Are you intelligent? How do you gauge intelligence?

[Terrifiedofwastingmylife]

Sure, there are different kinds of intelligence so there will be many answers to this question. But I am interested in how people define intelligence? Are you comfortable in your intelligence?

I do not feel intelligent, according to any definition of it. My brain seems to have really slowed over the last decade, I find it very difficult to learn new systems (I get almost mentally paralysed from fear and stress) and struggle to retain information. I sometimes worry if I'm in the early stages of vascular dementia, which would obviously be different from not having any raw intelligence to begin with. But perhaps I've always been like this, I've just not realised before, and it's nothing to do with dementia.

Anyway, whatever the cause I mostly feel the opposite of intelligent - I can't even work out in my fuzzy brain what it even means anymore.

"Intelligent people often seem to know a lot but the retention of knowledge is not the marker, it’s incidental to the curious nature of intellectual people."

I love this and think it definitely applies to me. I am very curious and spend most of my time exploring new things. I was a disaster at exams that required memory whereas maths and science, or anything that needed the application of logic I found easy. I am curious and often people are surprised by the breadth of my knowledge across all topics, but I couldn't tell you a single date in history besides 1066 or remember anyone name five minutes after being told it.

I am very practical and my career success was always built on my problem solving ability and lateral thinking. My biggest failures or embarrassments have been to do with memory - people expect me to have a good memory but I don't and have found it very frustrating.

OP your spreadsheet task would be much to tedious for me and I would make mistakes. I would feel compelled to design a system that took that tedium away and reduced the chances of error!

I think that there's plenty of intelligent people. Most high level businesspeople ate. But true geniuses often seem less interested in material things and tend to pursue knowledge. Obv that's a big generalisation.

I also think it's not clear cut. There are plenty of extremely smart children who can do high level maths etc, and degrees by their early teens but this isn't the same as being emotionally intelligent or 'well rounded'.

I consider myself intelligent and curious but on paper, I'm not as good as my peers. I've found it ironic how one of my best friends from high school said she thought I was one of the most intelligent people she knew, yet she went to a much better university than I did, getting higher grades at A' levels.

OTOH, I know my DD is incredibly bright, sailing through most of the school work she has in year 7 at her private school, getting 95-98% and top grades in her work and tests. She's always been outgoing, confident, gregarious, articulate, and a true character. I love how she just has the confidence to do things most people (adults even), would baulk at. I remember she sang a song on stage from 'The Greatest Showman' at a drama class she went to, and she just belted it out without any further worries at all.

Yes, I'm pretty much biased but I can see really what intelligence is like in her. She was interviewed for the local BBC news last year after they visited her school, and interviewed some of the school ambassadors about their thoughts on global warming. Her articulate and intelligent answers were fantastic, and I felt immensely proud.

If I could have an ounce of her confidence and intelligence, I'd be grateful. She'll go far, I'm sure.

Yes

For your spreadsheet I’d look to see if there is any software available that’s free or cheap allowing customers/donors etc to input their own data as they register with you & that to flow to a database. You can do something like that with something as simple as google forms/sheets but I suspect that wouldn’t meet the requirements for GDPR. There must be software out there that does though.