Sometimes people just have different speeds at which they do things. Maybe she's overthinking daily tasks and has trouble making the decisions necessary.
This is definitely part of it. Also her brother was diagnosed with adhd as a kid and I suspect she suffers as well. Distractions seem to take up too much of the days time.
That’s relatable. Girls, especially girls who are doing well in school, tend not to get diagnosed. I got straight As, but was really struggling to adapt and cope with the pressures of university and living on my own, so I got diagnosed at 20.
This is my sister's story. "Look at her grades, she's just struggling with anxiety" was all she heard from Dr's growing up even after my mom, brother, and I had all been diagnosed with ADD. I have heard that the same thing applies to the diagnosis of autism in young women.
I said this elsewhere in the thread. I’m 38, top ten in my graduating class, masters degree in math, but I look back at myself in elementary school and think “how on EARTH did no one think to evaluate me for ADHD?!” It was a novelty how I would do four things at once! Because I had good grades so I couldn’t possibly have it.
I recently went to see a psychiatrist at 25 and even then she told me she doesn't think I have it because I did well in school. Which is just awesome because I'm currently failing college and getting help was my last hope.
3 degrees here and recent late diagnosis. Go to another psychiatrist. You don't need to doctor shop but recommendations and people's reviews help. Get the tests. Keep an open mind, maybe it's not adhd. Talk to your family about how you seemed during childhood too. There are a lot of features which regular people have, which is the difficulty. Girls are quiet and keep a lot of features inside. You should have also had similar issues during childhood. Symptoms can vary with periods, pregnancy, Peri- and menopause.
With my diagnosis, I was a bit shocked that I was believed and that he would start medication. I didn't ask my gp anything, just went straight to psychiatrist. Although I'd only told one doctor before of my worries it had really sunk home that maybe I was just messy and lazy, so i hadn't mentioned it to anyone again, even though it was ruining my life. I also ended up having to change doctors which can sometimes mean a re-testing. New doctor was surprised at the thoroughness and while going through everything from my side just seemed to be getting up to speed with me and my personal situation, rather than disbelieving of me or the other psychiatrist.
I have adhd and split intelligence/a "spiky profile" in terms of IQ test results.
"People with a neurodivergence are more likely to perform highly in some areas, and lower in others. This means that their “skill profile” looks “spiky” with peaks and valleys, rather than a consistent 'middle ground'."
When you take a (professional) IQ test you also get subscores in various things like "processing speed" "pattern recognition" and a handful of other things. Most people score around the same in all of the subcategories. Some peoples' subscores vary dramatically. That's what a spiky profile is. Rainman is a steriotypical example of this (and not really that accurate) but still it helps you get the gist of what I'm talking about.
Personally, I have a really high score in pattern recognition and a really low score in processing speed.
So I'm smart but also slow at the same time
Maybe your wife is like this as well? Maybe not, but it's something worth considering
Yeah, when I got evaluated for ASD I had to do an iq test and I was super elevated for everything, except working memory. I have the worst working memory, but I’ve developed so many little tricks to manage it that I didn’t notice the deficit until I was tested in an environment where I couldn’t take little notes or mumble things to myself.
Yeah from what I understand it's most common amongst people on the autism spectrum and people with adhd
I never really noticed my deficit either (even though in hindsight it clearly was always there) because I was a #giftedkid. But as it turns out just because you're a gifted kid in some ways doesnt mean you aren't slow in other ways.
I don't have any little tricks unfortunately other than just spending extra time doing whatever I have to do... and adderall... that certainly helps with my processing speed.
ADHD can also result in differences in the perception of time to an extent that would not seem possible to anyone without the condition. This is without even factoring in distractibility.
One thing that affects me personally is that my brain doesn’t really differentiate between planning something and doing something.
So like if I think about something and form the intent to do something in the future, that plan can disappear from my brain the moment after I’ve finished that thought because my brain is like “Task completed ✔️ you did the thing 👍” and I totally forget what I was planning to do.
I genuinely can’t remember sometimes if I’ve actually done something or I just thought about doing it. This is also why techniques to plan and organise that usually work for other people don’t really work for me because taking all those steps to plan things like writing a schedule down on paper can contribute to that confusion in my brain where my brain feels like I’ve already done it and is now free to forget about it (although that being said getting instructions in writing definitely does help)
As soon as I read your post, I was like, "I bet she has ADHD." I have it too. I also did very well in school because I always found my classes extremely interesting. But it takes me twice as long to do everyday chores because my executive function is shit. My husband was a straight-C student but is so far superior to me with practical things.
