People's intellect.

[Wingette]

Macquarie defines intellect as :

"The power or faculty of the mind by which one knows, understands, or reasons, as distinguished from that by which one feels and that by which one wills; the understanding."

Are some people, such as Chairmanwalker, born with lowered intellect, or just a greater affinity for specialization in different areas?

What areas are we expected to apprehend in order to be deemed intellectual?

I wonder.

[motarelli]

My definition seems to change as I get older. I used to believe that academic excellence was all that mattered (and for that reason I felt like a failure - I dropped out of university). I'm finally realising that it's not important that we can all regurgitate the same facts and figures.

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

[ChairmanWalker]

I agree that academic intelligence is not the only form of intelligence today, nor the most important. I would say that healthy emotional intelligence is just as important, if not more.

[Wingette]

I do think that academic performance is too highly emphasized in school, even when in 'real-life', natural abilities and traits would obviously allow you to perform better.

This is assuming that the academic performance was only able to be achieved due to continuous rote learning (therefore not really applying characteristic traits).

[ChairmanWalker]

Well academic performance seems to be less and less relevant as one gets older, hell most people change courses/careers from what they originally did. People just aren't staying in one job as much as they used to.

[Wingette]

Yeah the relevance of academic excellence does deteriorate over time, but employers are putting more emphasis on degrees. Or so I hear.

[motarelli]

Here in the UK employers are asking for degrees for things like admin. In the past you would've been able to get your foot in the door straight out of school. I suppose they can afford to be picky when everyone's out of work.

[Wingette]

That's right motarelli, but I think that degrees get too much attention. A degree doesn't explicate an individual's work ethic or their natural ability, but rather just their ability to rote learn some topics.

From personal experience, my parents employed a man who had several masters and other qualifications for a position. Just after meeting him once, I could tell that he was useless.

His several years in university got him a job, but his natural characteristics got him fired within weeks.

So whilst college degrees do look great on a resume, I'm just paranoid that some employers put too much emphasis on them.

[motarelli]

I completely agree. There's only so much that university can teach you. People often leave without any real life skills.

[Wingette]

But in this era it seems like people just have to get a degree just to be even considered

I hope we don't keep traveling in this direction for much longer, otherwise people will feel obliged to go to university just for a degree rather then specialize in what they actually want to (probably already the case).