February 4, 2014
What does it mean to be smart? There are many who will say that to be smart is to be able to ace your courses in school. As such, there are many who do not consider themselves smart and even put themselves down and assume that they will not have a good and rewarding future because they failed to finish high school or college due to poor grades.
However, let’s look at some statistics. In 2010 a Bloomberg study showed that the number one source of CEOs for S&P 500 companies has been college or high school dropouts. In essence many of the people that have had the greatest influence of our times were not really interested in acing their courses.
A survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations determined that high grades in high school or college and high ACT scores are not good predictors of later success in life.
A study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation also showed that high school dropouts had the biggest increase in rate of business creation in 2010 compared to any other group.
There are also elected members of congress without a formal education making decisions about this country. According to the congressional research service published in March 1, 2011, 26 members of the US house and 1 senator do not have an educational degree beyond high school diploma with no mention as to how many of them actually have a high school diploma.
Let’s now look at some of the icons of our times. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg achieved unparalleled success and are all college dropouts. However, they provided creative answers to the challenges of our times. They did it by being creative and not by being interested in acing their courses
The reason many people are wrong in assuming that grades, and therefore people’s high IQ, is a measurement of how smart someone might be can be found on a book written by Daniel Goleman titled, Emotional Intelligence; Why it Can Matter More than IQ. In it, he describes the factors that can make people with high IQ struggle with success while those with moderate IQ may be able to achieving it.
The secret is in our emotional makeup. In his book he describes how mastering self-awareness, self-discipline, confidence, and empathy can get you farther than a high IQ. There are other authors that have also written about this topic that drive home the same point. I just discussed the one by Daniel Goleman because it is the one that I read and that I am familiar with. I should also disclose here that I provided a link to the sale of the book by Amazon.com and that I am an affiliate for the site. However, any book that addresses the benefits of emotional intelligence and downplays the importance of acing exams and courses is on target. In essence, rather than focusing on people’s IQ, we should focus on the emotional quotient (EQ), which is a measurement of a person’s emotional intelligence, because it is a better measurement of success.
If you agree with this, you are up to speed on what success is all about and you may not even have to read the book. However, if you disagree, I suggest you read it and, by the time you finish reading it, I am confident that you will have changed your mind about what success is all about. This does not mean that a college education is not necessary. For example, if you are like me and you are interested in science or pharmacy, you need a college education not to become smarter on those areas but so that you can be up to speed on what is known so far about those subjects. This way you will not end up wasting time designing experiments to discover things that are already known. Then, if you are smart, you can design studies that can become landmarks that provide answers to challenging questions.
The bottom line is that if you are feeling down because you never finished high school or college or did poorly, be aware that statistics show that your odds of becoming successful, are actually better than those who did really well in school. The only thing that is holding you back is either your lack of confidence, self-awareness, discipline, or empathy.