"Too much intelligence eats your brains"

[Colditz]

I was discussing this last night with my intelligent misfit friends (and some of my intelligent normal friends too). We came to the conclusion that if you have a high IQ, far from saving you work, it actually causes you work. You are unable to be contented with repetitive work without talking to yourself, spreading malicious gossip or keeping Gin in your pocket, and getting away from boring work takes EFFORT at a young age, when many people (especially very intelligent ones) may not be emotionally mature enough to realise that they will not be 15 for ever and need to pull their finger out.

I came to this conclusion after realising that NOBODY who was a particularly high flier in my classes (which were some top sets) is both happy and successful. The two people who have been successful in their chosen careers (archeologist and hedge fund manager) were, I know, bullied systematically by their parents, one had a nervous breakdown and the other is anorexic. Then there's the scores who never got that far, three bar staff, 2 factory workers, 2 care assistants. All going quietly nuts, drinking too much, staying up into the small hours bickering about the nature of intelligence when they have a 6 am start on a Sunday morning, drugs, ohhhh the drugs these clever people take.

And then there's the people I know who were bright, but not in the top top sets. They almost all "succeeded", or are at least happy with what they're doing. They are living happy, calm, cheerful normal lives, without the screaming angsts of 3am and no sleep and 6am start and your head won't SHUT UP. They are running offices, and going to the gym, and managing pubs, and working as nurses, and vet nurses, or depo managers ... they all have good jobs, and seem mostly really happy (these are the people I know from the classes I was in that were middle ability classes).

There seems to be a much higher degree of conventional success from the people who were not in the top 5% for everything, is what I am saying. And there seems to be a greater degree of happiness too, and fewer social and mental health problems. SO why?

Is it a failure on the part of the education system? Is it an inbuilt neurological imbalance? Is it because the very very clever never really have to work at school, and coast until they hit the real world where coasting doesn't cut the mustard? Any other ideas? Criticisms?

Quite a few people have suggested (in various books, newspaper columns etc) that there is a particularly British distrust of academic intelligence and intellectualism, and I think there may be something in that (especially when watching all those reality shows where it's blatantly obvious that being a blubbering, gullible, grateful moron is regarded as endearing, heartwarming, deserving of reward).
I have been told more than once that I am 'too clever for my own good' though I have always been aware that this has been a synonym for 'you won't eat shit or defer to men and you will have to suffer for this attitude'. I have picked interesting jobs rather than lucrative ones which means I am desperately broke and struggling and now too old to get a 'good' job and will therefore probably be desperately broke forever.
And I do worry about DS, who is showing lots of signs of being unusually clever - I adore my boy and I am pleased and proud that he is so clever, and I really hate the idea that I should try and conceal his cleverness or teach him to mistrust it and pretend he's a moronic herd animal. I think I will try to teach him that he's wonderful and should never be ashamed of what he is- and if some people don't like it that's their loss.

That is absolutely what you should teach him santa.

I agree with previous posters - I coasted through school. I found maths a bit challenging but was still in the top set. (infact a lot never made sense till I did statistics in a work environment and realised that a lot of this stuff really did have a practical use )

But when I hit A' levels/university I struggled and have got bored easily ever since. Even to this day, I get so irritated that so many people I work with are complete fuckwits jobsworths and people are more intersted in work politics and rules than actually getting the job done well.

And I get bored very easily and drink too much. My IQ is supposedly 152. Not as high as DH who is a RL mensa member.....

"I get so irritated that so many people I work with are complete fuckwits jobsworths and people are more interested in work politics and rules than actually getting the job done well." Amen to that. Thankfully my line of work tends to attract similar social and economic outcasts, but we all still have to deal with management - unfortunately. Work politics drive me mental, and I'm in local government so there are a lot of them! I'd be a liability if I was ever promoted.

I'm not sure you've quite got it right.

disclaimer
I was accelerated through school because I was academically quite bright. Then spent years at the end teaching the other kids stuff because I had bog all else to do - so I'm probably a tad jaded
***

The problem is not with intelligence, it's intelligence coupled with creativity.

If you are really smart you are ostracised. Unless you have your own little world going on in your head, you feel pain because it's frustrating/self-defeated. As the saying goes: 'no-one likes a smartarse'.

So a lot of people dumb down to conform and don't really develop their genius, dropping out of education etc. or choosing a path which will not lead them to reveal their academic brilliance.

However if you are very creative and intelligent too you've got a problem. You know you don't fit in. You quickly learn that people who are stupider than you have power over you and develop problems with authority which don't exactly aid your career prospects. You don't have to concentrate at a depth to understand things so you probably lack focus and the strategy for educating you has changed six times since you started school.

The solution: I have no bloody idea (see I'm not that smart ). My parents always said 'ask questions and you will learn more'. Which stood me in good stead until I was 11 and the teachers asked me to stop asking more questions because 'that bit won't be in the test' . I tuned out at that point pretty much.

