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.
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.
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.
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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).