In defense of intelligence

"We really are more intelligent than we sound, I promise!" Ah, the self-consciousness.


Having dragged my friend Kofi along to a lecture this evening by the vaguely notorious activist and former educator Bill Ayers, I sat in the auditorium chatting as we awaited the start of the program. Truly, our conversations have a history of flying from place to place, ranging from Thoreau to the current situation in Côte d'Ivoire to gender debates or "aluminum" vs "aluminium." As we sat awaiting Ayers, the conversation circled around the less sophisticated: gender debates and attractiveness, people watching and discussion of common friends, some vaguely embarrassing comments and chuckles at statements said thoughtlessly but potentially laden with innuendo. When, not ten minutes later, a fellow sitting in front of us turned to ask me if we were Dickinson students (turns out he lives in nearby Harrisburg), I felt the need to qualify my affirmative answer with the above brief, half-joking defense of our intelligence, which likely hadn't been well displayed in the conversation he'd overheard. It was as though I'd landed myself back in the times of Jane Austen, apologizing for perusing a novel instead of some dry but proper morality reading. On the contrary, he reassured me, we do sound intelligent - "just talking about life," as he put it.


Still have to laugh at myself a bit, though, knowingly shaking my head at my own self-consciousness. This is not at all out of the norm for Kate behavior. Truly, it was well displayed one day several months ago, when the car I was driving decided to break down on the busiest street of Erie, PA, right in front of the major highway ramp and during rush hour on a Wednesday. As a friend and I watched in laughing astonishment, some rather bold drivers actually took to bajaing (can I make that a verb?) through the median a foot or two from my window. That is, it was all entertainment until one woman, ironically criticizing my abilities as a driver while her husband careened their car over the median, scrolled down her window and yelled with all possible annoyance, "Turn your four-ways on!!" I yearned to defend my intelligence, to yell back and explain "They were on, but the alternator died and drained the battery!!" Damn it. I'm not stupid, I swear.


And again, not a week ago found me reluctantly in conversation with a fellow student over the counter of the circulation desk while I worked, her checking in on how my thesis was going (unstarted at the time). After asking that I reminder her of my topic, she said condescendingly, "Ah, right, I remembered your prospectus mentioned ___ and ___, but that neither of them had anything to do with your thesis. Well, I better let you get to it." I'm not going to lie, I wanted to chase that girl down, partially to kick her for her continued and patronizing rudeness, that omniscient tone that grates on my ears, but more to tell her exactly why she was wrong, to prove that there was a connection and I wasn't completely dim. Lucky for me, workshopping that part of my thesis a few days later did that for me. See that? I wanted to say. I'm not all that foolish.


It's an interesting impulse, this urge to defend my abilities - particularly my intelligence - when I feel they've been doubted. This could inspire some major psychoanalysis, eh? Maybe conscientiousness about meeting expectations (past or current), reminiscent of the nerdy Brian of "The Breakfast Club" fame, or shaky self-confidence in one form or another, or, for some, a need to uphold some egotistic beliefs or self-perceptions. Or maybe what author Richard Wolffe termed at a recent lecture, in regards to his life as a writer, "the sheer hell of self-doubt." (That last bit's a good one, I'd say, particularly as a writer.)


Brought to mind also, however, a clip a friend had recently shared regarding education, the pros and cons of "the system," the expectations thereof. Afraid to make mistakes, or be seen as less than intelligent? Just an interesting bit of an on-going discussion here...


Ken Robinson speaks on education, via TED:

*I should admit that it's vaguely entertaining, by the by, that this discussion on the education system should return to my mind via an encounter while awaiting a lecture by Bill Ayers, as his second claim to fame, in addition to co-founding Weather Underground, is in the realm of the pedagogical.