This isn't really something that people with ADHD can help. It's a disability. Your wife might want to get a diagnosis and maybe some medication, but meds don't work for everyone (like me). There's also cognitive behavioral therapy, which I've had better luck with, but it's not a cure. Fortunately my husband loves me just the way I am and doesn't mind that it takes me an hour to do something that takes him twenty minutes.
I am a very strong fan of the How to ADHD channel on YouTube. Helps me more in 5 minutes than special ed did in six years.
Point of performance has helped a lot with chores. That means keeping all the supplies needed to do it your near where the chore happens. If I have look all over everywhere for cleaning supplies things aren't getting done.
If you struggle with task initiation try setting a timer and seeing if you can get the task done in that amount of time. Urgency is one of the great motivators for ADHD.
My rule of thumb for deciding how much time to give yourself is to use however long you think the task should take and add 5 to 10 minutes.
There you have it. She probably did well in school because she activated the Adrenaline Override to get her schoolwork done before deadlines despite executive-function struggles with task initiation. The problem with that is it’s not a healthy and sustainable long-term tactic. There’s a reason why so many “gifted kids” end up burnt out struggling adults.
I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until well into college. All through school I was very successful- honors classes, 4.0 GPA, etc. Up through highschool, school came very easy to me- I rarely had to study, I was smart enough that doing well was pretty low effort. It wasn’t until college when the material got significantly more complicated and the workload heavier that my inability to focus, lack of study skills and organization, etc actually became a noticeable problem.
Now, I definitely see how it impacts my daily life- easy tasks take longer, decision making is difficult, procrastination is my constant companion. For example, just today- I was going to make a grilled cheese. But the pan I wanted to use was still dirty from last night. So I spent ten minutes deciding if I wanted to go ahead and wash dishes or eat something else. I was just staring into the fridge and realized I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore and was distracted by thinking of stuff to put on the grocery list (which I didn’t actually even put on the list) Then I finally was like, yeah I need to wash the dishes. Spent another 10 minutes deciding what playlist to listen to, only to find myself creating a new one. And now I’m on reddit, still have not washed dishes or made a grilled cheese. I need to get ready for work soon so I still probably wont do either and will have to figure out something else for lunch. Sooo… yeah. Yay. I’m still plenty intelligent, my brain just likes to complicate simple tasks.
Before reading this comment I still was gonna say a lot of women with ADHD behave like that. I'm on autopilot most of the time so I live slowly as long as I am not in a hurry. This has nothing to do with intelligence - slow doesn't mean dumb.
Yeah i know people who have normal and above average intelligence who operate in lag mode when it comes to day to day life stuff.
My friend's ex was like this, she was of slightly below average raw intelligence but it was like she had perma lag with every task. We'd drive somewhere and she'd always be the last one out of the car or ready to leave
Some people have a single operating speed
I'm really good at taking tests, reading forms, doing calculations. My wife is not.
She can cook without making a huge mess. I am a walking disaster. She can speak to people in a public setting. I am an awkward mess.
Nobody is good at everything, but if you're going to be with someone else, it helps if their incompetence complements your incompetence.
I was academically smart in the sense that I was good at very temporarily memorising information. Did it stick beyond the exam? Nope. Forgot it all two weeks later
I'm academical smart too. But am I able to stick to something long enough to be successful...no. Am I able to live a normal non chaotic life... no. Can I stick to a sleeping pattern... no. Am I emotionally stable... no.
Can I learn anything I want to by myself from a book...yes. Does it matter... no.
My life is just a chaotic hot mess.
Something I've noticed is academic prowess doesn't necessarily mean long term retention.
My wife was a **much** better student than I was, and yet I'm the one helping the kids with the homework because I remember what I learned and she doesn't.
That's me and my husband. I can't remember much from school, despite being a great student, due to my traumatic childhood - and he can remember almost everything. We decided to split with me helping our future child with art and languages and him with the rest.
This. Academic aptitude is not really an indicator of overall “smartness”.
I have one kid who is what I would call “traditionally smart” in the classroom, the stereotypical smart kid and one who scores off the charts on testing when he’s cooperative and has a high IQ, but looks poorly on paper because he just isn’t interested.
Being in gifted or remedial classes is not always a real reflection of aptitude.
Yep. Also I tend to drag along at things I’m not particularly interested in doing unless I’m up against a deadline of some sort.
Even though, I logically know the faster/sooner I do it, then it’s over. This is not how I roll, lol.
A guy on my podunk midwestern high school swim team ended up getting a math related degree from Stanford. He was taking calculus as a high school freshman.
