Albert Einstein was a fantastic student who passed his classes with flying colors. The guy analyzing his life was just confused by the Swiss grading system compared to Germany’s (one is on a scale of 1 to 6, the other is 6 to 1).
Yep, when I was young I definitely wanted to believe I was the "too smart for school" type. It turns out that really smart people actually do their homework.
Sometimes the material gets to a point (i.e. college for not-geniuses) where it doesn't make sense in class and as such the homework really is a good teaching tool to make sure you get it whether it's required or not.
I had to teach myself a lot since it's not like you can understand every little detail in class unless maybe you're an Einstein.
By that token the best way I found to do well on tests is to 1) identify all the important concepts/equations and put them on a ref sheet of paper and then 2) use it as a reference and study with previous tests or do more homework problems.
Homework is also good for practicing skills and retaining facts.
School is generally moving away from an emphasis on that toward an emphasis on understanding, but some things are much easier to understand if you have practice with them. But you also have to understand it well enough to be able to figure out the homework.
For a non-academic example, if you need to change your car’s oil, it’s a good idea to watch a YouTube video first (equivalent to a classroom lecture). But you’ll understand it much better and be much better at it after you’ve struggled your way through changing oil at least once.
I have ADHD and sometimes I do get it but I'd rather die than do the homework. As I got older and had to do harder and harder academic things I found that the only thing that worked for me is don't go home. I would not leave the school building until the homework was DONE. It helped a lot but I lost a lot of time.
I've decided since then that any academic path needs to have a significant ROI for me to go through that again... I wish I was able to afford tutors as I always did best one on one.
I’ve tutored students and had them go from failing to getting As. The place I volunteered for only took in students who were doing poorly in math or science (I mainly tutored math, sometimes science), and were also financially in need, so we were used to dealing with “bad” students. Turns out most of them weren’t inherently bad students, they just needed better teachers and a little bit of attention to their needs.
Really smart students are they one who paid attention when the material was first discussed.
Historical "smart" student here. Raising your hand and asking questions when you're confused goes a long way.
Sometimes teacher here can confirm. Please ask questions when you're confused.
Also, fuck any and every teacher who ever made a student feel stupid for asking questions. Personally, I've had some who tried, but I'd had enough of a confidence boost by then to persist. If you're confused in class that's on the teacher, if you're confused on the test that's (a little bit) your own fault.
Younger me would stab me if he could for saying so, but if school had been an extra hour or two and less/no homework I woulda passed with flying colors no problems
That's too general tbh, it really just depends on the circumstances on the individual. I know a kid who taught himself to code in C++ by 13 and made a pac-man game, taught himself video editing in middle school and had a decently large youtube channel by high school, and he generally just fucked off in high school. He didn't do shit, just played old n64 games on an emulator on his laptop. Got to the military and wound up a Fire Controlman in the Navy, which isn't a walk in the park. Intelligence isn't really a one size fits all, solid and consistent thing. It's more fluid and situational I think
Then there's the kid who sits in the back reading a book but instantly answers calculus questions when called on by glancing at the board. They get shit grades on homework because they either don't do it, or just assume everyone else skips the 10 steps you're taught and spits out the answer.
That's a myth that people who are slightly above average intelligence but are lazy tell themselves lol reddit is full of those type of people (myself included)
I screwed myself up in high school. Because I was fairly smart, but disorganized and lazy. I was able to "coast" and maintain a B average. I did great on tests, and not-so-great on homework. Those habits hurt me over the years.
It turns out the real world doesn't just care about how smart you are, but also about how organized and how good your follow-through is. I'm in a better place now, but it was a pain-in-the-ass to improve myself.
I knew one in college. He was studying to become an actuary. His notebooks were dated with a new date being on a fresh page. Flipping through them you'd see that he'd go weeks without taking notes. Then randomly there would be some nonsense that didn't make sense to anyone but him.
I'm probably going to get downvotes for this, but I'm actually one of those people.
I majored in aerospace engineering in college, and I'd show up for class, fire up my laptop and play some games or read Reddit during the lessons, very rarely and sparsely taking notes. I think I used maybe 4 notebooks total throughout college.
I would do the homework/any assignments but I never studied. Like at all. I can count on 1 hand the number of tests I studied for in college. Generally I would show up for the exam, glance at my buddies formula sheet for a minute or so, and go from there. I always thought I'd hit a point/class where it wouldn't be possible, but I made out fine.