Perhaps we should (as a service to mankind), introduce intelligent friends to other single intelligent friends and encourage them to breed so their progeny can answer this?

being lazy TICK
having poor self discipline TICK

I'm a middle of the road acheiver - ie reasonable success compared to most of my family but not at the foothills of where I ought to be theoretically particularly given that I am emotionally pretty stable having been through some tough times which I was lucky enough to come out of more psychologically sound than I went into them!

However I have poor self esteem and value very little anything I have acheived - like many others here I don't feel I worked very hard at anything and therefore didn't really deserve it.

Did a psychometric test once which the tester said he had only seen similar profiles three times before in his career and one of them was head of aquisitions and mergers at Goldman Sachs in New York (his slightly incredulous tone as he looked at me didn't help), also said I was the brigtherst person he'd ever met in advertising - I said if I were the brightest person he'd ever met in brain surgery that might be worth writing homeabout, but advertising?! Talk about damning with faint praise!

I wasn't accerelated through school when I'd finished the maths workat the end of the frist lesson of a double lesson , I would be sent to photocopy the next lessons handouts. (acually I'm so old it wasn;t a photocopier but a banda (SP?) press)

I think you are extrapolating from your own personal experience here Colditz and that is not a big enough sample.

What I have observed is that the brightest do not always succeed. The people who succeed have drive coupled with a reasonable (but not excessive) amount of intelligence.

One of the most intelligent people I know is sitting on a welsh mountain side writing scripts.

If he had even a moderate amount of drive he would be a millionaire by now.

I asked him about this and he told me that he thought he had had too happy a childhood to write immortal prose.

Go figure. Mess your children up a bit and they succeed. Not too much of course, but just enough to give them some drive ...

Surely it is not so simple? I went to a grammar school. ( I apparently passed the 11 + though have no memory of taking such a test - oh how things have changed)

I look on Friends Reunited and there is a fair smattering of doctors and lawyers, and many more who divorced their first husband, moved home and now work in customer services. Surely we were all equally clever?

I think that being "clever" only counts for so much, You need determination to do well.

Oh and my history is that I am brightish but no genius (think my IQ is 142). Was always in the top 2/3 for every subject at school. Could have done nothing with it. Many people do. Think I have exceeded expectations in the career stakes. I think this is down to childhood factors too

colditz - i had childhood depression too. wouldve been allowed to go to counselling but didnt have the confidence to ask. when i finally did, they didnt get it at all and offered me help with my homework (er, that SO wasnt the point) but yes, despite my parents not being abusing i do know how the depression in teenager years feels. i was depressed from age 10 to 21.
it feels as tho there is no other way of being. you dont remember any other way to feel, to think, to be. death feels like the only hope of freedom.

I've been thinking about this some more. I think the driving factors in the world of work are so so different from those at school, and I never really moved on to embrace them.

When I said before I didn't need to work that hard, it was true. I didn't - in order to get A's. If I had been at school when As were introduced I'd have known I had to work harder, as I would have been aiming for all As. I have always worked best under pressure, and believe you me I would have done whatever I needed to do to achieve. So I guess I have always gone through life doing what I needed to do to get the required result, but no more.

When I hit university I found that it wasn't quite enough. I needed that extra "something" to get a First and I didn't quite have it. That's the extra self-motivation and initiative that I guess I was lacking - the thing you can't study for. I got the marks for a First but wasn't awarded one because I wasn't exceptional - only 2 Firsts were awarded in the year. Same with my postgraduate law diploma - I did very well and came out with a Commendation, but not a Distinction (truth be told I got the result I did through one month of cramming right at the end of the course ).

In the world of work and careers it's the same. Just working hard isn't enough - there are subtler factors at work, things (and people) you can't control. I find that very frustrating and I've never really got a handle on it tbh. Consequently I lack confidence in myself, and I think I have probably sold myself short because of it.

and now I'mcringing because what I posed looks like showing off.

The worst crime in our family was showing off.

hey, maybe lots of us will always just find an excuse for our wasted potential. maybe we ARE just lazy.

kew, the worst crime in all of englandshire is showing off. or loving yourself. god forbid any of us should have any pride in ourselves.

All the stuff posted so far sounds very female tbh. Constant self doubt and self criticism - good to some extent yet can be crippling to a topflight career

And of course you didnt sound like you were showing off Kewc

I'm certain that what I've posted sounds like showing off . But hey you're not real people right? This is t'Internet. And it's ever so cathartic!

mm.
I think quality of clever person life depends a good bit on finding (and having the energy to find, 'cos it can be hard work) kindred spirits. Look at all the coteries that get formed, the Bloomsburyers, the Fabians, the whatever it was called that Emerson got together to do collective farming & mutual original thinking (not entirely successful, I recall, as a project, but my point stands) - you need mates

So ... for me, I am really quite happy, and fairly well professionally/personally achieved, though not quite as much as I could be, but everyone says that ... - anyway, because I've got lots of dear friends, and work with lots of colleagues, whose cleverness is just another notch or 10 ahead of mine. So I have a shoal to swim in. Dh is quite a brain too, that's relevant.