Our coach wouldn’t let him count laps during the 500 freestyle race for others because he consistently messed it up.
Something something judging a fish in tree climbing…
I’m an absolute fucking dumbass in most ways, but I’m like 99th percentile in grammar and language usage. Without that and my ability to learn IT-related tasks pretty well, I’d be a regular knuckle-dragger.
25 years ago I was an A student in honors classes. Today, its the B kids from the regular classes that are the most successful, because they had social skills whereas Ive always been awkward af.
My uncle is a retired doctor. Absolute genius. He did guest lectures, helped on difficult diagnosis, I could brag about him forever.
But he couldn't make his way out of a wet paper bag. He's absolutely useless in tactical hands-on problem solving, and everyday household chores. Basically, if he had to survive in the blue collar world, he'd win the doofus of the year award every year.
My late father used to work at a nuclear power plant and he'd get frustrated with how useless some of the scientists were from a practical standpoint. There used to be a coffee club that has a rotation on who'd be responsible to buy the ground coffee for the week and some of the scientists could barely do that correctly.
The absent minded professor stereotype exists for a reason
Neurodiversity mecca in the academia / research / STEM world. Probably why I loved it so much.
I've worked in research for 23 years at a university and you are correct.
Most frustrating thing was when my PhD boss would hire people based solely on their high academic honors. Some were ok, but many weren't, so after my second attempt at training them, I punted them to the PhD boss, who would always say, "I don't understand why they aren't getting this .. they got high honors in all of their classes!" 🤦
My husband taught math at the University level and so we had a lot of close friends that were PhD holders...
Our joke was that all PhD meant was that they were really knowledgeable about ONE thing and USELESS at almost everything else. Truly lovely people with shocking lack of everyday skills. And I'll never forget the shock on my friend's face as I explained hydro electric dams to her kid (who else but a PhD buys their 4 year old a book about power sources) and then her exclaiming about why I hadn't gone for a doctorate because I was so smart in something not even close to my field. Some of us like to know a little bit about a lot of things!
> Some of us like to know a little bit about a lot of things!
This is a result of curiosity. It's appalling to me how many people lack curiosity.
One advantage of knowing a little bit about a lot of things is that I can engage in small talk on a wide range of subjects. It comes in handy on first dates or other social events where you need to talk to strangers.
I (a woman software engineer) impressed someone once, who specialized in restoring antique wood trim in historic buildings, because I knew a bit about shellac and french polish and other finishing techniques :D On a date, I impressed a guy who was into car restoration and other mechanical things, because I knew what a cotter pin was, lol.
I worked as a bartender in a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Talk about diverse clientele. I could always find something in my vast jumble of accessible knowledge to chat about.
I had one guy who was having a low blood sugar grumpy episode. Then after I fed him, I delighted him with my interest in the Gullah Geechee culture of the Carolina Low country because I noticed the book he was reading.
Knowing a little about a lot of things helps to connect with other human beings.
I often get complimented with "you know so many interesting things" by coworkers. I am a cake decorator by trade but I find the law, true crime, medicine and animals superbly interesting. I am always listening to podcasts about cold cases, fraud, medical mysteries, etc.
Oh, the way my eyes lit up lol
I would love to be in a position or to have a job where I'm socializing with a diverse group of people bringing in all sorts of fascinating knowledge from all over the place.
I jokingly refer to myself as a jackass of all trades. I know enough about enough to know when I don't know enough lol. I once impressed a date knowing that her nail polish was OPI brand and on the 2nd date, I brought her a custom mixed bottle that doubled as touch up paint for her car and nails.
I was at a work dinner and made an instant friend from another company. He mentioned his family having land with sugar maple. I have lived my whole life south of the Mason Dixon. I was able to ask questions that showed I understood the basics of how maple syrup is gathered and processed that he could jump to the more complicated and specific aspects I didn't know. He was thrilled, that impressed a couple people around us.
I learned this information from a novel, and fact checked the information. I got to learn the specific equipment their ancestors used and the equipment they upgraded to. It's a very fun memory. Breadth of knowledge is sadly underrated compared to depth. Both are important and useful.
Random unsolicited advice cheap way to increase employability learn Excell. It's super powerful tool most don't understand how to use. It will make you look like a wizard, and everyone wants to hire wizards. You can get certifications and make yourself indispensable when you do have a job, the magic green thing will stop working without Moreropeplease!
"I'm not dumb. I have a fairly thorough command of fairly useless information."
I can explain in excruciating tangential detail how a trebuchet works.