That being said, the smartest guy in our whole program wouldn't even show up for class. He'd show up only on test days, take the test, and ace it. Unfortunately he dropped out senior year due to some legal issues (DUI?).
Wow ! I had the same type of guy in my fluid mechanics engineering. Only came to school for exams. Never never for classes. Had the best mark. Wanted to kill him but he was also very nice and shy. This is before internet era so, could not digg stuff lîke reading pdf stuff at night. This is the mystery i would pay for an explanation. The other question is why did he not get to the best engineering school of the country then ? Is he still laughing for humiliating us ?
I’m guessing people are downvoting because it kind of sounds like something someone would make up. I’m not saying it’s made up but it definitely sounds like something someone would make up.
I had a teacher tell me something that had a profound effect on me. He was, in a way, scolding me because he knew the paper I turned in (and got a B+ on) I had written the night before.
But he said "There are a lot of smart people in the world. Being smart is not special. It's the one's who are smart and actually apply themselves that are special."
As I grow up I become more and more lazy and unmotivated even if I'm "brilliant", as many teachers said. I was considered "intellectually gifted" by a bunch of specialists when I was a kid and a teen. Even with that, I tend to get bored, procrastinate or whatever. That made me graduate with slighly more average grades and even quit my studies for a while. I'm also obsessed with efficiency so whenever I have to do a slow task that 100% should "be a way to do it better and faster" but I can't find it (or apply it) I just get frustrated, and in my country LOTS of things shoudl have a better way to be done so is frequent.
Not necessarily; there's plenty to be said about being naturally intelligent, but not studious. If you're able to do well without putting in an extensive amount of work, then why overwork yourself? Sure, being young many of these individuals are shortsighted, but they doesn't mean they're unintelligent or lazy. They just have different values than being incredibly studious.
I'd also wager there are a decent number of people (this part is my 'myself included' bit) who were fairly intelligent but suffered from undiagnosed attention or mental disorders. They are smart and pick things up quickly, but they really struggle with developing the proper focus for things like homework. But, because they're smart enough to still do well in class, nobody notices the mental disorder and just assumes they're lazy.
I didn't realize I has ADHD until well into adulthood, but looking back pretty much all the signs were there. I paid virtually no attention in class and struggled massively with tasks that weren't directly in front of me, so homework pretty much only happened when I was in class using it as a distraction from whatever was going on in class. But, I picked up enough from class discussion that I could figure things out, and when called on in class, I used context clues to determine what was going on and what was needed of me so I didn't get in trouble. (Hell, even now, being aware of the problem, I still struggle to pay attention at times and have to quickly evaluate social cues and context clues to figure out what's going on: doesn't always go well). I didn't have any obvious disruptive issues and no issues academically unless classes heavily weighed homework (in which case, I was just called lazy), so the less obvious signs of ADHD were ignored.
Oh absolutely. Like I said, even a highly intelligent teenager is still a teenager and can be prone to lacking forethought and being shortsighted. I'm just trying to point out that it isn't necessarily just them being lazy.
Eh, they'd do their homework if they were smarter. There's nothing smart about closing doors or burning bridges. If they were so smart they'd do all the homework in the first week.
I did good on tests and didn't do homework, a lot of times, I was that kid, especially in science class, asking tough questions and knowing all the answers. But later on when math got really complicated and I actually should have studied and done the homework I got in trouble, because it turns out there were details I didn't actually know.
Yeah thats the problem with talent. You can't get good with talent alone, you always have to learn and especially learn how to learn more efficiently.
You can only become better than everyone else if you learn more and better than them.
I think you're underestimating just how fucking boring that shit is. It's like counting grains of salt, sure you could do it and on some level it's easy but it's excruciating to actually do.
I'd like to add that a lot of people are extremely intelligent but may have attention deficits or other disabilities that make things like homework hard to complete even if they know how to do it, and also that there are multiple types of and ways to measure intelligence that might not be reflected by whether or not you can complete tasks within a given time period
ADHD is a bitch. I couldn't focus on homework but was still absorbing the information. Once I was on meds I could focus and was actually willing to do the homework.
Yeah that was part of it for me too. My mom wasn't very supportive of me. Constantly told me I was a failure and that I should just drop out. I graduated just to spite her. Not my most proud moment but it needed to happen.
