<p>I think some people do have more inherent academic ability. But I also think these gifts can lie in different places and people can use them to achieve similar results- for example, I have a friend with very good short-term memory, another with very good long-term memory, another with calculation skills, and I have very good pattern-recognition. These are all somewhat different “gifts” but we all do very well in school as a really, we just have different approaches to things, and some classes with better with different things. Math and physics come easily to me, and history comes early to my long-term memory friend, etc. But we all still do well in the other classes, they just don’t come as naturally.
Anyways, so I think people can be smart in different ways, but that we learn to work with these ways. Also obviously people can be more even, or more “spikey” but a lot of times we learn to work with what we have. Also obviously not everyone is gifted and if we could sum the different ways to be intelligent, I think some people would just be inherently more intelligent, but a lot of things are just different.</p>