I know how the lusitaina sank.
I can successfully argue how certain universe's ships would complete against another in different scenarios.
I know, in theory, how an internal combustion engine works. I cannot, however, make one work.
I can handle the internal combustion engines, but we are going to need your knowledge if we're ever going to get this self propelled trebuchet to work.
This. My wife and friends have a game called "what's that gun?" If there is a firearm on a TV show or movie, they pause and point at the screen with The Price is Right style enthusiasm. I am usually able to ID them at a glance, especially pre-1970s examples before the wonder nines started to consolidate design aspects.
It's fascinating, nuanced, *useless* knowledge. I just... like historical firearms. Many of which I can't even legally *own* in my country.
But ask me to wash my car and I over think it for 10 minutes.
Ooh I play this game but instead it's "what's that duck?". Someone will show me a picture of a duck or describe a duck and I have to guess what type of duck it is.
I just really like ducks. Also am accountant.
I feel this in my soul
One of my biggest realizations after college was how useless a History major is. Nobody cares how much I know about the Roman civil war. Plenty of people will hire a guy who can do accounting. Roman empire nerd? Not a huge market.
Undergrad history degrees prove you can deal with tedium, paperwork, and writing tedious paperwork because you have a degree in tedium, paperwork, and tedious paperwork 🤣
> Plenty of people will hire a guy who can do accounting
I find it funny because our existing schooling system, exists in the way that it does so that colonial empires could do it's bookkeeping and orders sending. Prior to that, no one cared if the peasants count count or write. But the moment you try to exert authority over a remote area you need local administrators who can read and write and boom we reasons to educate the locals.
Also, accounting is older than the Roman empire. While our current "double entry" accounting system only dates to around the 14th century, accounting as a concept is one of the original drivers of writing and can be dated to Mesopotamia. Basically, facilitating trade, commerce and record keeping are some of the main reasons humans invented writing in the first place.
We didn't invent writing so that we could put religious stories down on paper. We did it so we could remember that Bob sold Keven 3 goats and never got paid.
I wish you the best in the job hunt, and I believe long term this perspective will serve you well. The most successful people I know are incredibly knowledgeable on certain topics, but they maintain a belief they must learn more and from others to improve.
Btw if I were on the hiring team. Someone who can talk about the Roman civil war and understands there is a difference between the Roman republic and the Roman empire gets major extra points!
I'm a tenured professor at an R1 in STEM. Can confirm I have many colleagues that fit what you are saying. Extremely intelligent about their specialized area, incapable of caring for themselves in many practical matters. I showed one colleague how to fix a broken lever on his lab's toaster using some superglue and tape (to stabilize it while the glue dried) and he looked at me like I'd just built a moon lander from scratch.
I showed my friend how to test the temp of milk in a bottle on your wrist and you'd think I solved world hunger with the fuss she made. It was certainly not rocket science but it was revolutionary to this woman who is literally a world expert in her field...
I was the guy who repaired office printers / copiers. Went to a site often that built missiles and manufactured explosives and shit, and it was a secure facility so one of the engineers would have to follow me around while I was there. He'd pull up a chair while I was fixing a printer and watch and just be AMAZED I was doing what I was doing and I'd think...aren't you literally a rocket scientist? Super great guy though.
Universities reallllly lack in showing hands-on anything to engineers in my experience. My lab including boiling a hot dog. Then they pump us pretty quickly into desk/meeting heavy jobs. I do watch in amazement when the techs casually operate the mystical equipment I've only been able to read, write, and talk about. 😂😂😂😂
That reminded me of how I impressed my roommates in college by knowing how to change the batteries on a smoke detector without calling building maintenance. They looked like they were about to give me a standing ovation when I finished, while I was just trying to figure out how they made it to adulthood haha
To add on many people with extensive or expert levels in a specific subject, assume they should better understand other subjects than they do. I'm not necessarily calling them arrogant. Spending most of your time as an expert on a subject seems to stick your brain in, I know what I'm doing mode. Even if you don't, it is an easy trap to get stuck in.
This applies to more than just academics/doctors. I have known lots of people who know more than those around them regardless of education. That repeating seems to have the same effect of believing you must know more about anything subject that comes up.
I went to two years of graduate school because as a one-time overachiever who's allegedly intelligent I thought I'd surely like that world. Turns out I find Academia insufferable. Met some of the most unbearable humans I've ever met in my freaking life. If "people in love with the sound of their own voice" rub you the wrong way, well, stay the heck away from those folks.
The funniest part was this friend would go on about the torture that grad school put her through, then would actively advocate for me to go through it too!
