Do others "fear" you because of your intelligence?

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I wouldn't say they necessarily fear it, but it sure as hell pisses them off. Some people have told me I act like I know everything, but that's ridiculous to me because when I don't know, I keep my mouth shut, or I say "I think," or "it seems like," or I'll just say that I don't know. And I only state things as facts when I know they are indeed facts... Whatever... People hate it. They hate being corrected about anything, they hate being called out on their BS, and they HATE when someone offers a MUCH better solution to anything.

I remember being in elementary school doing phonics or something, which at that point in time, consisted of showing the class different letter combinations and then telling us what sound said combinations make when spoken. We also looked at some pictures of different objects and were told to identify them... Well this caused problems... We got to the -ch. Of course, we were told that -ch makes a sound like in the word CHERRY. Well, I raised my hand and I said "well what about Chicago?" I don't remember exactly what was said, but my teacher was pissed and probably told me not to be a smartass or something... Okay, well I'm sorry. I didn't realize that was being a smartass. If you're gonna tell me that something makes a certain sound, but I know an instance where it doesn't, I'm going to be confused, especially at that age. EXCUSE ME ALL TO HELL FOR KNOWING THINGS...

Then two other times there were pictures of a hard hat and a football helmet. Both times, someone said "it's a helmet." I had to point out that they were a FOOTBALL helmet and a HARD HAT. Yes, they are helmets, but that's not specific enough, at least not to me. Helmet could be a whole shedload of different types of headwear. If I say hard hat or football helmet, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway, I got bitched at for that too, and many other times in school. School's a big joke anyhow so whatever.

What I've come to learn is people prefer if you just shut up and do what you're told.

However, there is a bit of a silver lining to all of this. My girlfriend at least appreciates my brain, or so she tells me anyway.

On a couple of occasions, yes, people have told me they are afraid I could use my intelligence to hurt them.

Which is true; I could; I know enough about lots of things to use them in violent, embarrassing, or sneaky ways... but I also have something called a "conscience".

Similarly, they could use their social savvy to hurt me; and yet, mostly, they don't, because they have a conscience. So I don't see why they should be scared of my book smarts.

Mostly, people think I am a bit slow; but when I get my brain fired up and am in an area where I am very good (usually science or math, or sometimes writing), people start to think I am some kind of Einstein. I think they are right either way-I'm slow and smart, both at once, in different areas.

I think a lot of people fear intelligence. My husband has had to deal with this at work and it resulted in him being bullied and needing 3 months off, to get himself back together. He's NT, but I'd say he's borderline spectrum. He's very smart, works in IT and is very good at his job. But, his supervisor, the one above her and so on, are much less intelligent. Apparently they have management skills (really?). They like to rub his nose in it about people skills. He basically gets on with his job and likes to provide a good service to the customers. He doesn't socialise with the team, but he's pleasant with them and very helpful. If you ask me, they are the ones lacking in people skills, not him. When his team was regraded, he didn't get the same grading as the others, despite being the best at the job.

He's a boat rocker and, combined with high intelligence, they see him as a threat. They like to keep him down as he refused to sign a document saying he wouldn't speak about the staffing review. He said he wouldn't sign it because he hadn't seen it yet and, if it said his job was disappearing, he would definitely feel the need to speak to someone about it. The document said that he should speak to no-one (we both take this to include wife/ best friend, etc). Actually, the ones who did sign it were clearly heard speaking about it in the office, within earshot of people who hadn't seen the review, and they were not reprimanded. So what was the point of them signing anything? Just to prove that they were sheep, I expect.

I've had to deal with similar issues, but I'm not a boat rocker. I'm too shy in a work environment to be like that.

I think people just don't like to think they're stupid. It hurts their ego. So acting like a know-it-all is considered bad. (never understood that)
Everyone wants to think they're better then most other people.

No....but people tend to fear my stupidness.

I've had people "jokingly" say "You make me siiiiiiiiiick" when they asked what I got on a test and I got an A or a B and they only got a C.

Seems to me like it's often the B and C students who work the hardest anyway; the A students are usually naturals who don't have to work very hard, but if you're not a natural and you work your way to a passing grade, that's a great deal more admirable than just being good at something.

Callista's post reminded me of some other issues...

In high school, I would consistently earn an A+ (100%) on quizzes, tests, and exams in particularly difficult subjects, and be accused of cheating by the other students (whose grades were somewhere between C- and B-). Then I'd have to re-take the test under the watchful eyes of a teacher, the assistant principal, and a student proctor, and still get an A+. Once, I had to take an exam three times, with the last time wearing nothing but shorts and a tee-shirt to prove that I had not somehow sneaked in a crib sheet, and some other students still insisted that I must have cheated.

Another time, while at university, I earned a perfect score on a difficult fourth-year engineering exam. The Dean summoned me to his office, where the instructor insisted that I must have cheated. He said it was because "Nobody aces any of my exams!" I had to re-take the exam (different version), and still aced it while sitting at the same table with only the instructor, the Dean, and two proctors in the same room watching my every move. I even corrected two of his mistakes on the test, thus proving that I knew the subject matter to the satisfaction of the Dean.