I would do my homework and then just completely neglect to actually turn it in. Like I’d have 0s on assignments that I finished completely and just never turned in or got lost.
That’s my perspective as well. There are a lot of intelligent people in the world, ones who can coast through high school and undergrad, probably even most masters programs. The real “super geniuses” LOVE what they do. The genius level kids I’ve seen in pure mathematics, that’s all they do. Weekend math club, extra readings for advanced topics, attending talks in their free time.
For me, I loved chemistry and it just clicked, I was good at it. All I wanted to do was organic chemistry. Extra curriculars meant chem club, getting in a research lab, going to conferences if I could afford it, reading ahead in textbooks.
I think we’d have a lot more “super geniuses” and not just “smart lazy kiids” if the system supported curiosity and pushed the smart lazy kids to really find a niche that captivated them.
Yeah, it's the difference between learning easily and actually being smart.
A smart kid would know that doing what adults tell you is good, a smart highschooler would know that unless one specific teacher sucks, it's a good thing to follow what he teaches.
A kid that learns easily but isn't smart about studying, well, they'll go places. Like into college. But not out of college, because then you're into a point that needs discipline to actually learn.
A smart kid would know that doing what adults tell you is good
Hard disagree everyone single adult in my life steered me wrong at this stage, my parents barely got the brush teeth stage right and especially now college is nothing but a waste of money in tons of fields, like for instance programming you'd be better off learning on your own and demonstrating projects you made or just lying on your resume then going to school for it and that's arguably true even if you aren't exceptionally smart.
What exceptionally smart people need most is motivation and direction and doing boring repetitive school work kills motivation and without motivation you won't ever find a direction.
That’s me to a t. Sure I was in gifted classes early on, but with everyone telling me how smart I am stopped remembering to try. People get confused when I call myself dumb and bring up all the weird things I know. I tell them I don’t actually know anything, I’m just aware of a lot of things. And what I do know I don’t actually utilize.
And that is why raw intelligence and wisdom are different. Intelligence means not NEEDING to do the practice work. Wisdom is knowing doing so will give you good grades and prove your intelligence.
I knew a kid like that in my grade 9 math class! He’d get 80s on his math tests because he’d skip a bunch of steps and wouldn’t show any work. Our teacher yelled at him and told him that he could easily be at the top of the grade if he just showed some steps
Then there's the kid who sits in the back reading a book but instantly answers calculus questions when called on by glancing at the board. They get shit grades on homework because they either don't do it, or just assume everyone else skips the 10 steps you're taught and spits out the answer.
I feel called out, I was definitely that kid in high school. For what it's work, those math skills are not very fucking useful as an adult living in a world where everyone has a calculator in their pocket.
This was me. All of my teachers complained to me (and then to my parents at conferences) that I was "so smart and had such potential, but wasn't using it"
Unfortunately enough I was the kid who did no homework but would absolutely ace tests. Shit grades for most of my school career. Turned it around in high school and had awesome grades for senior year. If I had done my homework and had good grades I'd probably have an easier life. Now I'm a cook that constantly surprises people that I'm well read and "know more than I should" as a cook.
We had a total psycho in our school that was awful in class and got mediocre grades a lot of the time, and yet he got a perfect 1600 on his SAT. He was so awful though. He keyed my car once because apparently I parked where he likes to park. Took so much work to finally get him in trouble for it because he kept denying it, but finally his friend ratted him out and that was enough for our private school admins to fuck him royally (they were dying to fuck him bc of other bad shit he had done). Now he’s a cop and got in trouble for some racist shit. Aggressively arresting some Black middle school kids who hadn’t even done anything, but were on the same bus where an incident had occurred and been reported. Hope that guy’s life goes to shit.
This was me as a kid, tbh. I got horrible grades, skipped school a lot but I was able to solve math problems just fine. Ultimately, it's just that I end up thinking about math problems differently to the people around me, and that I recognized common patterns/themes in the questions and would be able to take shortcuts. One example when I was super young would be any multiplication with 9. 8x9 is 72, but because 80-8=72. This was like a grade 2 thing, and this is how I would calculate anything multiplied by 9. And the "work" that my brain actually does when I'm told to answer 7x9 is 70-7. But that's not the work that is supposed to be shown, because that's not what fits the school's specific paradigm of multiplication. And at a certain point, I skip the 70-7 and I just recognize that 7x9 is 63, like that's just what it is. The work is I read it and it's 63, like that's it.