But if I were all on my own, and hadn't any brain-mates, things would be very different.

Quattro - I've seen what you've posted on the other thread and to me you represent what I could (probably should) have achieved and didn't. I think I regret it (though I wouldn't have met DH).

But what Quattro's saying about these self-critical attitudes hampering a good career - would people agree that many (not all) high achievers, in monetary terms anyway, get there because they have the gift of the gab and are not concerned what other people think? I'd be constantly worried about letting myself and others down - it's an overused term but I am most definitely a perfectionist, and I'm guessing that kind of attitude can throttle ambition. Am I right?

I'm at your kind of level. Very clever (IQ varies between 135 and 152 - donp;t ask me why!?) butnot quite at genious level. Still feel that I ws almost very succesful (european finance director of major advertiding network at 28) but kind of fizzled out.

And yet... I am none the less happy so why does it irritate me?

Well, I am seriously underachieving right now. I do remember sobbing at university in my second year when very drunk that I'd rather not have got a First in my prelims and been normal. But perhaps everyone feels that they're not normal and I just linked it to 'intelligence' because I could.

I didn't want to pursue the PhD/MPhil route either . I was very happy, moderately successful and reasonably well-off in a minor branch of marketing consultancy for 12 years or so - crucially the people I worked with (one of whom I married, another of whom would be our children's guardian should the unthinkable happen) were very like me intellectually.

DH and I both achieved highly academically, but we are not multi-millionaires or famous. DH is achieving comfortably in a middle-of-the-road sort of way. I am writing more intentionally now and do sort of hope that it turns into something, but to be honest that is really just more intellectual loneliness. It's not really a topic of conversation on the school run.

Why do you think we're all on Mumsnet?

Member of Mensa. IQ apparently 172 at the age of 11, although I think the weighting gets screwy at younger ages as I certainly know brighter people than me with a technically lower IQ.

I can assure you it means feck all apart from the fact I had a mathematical brain and really liked those puzzly sort of tests especially as you didn't have to "learn" or "memorize" them at such.

Tests where I had to do actual work, forget it.

In fact, I still have nightmares where I relive university finals, turning over the paper and not knowing the answers to any of the questions...

(degree physics with astrophysics, scraped an HONS with a 3rd)

This is such an interesting thread, and there's so much I want to reply to.

But I definitely don't think it is a female thing. Out of my group of 9 friends at Cambridge (5 girls, 4 blokes), the girls were the ones being partners in city law firms, while all of the blokes have dropped out to varying degrees.

And a question. Is it more intelligent to spend your time racing to get ahead in a city bank and being a millionaire, or to follow your interests and do what pleases you?

I went and did an MA (at art college, so really quite a lot of fun) when all of my friends were off being trainee lawyers and accountants. But I realised then that there is a direct trade off between time to call your own and money, and have always preferred having at least some of the time. So I worked as a freelance, and have taken loads of breaks just writing or hanging around, and I'd still far rather have doen what I've done than have their six figure paychecks. And of course I think it's 'more intelligent' to do that...

[fgin] fook iq tests, the only thing they can tell is the abillity to do iq tests! most of what we acheve in life is what we do after school/college/uni.was dux at school ,top marks across every subject, except cant spell?.AM BARMAID, AND LOVING IT!.classmates at school/uni are now accountants and scientists doctors ect,these are people who used to ask me for help( i giggle if they could see me now!)i think its more a question of luck when it comes to earnings,and social skills have a lot to do with it, after all who wants to work with a "weirdo"?(struggling for better word).how you view your choices/life makes a difference too.... if u want lots of cash your driven to earn it,if your happy doing that then good for you.quality of life does not come from wealth, that comes from being content with your lot.but if your content wheres the need to strive for more?

my mother was extra-ordinarily intelligent according to all who knew her as a young woman.

she sat and got top marks for 10 O'levels, same for 10 (maybe 8?) A'levels, went to uni to train as a teacher and graduated top of her class, but was very unhappy and got into the drug culture that was so prevalent (sp?) in the early 70's. became a 'flower girl/hippy' too and went to a commune.

BUT, she was still so unhappy with her lot, and even tho she had by then had me, still took drugs to give her some degree of happiness, and she has now suffered with schizophrenia since I was 18mths, and been in hospitals/homes ever since bar a short stint when I was 8 and she was pregnant by another 'inmate'.......they homed them together and returned me (huge mistake, massive, but that is a whole other rant)....

my point being.............yes, my mother had high intelligence, yes she could have been a roaring success, she could also have had the world at her feet (so to speak), but she was not happy with it and strivedc to find better, ending her life as it could have been with so-called pleasure (hard-core drugs).

I now have no desire for my children to be top of their class............happy and with lots of friends is my aim for them, and respectful of people.

oh, and my brother inherited our mothers brains (I lucked out, altho I did gain her passion for reading), and he is not happy........he is a doctor and is 'satisfied', but I would not call him happy. Altho, he is an utter swine to me, so that may colour my feelings!