I wish I could pull off the same stunt at the DMV ...

I think some are blessed with book smarts and some are blessed with other types of smarts. And of course, all variations in between.

Perhaps some are jealous that some things come so easy to those with book smarts, but in everyday life, booksmarts don't necessarily take one the farthest in life, and sometimes takes one nowhere to speak of.

I was always in the top 1 percent of educational pursuits, but I was painfully aware that I was not nearly as profecient in other areas of intelligence associated with general survival skills, among human animals, as others were.

When school is over, book smarts quickly move into the background unless one is working in the area of academia or related fields.

Some do possess extremes in both types of intelligence. Some of those folks excel in all areas of life.

I think people that don't have book smarts and have the other type of intelligence are aware they have a distinct advantage in that area; I doubt many would trade that type of intelligence for the ability to make straight A's.

I haven't feared very smart people but in school I did get pretty jealous at their lack of studying. I will never forget Organic Chemistry. It was so hard. I got a decent enough grade (C+? B-? I can't remember exactly but it was ok.) As I went into the final exam for which I had studied to the exclusion of all other activities, I passed a guy from my class sitting on the concrete steps leading into the building. He was smoking a joint. I asked him why he wasn't worried about taking the final while high. Wouldn't he flunk? He replied that toking was how he always prepared for tests, rather than studying. The next week the grades were posted on the bulletin board in the hall (this is how it was done back in the old days.) He was gloating over his A.

Was I jealous? You bet. My decent but unspectacular grade came from grinding work while he had so much brainpower he could afford to sacrifice some of it to being high during an Organic Chemistry final and still get an A. Infuriating! I would love to have been able to kick back and relax like that and still coast through.

He was a particularly infuriating smart person. Non-infuriating ones didn't get high before the final and spent their spare brain power doing interesting projects that I didn't understand but was impressed by. It was the sheer laziness that wasn't punished by flunking that made me most annoyed.

Only when it comes to employment. I'm the kind of guy that can't keep my mouth shut if I see a better or more efficient way of doing things, and this can definitely be threatening to management types who want to do everything the way it's always been done, even if that way is slow or wasteful. The other fun one with me on the job is that I tend to teach other employees things like basic economics, the principle/agent problem, or the labor laws governing our particular field, the kind of things most bosses don't want their workers knowing too much about.

girls say im smart but it may be code for boring.

People fear what I will do with my intelligence but I am totally harmless. I consider it beneath me to apply my intelligence to anything destructive. I consider myself above that.

Fear me.

I want to let you in on a little secret here. Pot doesn't really hinder your brain, at least not for me. It doesn't make you stupid or a bumbling buffoon, but it can make you a bit silly. However, one thing it's really good for is relieving stress, and the less stressed you are, the easier it is to recall information. It also sometimes helps you to block out outside influences and just concentrate on the task at hand and nothing else. I experienced this myself when I went to take my Microsoft certification test the 2nd time. I've never been one to study either, and I probably could have easily gotten straight As, but I never really cared about grades, and I hated homework. I was also very forgetful with homework, so I probably only did about half of the homework that was assigned. I made out with mostly Bs, but grades don't mean a damn thing anyhow.

Anyway, the first time I took the test, I was taking practice tests pretty much every day for months leading up to the test. I ended up failing the first time. I was stressed out about passing because it covered a shedload of information, and while I know I'm great with computers and I can usually figure out how to do something even if I don't remember it exactly, the test would ask for which specific tab some option is under and things like that, things that aren't really entirely necessary in my opinion. As long as you have a general idea where the thing you're looking for is, you'll find it. Anyhow, I didn't take ANY practice tests for at least a week leading up to the test. Before I went to take the test, I smoked a few bowls with my friend. I went in there not really caring whether i passed it or not. I wasn't stressed whatsoever, I was relaxed. And I passed with flying colors.

Think of your brain as a computer for a moment. You only have so much RAM. How much RAM you have determines how many different things you can run(think about, process, whatever you wanna call it) at a time. Now imagine you have a program called Stress.exe running in the background. It makes every other program run slower because it's using up RAM. Smoking pot, at least for me, is like going into the task manager and shutting down EVERY process except the bare minimum ones required to run the operating system, therefore freeing up more RAM to be used for other things.

Don't be pissed at people for being smart. It's not like it's their fault, it just comes naturally to them.

Ehh, I think Janissy's got a right to be annoyed that there are people who just breeze through tests like that. They should be taking AP classes and challenging themselves, or learning stuff on their own when the teachers can't provide lessons at their level.

Lazy is lazy, whether you get A's or F's. And when somebody gets an A without working while you're working your butt off to get a B, it naturally does feel unjust. I think I'd get mad, too, seeing somebody just sitting there and smoking when they've got a good brain they should be doing something with.

In high school I was often the person who got A's without trying; but I didn't feel particularly proud of the ones I didn't work hard for. The things I was proud of--my writing, learning about physics, programming computers--were the things I did work hard on. And back then, I was pretty horrible at programming computers; I had these BASIC programs just riddled with GOTO's, because I didn't know any better...