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I think we can agree, then, that something went sour with AP chem and that not understanding the concepts is the root of the difficulty you have in doing Chem problems. If you want to attribute it to innate ability that’s fine; my suspicion would tend towards the teacher, book, or tutor. But it’s all water under the bridge now; I’m not trying to suggest you still take Chem classes or anything like that. If your passion is now in something like History that’s great, and don’t be too surprised in college if it changes again as you take classes in areas you hadn’t really thought about before. </p>
<p>As for the general argument of the thread, I think the question will never really be settled to anyone’s satisfaction. The notion that genius or talent alone is sufficient has been, I think, put to rest. Those at the top of their field, whether in music, academics, or athletics, work incessantly at what they do. To tease out the rest, to decide if they couldn’t have achieved that without some level of innate ability had they just put in the work, is the real area of controversy in this thread and elsewhere. There are intriguing examples that show hard work and dedication may be sufficient. One would be the 3 daughters of Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian psychologist, who thought that with training anyone could achieve remarkable things. His 3 daughters are the 3 leading Grand Masters in women’s chess, a deliberate result of how he raised them (see [The</a> Grandmaster Experiment | Psychology Today](<a href=“http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200506/the-grandmaster-experiment]The”>The Grandmaster Experiment | Psychology Today))</p>