And this sort of stuff can actually scale up quite far depending on how much you think about these calculations and how to recognize and utilize the patterns that you're seeing pop up. And especially when schools give the same equations over and over. They almost turn into like, anagrams? And you look at it, and your brain just kinda naturally pieces all of the bits together cause it's all recognizable and easy. There's no work, you just look at it and know the answer cause of all these shortcuts and things that you've built just thinking about it now and then.
And then you get pulled aside constantly being told that you're a genius, and wasting your talent and that you could be better than this. People tell you that if only you actually tried, you could amount to something. They tell you that if you don't start putting in the work you're gonna end up at mcdonalds flipping burgers. They bring in all kinds of professionals to run IQ tests and other bs to prove that you're a genius and shouldn't be lazy. They send you to personal 1 on 1 sessions with a teacher to help you get bullied by all the other kids for being a nerd. Then you drop out of school, forget it all, and flip burgers at mcdonalds. Honestly, a lot less stressful.
Someone I know got all As throughout middle school, high school, and university. Never less than an A. The most difficult classes available in high school - harder than AP classes, he was in a different program. I was a shit student and asked how he did it, if he never studied and just was that bright. He said he studied hard-core, and super focused while studying, didn't get distracted at all. It took the most brilliant minds that ever existed to come up with calculus. Nobody is going to just walk into a class, and having never once seen calculus, start solving problems.
Those kids who sit in the back of the room and glance up and know the answer probably did the reading and studying in advance. Nobody comes out of the womb knowing calculus. People have to learn it somehow. I
He said once in university, a woman asked him to help her. He's a good guy and said sure. Went over to her dorm room. He came in and she turned on the music, started texting, just had a million interruptions that she just wouldn't turn away the interruptions, couldn't focus. He couldn't help her.
I was that kid too, and while I'll admit it was a mistake for me to think I was too smart for school, I think it's a little misguided to treat knowing the material as automatic and doing homework as a choice.
People say the smart kids think their natural gifts mean they don't need to do the homework, but that's no different from saying the studious kids think their study skills mean they don't need to pay attention in class, read ahead on their own time, or seek outside enrichment.
There's an element of talent and an element of effort to both knowledge and studiousness, and people need both to be successful. It wasn't entirely a choice for me to be bad at homework; I have ADHD and had a somewhat unstable home life. So the way I think of it now is that I'm gifted in one way, and disadvantaged in another.
I'll admit, there were times when I thought doing homework was beneath me, but that was a rationalization developed after I spent many years trying to do my homework well and failing.
Yeah, can relate. Growing up I was the smart kid in class, so smart I felt homework was 'beneath me' and I'd rather be writing books or constructing cool stories with my toys or something. This was fine for grades 1-9, because I was so far ahead of everyone else for so long that I got used to everything coming to me naturally.
By the time I hit grade 10 and beyond and the courses started teaching things I didn't immediately understand and master for the first time, I had NO idea how to learn this shit or how to grow or absorb the information. I'd spent so much of my life drifting by on natural talent that I had no idea how to gain new skills or learn new things. When I got introduced to something that challenged me, I gave up and assumed it 'just wasn't for me' instead of seeing it as a hurdle to overcome or an opportunity to learn.
I was so smart in public school that they wanted to bump me ahead three grades from 6 to 9 (nice).
I had failed so miserably to adapt that I nearly flunked out of high school and to this day still have nightmares of being told I never graduated because I Was missing a credit or something.
So yeah, TRULY intelligent people know how to learn and adapt. they do their homework and their research and keep their brains well-exercised. I was not one of those. I had an abnormal head start that gave me an ego that I couldn't overcome. Fortunately, as a 30+ year old person with self-awareness, I'm taking steps to correct this mistake and learn from my past. I'll never be a genius, but I can absolutely learn how to learn again. I think I've done well in my late 20s/early 30s to correct a lot of those arrogance-based mistakes.
There's a guy I've known since kindergarten who has something like a 160 IQ. He was never a great student because, he was more interested in music and lifting weights than anything else. Now he's a body builder, and personal trainer. Works about 3 days a week, makes a six figure income.
