who are smart, but don’t like academics or prefer working in a vocational field. </p>
<p>To get a well paying job that will support themselves comfortably, virtually everyone now needs some education after high school. That can be college or learning a trade. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, medical technologists, etc. earn good pay, and in many places they have no problems finding work due to a shortage of skilled people in those fields.</p>
<p>CCC - I responded to Vehicle’s post. You get upset and respond like it’s a personal attack, start lecturing me on your life and how people looked down on you and start justifying your life choices; you don’t think that sounds a bit insecure?</p>
<p>Then I apologized and said I’m sorry if you found it condescending, and you get even more obsessive and repeatedly quote my post. What is it you want to hear? That I’m arrogant and look down on blue-collar work when I’ve stated twice I don’t? By all means keep lecturing me, that’s really what you want, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Money isn’t the issue but rather the means to get into the fields I enjoy. I make great money now in my trade-esq field so I understand that vocational training wouldn’t be a route to poverty or failure.</p>
<p>To be honest, I wouldn’t know what kind of trade I’d do or if I’d want to do it the rest of my life. I see a college degree as appealing because the jobs will be different then simply working with electricity all day (for example).</p>
<p>I guess I’m so bent on going to college because no one in my family has ever gotten to that degree and most of their trade skills have landed them in dead-end jobs.</p>
<p>I’m interested in fields like Psychology, Medicine, Law, Economics, Education, and Business (which is something I’m doing now). I’m not sure what kind of “trades” I can get in these fields besides ones that wouldn’t be interesting to me.</p>
<p>Big difference? Probably. Main difference? Definitely not. I know people that have worked incredibly hard for a long time to prep for the SAT and get 1900. I also know someone that skated their way through school getting B’s and C’s and never studying. He got 1530/1600. Hard work should be commended, but it’s silly to equate it with being “smart.”</p>
<p>Well it’s been proven that “intelligence” is more environment than it is genetic. Vehicle, by simply exercising your mind you can become “smarter”. It’s true. Right now, start reading some books, any could be classical or harry potter. Take some courses you like and apply and challenge yourself. Figure out some tough math problems. Learn a new language. Learn to play an instrument. All these things force your brain to develop more connections and synapses between the neurons resulting in a higher “intelligence”.</p>
<p>Intelligence is a very loaded term I find. There are a myriad of “intelligences”. This is why describing intelligence in terms of an IQ is rather ridiculous. There is verbal intelligence, spatial intelligence, mathematical and problem solving intelligence, sensory intelligence, and a slew of others that develop in direct proportion to how frequently they are used. Genetics have surprisingly little to do with it. Do they have an impact on intelligence? Of course. Are they the determining factor in one’s intelligence? Not really. Or at least definitely not as much as these elitist snobs would have you believe.</p>
<p>Vehicle, I certainly feel for you and I have had a lot of the same thoughts as you have. Just apply yourself, and constantly challenge your mind with new ideas. And if someone really is twice as smart as you, you know how you can do better than them? Work twice as hard.</p>
ok just kidding…but you don’t sound dumb to me! but college is not for everyone and you gave it a shot. maybe time to try something new?</p>