Aspie, low grades, but very high intelligence

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School, work, life: you play the game the way the rules were written, not the way you think they should have been written. When you run your own school or company you can set the rules you want.

I've talked my son into cramming two things: spelling (back when he had to take spelling tests; needed to pass; outside of testing he has spell check so who cares, right?) and dates for history (the rest he mostly remembers). Two small concessions to "the system" that help keep his RELATIVE overall grades reflective of how much he has learned overall compared to other kids. Grades aren't an absolute; they are a competitive measure, and if you don't leverage them the way other kids do, to the extent you can, you let yourself get sold short.

Everyone knows that a 4.0 may or may not mean you learned the material, but it makes it clear that you know how to get the desired results. In the world of business, the later is often just as good as actually having the knowledge. No one said it had to be logical.

I was considered pretty much ret*d during my school years because my grades were not very good. I have a fairly good understanding of this particular issue you have brought up.
although I have not fully digested all the replies on this subject I can share my perspective on them.
Aspie intelligence is different from NTs for certain. Usually NTs are excel at rote memorization.
whereas the ones wtih ASD traits tend to be better with creativity and comprehension abilty.

If the IQ tests were mostly consisted of rote memorizatin and recalling ability, most aspies would be extremely poor and have a low score. and Aspies would be considered to have a lower intelligence than most NTs. however, Most IQ tests do consist of comprehension and other types of intelligences, Aspies can excell in those areas

I am a believer that Aspies should be placed in different educational enviroments if possible.
Schools that promote alternative ways of teaching would be very suitable.

also, most aspies or the ones who claim to have aspie traits are simply uninterested in the academic subjects but interested in "other things".

it's also the competitive drive that NTs have that makes them excel at school enviroment and work places. the competitive Drive is mostly lacking in people with ASD. or they are simply too lazy to do anything about it.

While NTs can easily and even instinctively able to recall things like when someone would recall a long bible quotes, I still think the ones with ASD traits are much more intelligent human beings. because education that merely focus on rote memorization can be risky and even counterproductive as people can rely on written datas as valuable source of information without questioning and its validation.

Also while its competitive drive and one-tracked mindness of NTs can enable creative solutions and even foster some type of genius invention or advancement of human species.
they do not add much to the advancement of intellectualism of human lives and values in the long run.

Having a degree with having earned a 4.0 may not make you an expert, but you have to agree, that person most likely knows more about the area of study than someone that barely passed. That may not be true 100% of the time, but most of the time. Part of getting good grades is knowing how to take tests.

If you needed to pay someone to fix your furnace, would you want someone who has demonstrated ability to fix the furnace or someone who has fixed furnaces and got it right 70% of the time?

The problem is there is no sure way for potential employers to know how knowledgeable a job candidate is, but someone who graduated with a 4.0 represents as someone who applied themselves to the tasks more than someone with a 2.0. From my experience in the work world, a big part of that college degree is simply having gone through the process from beginning to end and grades indicate continued focus on the process. Continued focus on completing and performing is what an employer is looking for in many cases.

If I were in the position of looking for someone I will pay to perform a needed task, I would want someone who had demonstrated that type of focus. Sure wouldn't want to pay someone to fix my furnace who kind of sort of can do it part of the time.

As far as different educational settings, I agree to a point, but then there would be the whole task of testing to see how each person learns and if it comes down to it, there would need to be hundreds of different kinds of schools, so it's up to the individual to learn how to learn, perhaps with assistance in learning how they need to learn.

I think that is the direction education needs to go in, focusing early on in the different ways that people learn, and helping young children develop their own way of learning.

I was lucking in that I learned in my early twenties that writing something down was a great way for me to retain, and now, at this age taking classes again, I even sometimes draw things out in different colors to "get" the concept of what I am learning.

Often for me I make things harder than they are, and that is a trait I think many on here share. Anxiety will also play a huge factor, can't learn when the brain is in anxiety mode (proven fact), so positive thinking helps too.

I definitely get bad grades in school, it's a wonder I made it trough this year. I am intelligent, and understood lots of math and science stuff before going to high school, like quantum mechanics. Yet in high school my grades in math and science aren't that high, I understand the stuff, but I've always had trouble presenting my ideas and methods to other people. So I get stressed when I'm taking a math or science test, or any test. Test in which you have to give the meaning of words are the test's I score high on, because that's where there is no stress, because my memory is pretty photographic. So I just remember it, like topography. And then on the test I don't usually have trouble with it except that I have to remember to learn words independently of each other and must not learn word lists based on order of the words or place of the words. Sometimes math is easy, but it strongly depends, as it is with science. If I make my exercises at home most of the time they are 100% correct, but on a test I fail. Guess it also has to do with my anxiety to fail which perhaps more people on here are having trouble with.

