<p>I was the valedictorian my freshman year (now I’m the salutatorian…Curse you, choir assignment, curse you! Yes, I’m serious; that’s what knocked me down!). See, I believe you can measure intelligence in several ways, and, grappling with an odd mind totally devoid of common sense but with fair amount of “book smarts” and quite a bit of general profoundness, I’m more inclined to want to believe that, lol. I hate how people try to judge my intelligence without knowing any of my opinions or values or philosophical musings or, heck, even really talking to me/knowing me at all. And, in a way, it’s more offensive to me for someone to make the unfounded assumption that I’m smart than for someone who knows me very well and whom I’ve revealed all my hidden layers to (which is actually nobody because I don’t really know how to do that, lol, but this is all hypothetical) to believe I’m dumb. Intelligence itself is just so elusive and trying to bottle it using numbers and benchmarks and incommensurable standards is just downright frustrating. And, yeah, I may be salutatorian, but I’m extremely co-dependent and the section of my mind devoted to living on one’s own just doesn’t work right. Lol, different sections of my mind all have different IQs; my common sense is the school dunce.</p>
<p>I also always go by the philosophy that if you think you’re smarter than everyone else, then, by virtue, you’re not.</p>