Tuesday, June 5, 2012

My academic self

I have lost the sense of myself as an intelligent person. In high school it was easy -- I was in the second tier among the gifted and AP students -- just one rung below the super-smart. I never got good grades -- maybe out of a self-fulfilling prophecy -- but I never got bad ones either. I went to Emory and found myself among people who were as smart or smarter than me, but who were, on the whole, much harder workers.

Once I started working in a service job, I found myself among people who valued things other than intelligence -- commitment, creativity, empathy, tenacity. My coworkers are sometimes impressed by my educational history and the intelligence it implies; outsiders are often impressed with the fact that I went to a fancy school and didn't go on to law school, med school, or at least other graduate school -- that I gave up the potential of a higher income and more prestige. That kind of intelligence is something that is supposed to be tied to class. Smart and rich are the same, and if you're not one, you can't be the other.

Now in a graduate school program that's focused on direct service in a helping profession, and still working while in school, I feel soundly average. Given the option to take PhD classes, I fear that I won't be able to keep up. I took three grad classes in undergrad, one of which was a theoretical religion class. I've got six semesters of graduate school under my belt, in public administration, women's studies, and nonprofit management. There is no reason to think I can't do this, except that not choosing a prestigious career makes me feel like I don't have the intelligence that such a career would indicate.

I don't have trouble believing that people I know with different education backgrounds are much smarter than me. I don't have trouble believing that people in similar jobs to mine may have different kinds of intelligence and/or be much harder workers. But somehow, when it comes to myself, forgoing the things people with my IQ are *supposed* to do has convinced me that I've forgone my intelligence too.

Well, I haven't. Theories of Social Justice and Social Movements, I will take you on. I will take you on, and I will conquer you. I will introduce myself as part of a helping profession, and I will still argue that the resources we are trying to ration are not scarce. And I won't forget that I'm a smartypants.