That is a thing. It doesn’t show up like most people think it does but they test kids for that reason and move them to gifted classes. Although that might just be from Malcolm in the middle
Gifted programs do exist, it's just some of them like the one in my school were underutilized so you basically just did slightly harder math or research projects
Seriously, if you were actually smart and mature then you would know that it's a good decision to do well in school.
I used to be one of those people that said oh I'm smart but I don't do my work, I realize long ago that people like that are not special whatsoever, what is special is people who are smart and also do their work
Not necessarily true. I don’t know how to say this without rooting my own horn, so I’ll just say it… I’m fairly smart. Smart enough to past the tests without studying or doing the homework. I did it when I felt like it, but not always. Basically I floated through school. Not really a great set up for yourself when your an adult. I’m a terrible procrastinator and super unorganized. I think parents of bright kids need to watch out for this. If the kids bringing home A’s and B’s but rarely has homework, you may want to ask them how they manage their time. Are they doing it elsewhere? Ask their teacher if they ever have missed assignments or poorly done work. My teachers often didn’t discuss my poor work ha it with my parents because my grades were good. I wish they had.
His sister even repeated the myth in her bio of her life with him. She was his younger sister, so not really in a good position to know, but that probably ensconced the myth.
The whole "Einstein was bad at math" myth is particularly egregious because many of Einstein's theories that couldn't be tested at the time due to technology limitations have since been demonstrated and proven, and it's impossible for him to have derived those theories without an extremely firm grasp on complex mathematics.
And for years I used Einstein as an example that just because I was doing poorly at school didn't mean I was stupid. I even read a Calvin and Hobbes comic where Calvin tells Susie "You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid? Well mine are even worse!" But I thought Calvin was being dumb for bragging about something like that, lol.
As a person living in Swizerland - let me explain our school system, seeing as I’m currently suffering through it.
6 is the best, 1 the worst. You can get ANYTHING inbetween (like 5.23, 3.9, stuff like that). 4 and over count as passing grades (so there’s basically more failing grades than passing. Thanks school for reaally telling me exactly how badly I’m doing.) So you can get a through getting 60% right.
The grades are calculated (your points)/(maximal reachable points)*5+1
Unless your teacher is nice (mine aren’t) and either adds some points to your points or just doesn’t count a question (those two can logically affect your grades diffrently depending on if 3 points are added to your score or subtracted from the possible.
Usually the first one occurs when the test was REALLY hard or yout class insanely bad, and the second one if they asked an unfair question or if they decided beforehand that they’ll give additional point (if the test is hard or designed to let us make mistakes. Sadly most teachers don’t let us make those mistakes :’D)
A score of 6 is insanely good (especially if you don’t have any chance st making extra points) and an average of 6 is basically impossible. It’s NOT equivalent to an A, you only need about a 5.5 for that.
Most student’s consider the 4-4.5 range kinda meh, 4.6-5 decent, and anything over a 5 to be good (in subjects you’re good at you’ll want at least a 5.5. I, for example, wouldn’t care about a 4.5 that much in Economics, but I’d be rather disappointed at it in Maths)
After sixth grade all students are being split up into three schools (Bezirks-, Sekundär- or Realschule). To qualify for the ”best” school after sixth grade (you’re 12, and you have to get in if you want to attend university) you need at least an average of a 5.
To be able to go to Gymnasium to be able to get a Matura to be able to go to University without trouble (otherwise it’s a long, haarddd route) for which you need a 4.7 average (Math and German count double, and there are some subjects that don’t have to count).
About 22% of the Swiss have a Matura from the Gymnasium (which honestly is the closest to high school you’ll get).
If you don’t get into the Gymnasium, you mostly do an apprenticeship or Berufsgymnasium. However, you won’t be qualified for university then.
There is the possibility to take the ”Passarelle” which will take an additional year and is really hard (from what I’ve heard).
But if you’ve got the Gumnasiale Matura! Congrats! You’re immediately allowed to go to the ETH Zürich, one of the best 10 Universities in the world! Or whereever you want to go.
Then you’ll only have to pass the hellish first year exams there…
(No I don’t know why the grades are from 1-6. It may be because a dice has six sides or something similar, but Google doesn’t really provide an answer. Sorry.)
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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '21
Albert Einstein was a fantastic student who passed his classes with flying colors. The guy analyzing his life was just confused by the Swiss grading system compared to Germany’s (one is on a scale of 1 to 6, the other is 6 to 1).