<p>So what I mean by this is: Obviously, a wealth of people at UCLA/UCB are really smart, (if not everybody,) but does that mean that everybody shows it? For example, do people use a lot of big words just to sound smart and talk to their friends in an almost lecture-like format lol? I’ve been to Brown and Harvard and the people actually don’t do that but a few did, so I didn’t know if any of the UC’s were like that? </p>
<p>In other (other!) words, if people know they’re smart, do they flaunt it? Do you think it’s relatively stupid to flaunt if you’re smart because it’s almost like flaunting if you have money? (sort of like a superiority complex.) Thanks!</p>
<p>i havent seen that yet, they all speak “normally” i have yet to see someone go out of there way to flaunt their intellect. There prolly will be some tho, you’ll find those at every campus, even CCs hahaha.</p>
<p>No one does that. A few freshmen did during the first two weeks, then they realized it was frown upon here at Cal because no one cares if you had a legit sat score or what not.</p>
<p>It’s not just big words it’s your major of study. Does anyone really want to hear about how much you know about molecular physics? Maybe, but do you need big words to explain it? No. Therefore big words are not the only indicator of intellect. Big words just means you love the English language and are probably a Literary major. Come to think of it, even English majors avoid big words around friends because they are taught to be concise and to the point. Don’t mistake the people who “try” to use them versus the people who naturally have a big vocabulary and are fluent with it, they can’t help it. If someone told you to sound less smart in an academic paper would you? Or a better question, could you?</p>
<p>You don’t even have to be a literary major. The bigger your vocabulary is, the more jokes you can make. </p>
<p>Anyone who feels the need to sound smart to his or her friends has bigger problems than having too large a vocabulary selection.</p>
<p>Oh and to answer your question, no one does that, but there are always exceptions; you can find this type of person ANYWHERE, not just in college.</p>
<p>HAhha Thanks for the responses!
well I guess another reason I ask is b/c when I went to ucla, I went around to a few of the professors and department heads. Nice professors for the most part, but most of the department heads/SOME of the profs were so intimidating with the way they spoke (like I think one said, “yes, the XXXXXXXX department strives, undoubtedly, to inspire students to voraciously read our auspicious assignments assigned to them” (as an example.) Idk I felt reallllllly stupid after that! lol</p>
<p>Teachers like that are pathetic. Those kind of professors are examples of the crap at the university, not the elite. Get off your high horse, ya know?</p>
<p>There’s a difference between using big vocabulary words when appropriate and using them to be pretentious. </p>
<p>Smart people use advanced words that are both concise and helpful in getting their audiences to best understand what they’re saying. </p>
<p>Pretentious dumb people use poorly-understood advanced words to try to get their audiences to believe they are smart.</p>
<p>Smart people can tell these two groups apart fairly easily since the second group often uses these words incorrectly or awkwardly. They often find the second group of people to be grating, and many will eventually call them out.</p>
<p>Dumb people can’t really discern between the two groups, and think both are smart for using words out of their own vocabularies.</p>
<p>Take some CC Philosophy classes and you will get a pretty good appreciation for the behavioral patterns of each group of people. The biggest example of second group behavior I ever met was this guy who transferred into SDSU Philosophy that was able to work the words “averred” and “dichotomy” into about 5 inappropriate contexts every class. It took restraint not to punch his teeth in.</p>
Thanks for the responses!