Sorry if this post is cluttered but I have been thinking on how to make it sound as clear as it could be.

My grades would be lower depending on interest as well. If I'm interested in it I'll accumulate an immense knowledge base on my own.. The actual amount I learn in school is miniscule in comparison. A problem I find with post secondary courses anyways are that the schools are run simply as a business. You end up taking a lot of courses that look good on paper but are devoid of any real substance or applicable knowledge.

Not to mention some instructors who only care about their paychecks, tenure, and worse

What I find the hardest about college is retaining the information until the next class period from the lecture, I try not to write notes so I can improve on being more receptive in class, so in future classes I won't have to write notes I can just learn from lecture. I never went all the way through high school so i can't compare the two. But from what I have heard, high school was more repetitive. In college you learn something once in the class, but is usually brought back up in the next class, sometimes not though. Just the fundamentals though, just to get you started, the new class is usually a whole a lot different from what you previously learned except built on.

I had terrible grades but I'm easily as intelligent as those who make straight A's. I until recently had a good online friend who is VERY smart and tbh until I spoke to her I hadn't come across anyone I felt was smarter than I am lol. Grades are letters and numbers and don't truly reflect a persons intellect. I feel an intelligent person can be in all walks of life, as a janitor, or a president. It's always my belief that you have to know each individual before you can tell how intelligent they are.

Hi, it's important to figure out how you learn. Maybe try a smart pen that records the audio. or just an audio recording, try different colors (ink paper folders, may sound silly but it helps me to not have to think about which folder, which set of index cards etc). Understand I am older (54) and have that anxiety about being in classes so I try hard). Other things that help me: Important notes, terms, equations, etc jotted on half size index cards (the full 3 x 5 allow you to cram too much onto one card), and when I got behind in a chem class (teacher was a real gem, 120 in the class, constant chatter, a horrid online homework site created by the publisher that most just figured out how to cheat on, etc) was to get out my colored pencils, markers, drawing paper and just started writing drawing things out, first what I understood, next filling in what I didn't).
I have even used a set of gestures to help learn things, silly looking no doubt.

Sorry for the long post, but the point is, don't be hard on yourself (the anxiety over maybe NOT learning can actually prevent learning) and play with different things that might help.

It depends on what type of employers you are talking about on here. The person who were able to fix furnaces right 99% times doing it according to the manual that came with it, the employers would be interested to hire such an individual for menial tasks. but If the employers are actually rational and smart individual, he would want to hire someone who can fix the furnaces without any manuals and even able to attempt to fix even more complicated furnaces. and most likely the previously hired individuals would not be accomplish the same job as individuals who can fix them without any given manuals.

My grades were awful. But exams and whatnot don't give you the chance to show your full potential.

Apples and oranges, we were comparing success rate, but you do state that the employer would want to hire SOMEONE WHO CAN FIX THE FURNACES= demonstrated ability, and employers looking to fill low level jobs don't care HOW YOU GET IT DONE, just that it is done right.
Repair people do have to understand the basic concepts of say, heating and air systems, they don't have to pull out a manual for a particular model to fix it, most of the time, at least the good ones.

My friends and peers think of me as a very intelligent person. I knew so much in the class, and I always offered insightful answers when called upon or I offered. They would then say, "You got an A, right?" And then I would tell them I received a B. They seem to look shocked.

The reason being I cannot do standardized testing. I can do small quizzes but when it is a giant test that spans for hours I get terrible anxiety. I just cannot sit through it. If you ask me to do something creative with the knowledge I learned, I always get excellent grades.

I am a tactile learner. I can really only learn something if I can apply it. If I don't know what a piece of knowledge is used for, I cannot understand it. Thankfully, my ASD can help me memorize it and it seems to get me by.

That anxiety is a killer for tests for sure! I don't know where you are or if you have already done so, but students with disabilities offices can offer alternate testing facilities that might help with anxiety and concentration issues. I tried it, helped some, but the tests for the teacher I had the most negative/anxious reaction to, well, I still just freaked out: )))) My final for that class I didn't even finish, he had trashed my writing so much (but had gotten great grades in english and other classes required to write), and just left, figured "f%$^ it, he's going to give me whatever he wants (he had a history of grading females much worse than males) and I wasn't playing his game. He must have been afraid (I had reported him for not being discrete about alternate testing issues), because had a C going into the final, didn't finish it, got a C in the class.

Yes I have accommodations, and it helps me not fail but it only does so much. I'm not good at taking tests period. I can only have so much help.

I am sorry that you had that experience. Sometimes, grades are not a great indicator of your worth.

Emotional instability tends to make it harder to learn. Usually, the people who receive better grades tend to have better control/structure of their emotions. It allows them to nurture their natural gifts at a higher level.