<p>Are the smartest people you know (or yourself, for that matter) extremely arrogant or opinionated?
Or do some of them get scorn from friends because they don’t try in school?
Many of my good friends are getting annoyed by my own arrogance and unwillingness to try in school (I go to a sub-par HS, so not trying at all results in 90-95s. Plus our school only reports letter grades.)</p>
<p>Opinionated about what? When you say “opinionated” I think of those kids who always want to rant about politics in the middle of class, so I’ll talk about that.</p>
<p>Smart kids are more likely to have stuff in their heads about which they can be opinionated. We tend to assume people are smart when they have a lot of knowledge, and kids who have a lot of knowledge are more likely to have “intellectual” interests and read a lot. They might form passionate and unreasoned opinions about what they read because of their immaturity/youthful idealism. </p>
<p>There also might be people (like me, probably) who try to get good grades because they’re arrogant and getting good grades would give them a sort of tangible way to claim superiority.</p>
<p>(I’m a hypocrite for saying this, but I don’t like it when people don’t try in school. Well, it’s not necessarily about trying, because you don’t always have to try hard to learn something, but I don’t like people who don’t care about learning anything. I suppose there are “I never let my schooling interfere with my education” types who disparage the education system and still somehow care about learning outside of school, and I’m not really talking about those people. I mean annoying self-satisfied people who get a kick out of how they’re “gaming the system” by not studying, who think the point of school is to learn as little as humanly possible while still getting a high GPA.)</p>
<p>Almost all of my smart friends have strong opinions on things, especially politically. It makes sense in the context that you just described.
My friends don’t realize that the reason I don’t try in school is so that I can “try” outside of school. I would rather devote time to working on a research project or learning some complicated math. I don’t think doing repetitious worksheets on, say dimensional analysis, makes me learn anything.
I also despise those that have the resources to succeed and yet don’t. Yet, I respect those who work hard to be the best they can be (which I don’t see that often anyways).</p>
<p>If you’re extremely arrogant you probably aren’t extremely smart.</p>
<p>If you’re not smart, you can’t legitimately have a strong opinion on many things, because you simply don’t know enough about them.</p>
<p>I disagree though; the two people I know with 36s on their ACTs are also the two most arrogant people I know…
Although, the MOST opinionated people I know are not the smartest people I know (they adamantly follow their family’s beliefs…)</p>
<p>Our valedictorian, a good friend of mine, is somewhat opinionated and not very arrogant.
One of the two people duking it out for salutatorian is one of the most arrogant people I have ever encountered.</p>
<p>My boyfriend’s best friend, who considers himself “smarter than everyone else,” is extremely opinionated AND arrogant. I can’t stand him. No idea how he stacks up in conventional ways (GPA, class rank, SAT scores, etc.)</p>
<p>I’m number 6 in my class and wouldn’t say I’m arrogant (only about my SAT scores, I guess). I’m also not very opinionated. Don’t care for/about politics or philosophy or theology except where gender roles/rights are involved.</p>
<p>I don’t want to be that guy, but “smart” isn’t necessarily getting good grades & test scores.</p>
<p>If you’re not bright enough to consider other opinions or that you could possibly wrong, I don’t think you can truly be labeled “smart”.</p>
<p>
For better or worse, everyone has opinions like this…it’s just a matter of degree. And we’re talking about teenagers, so most of them are intellectually immature even if they’re smart, and they might be inclined to see things as more black-and-white than they actually are. (I mean, there are smart four-year-olds too, but we don’t have the same standards for them as we do for smart adults.)</p>
<p>Smart IS subjective, but I think “smart” in this context is “very academically inclined” (which is still ambiguous). </p>
<p>The two smartest people in my class are opposites. They are both mathematical talents, and one is slightly more so than the other, but they’re pretty much equal. One I cannot stand - he’s so stuck up and thinks he knows everything about everything. Working with him on a project, especially in a class in which he is not more gifted than the rest of us, is pure torture. You can’t have any input, because you are of inferior intelligence and can’t possibly know that he spelled words wrong, used improper grammar, or employed a logical fallacy. But some people still worship him. The other is shy and modest about his talents, and gets along with most people. Personalities are not determined by IQs. There are losers and winners in every IQ percentile group.</p>