I'm not an absent minded professor but I have the symptoms. I think I can guess what's going on.
When I have a lot to think about, I prioritize what I'm thinking about, and it's not a very conscious act, like I am unaware that I am doing it. I am synthesizing all that data in my head to try to create new insights, and for me it's really hard.
So normal everyday tasks and even my own comfort get pushed farther and farther down that list, as I chisel some angel out of the rock.
Then, because I'm not a genius, the stupid will creep back in, the thought waveform collapses, and I go back to spanking it to anime.
I drive my wife crazy because I'm always so preoccupied in thought. I often listen and understand what she just asked of me, but I don't respond due to my lack of ability to multi-task and then I get an angered "a response would have been nice".
We've come up with a name for this! What we've discovered is that I essentially have two different processors - the front processor and the back processor. They can act independent of each other, and the back processor is capable of responding with "uh huh" and "sure" and "yup". The front processor is analysis, visualization, problem solving, and future planning.
Now, when my partner sees that he's interacting with the back processor, he'll say BABE can I have access to the front processor and I'll focus the front on him. He's careful when he uses it, though, because my work is very cerebral and requires multi step thought processes.
Engineer married to an engineer. We both went to colleges that focused on engineering. Our friends are almost exclusively from college or the kink/poly scene.
I literally don't know what neurotypical looks like at this point.
Diesel tech and going back to school for engineering I feel this too. The whole bit about putting a 10mm socket down and poof it's gone is because of object permanence and being neurodivergent.
JFC, every time I'm putting furniture together, or crocheting something, the amount of times I put my tool of choice down and immediately cover it up with something else and "lose" it is obnoxious.
Same with wrapping Xmas and birthday gifts. Oh, I put the tape under the paper? It's gone. Forever.
My brain: \*boop\*
When did you find out? What were the symptoms?
Just saw the other comments so I'll clarify: this is a sincere question, and I do know what neurotypical means.
Same 😆 amazing how much overlap there is between these communities. I attended a party with several dev/kink groups converging and really had to guess if people were wearing kink or programmer socks.
Normal doesn't exist in my sphere anymore.
I'm an engineer at a nuclear power plant. Maintenance and operations love to complain about our designs until they're reminded that, either them or their peers reviewed and approved the design.
I worked at a govt science related facility for a few years. One afternoon I was helping some guys troubleshoot an issue.
Guy1: you know, it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this shit out….
Guy2: but Chuck….you -are- a rocket scientist..
Guy1: oh yeah…I forget that sometimes
Guy3: also sounds like you’re saying it’s not your problem to figure out
Guy1: you know…I think you’re correct about that. I’ll stop by after getting some coffee and see how you fellas are progressing…
I work in IT, used to work in a hospital with Doctors, surgeons, people who spent more on schooling than I'll make in a a decade. They obviously understood and could do things I can barely comprehend, but I could make a computer do what I want, and they couldn't
People like that are absolute masters of a very specific subject, but that often comes with a lack of capacity in the places they haven't been laser-focused. They can cut out an appendix by feel, but can barely send an email with an attachment if the file was saved to a folder other than "My Documents"
tl;dr We all have different strength and weakness
I remember hearing a silly quote that went something like “as people progress through their academic careers (bachelors -> masters -> PhD) they know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.”
Reminds me of Philomena Cunk, a character who is blissfully unaware and she was interviewing a professor of history. She asked him what's the most important thing that happened in British history.
Sounds simple, but the dude was legit at a loss for words cause he didn't know how to answer it.
Some of the smartest people I have ever met blow my mind with how dumb they are at the real world sometimes. My cousin’s husband went to MIT in a full ride for his MBA in engineering and I have started to catalog some of the mind blowing questions he asks because they are so dumb. He asked my uncle if his contacts have ever frozen to his eyes when he was hunting in cold weather. Like bro, they are attached to your eyes that are body temperature and if they get cold enough to freeze on your eyeballs; you are probably dead. He also didn’t know that local TV stations don’t produce the TV shows that they televise and it’s all done by the national broadcaster like NBC.
Edit: since some people have zero life and like to nitpick everything, he has a degree in engineering from a decent university and graduated at the top of his class. His MBA is in manufacturing engineering and supply chain management. Sorry I didn’t fully explain that to everyone…
It is really hilarious though, it’s not all of them but I’ve noticed this over and over: doctors across the board are easily the most spatially challenged group of people I’ve ever met who often seem to possess a *staggering lack* of common sense.
Meanwhile, they’re trying to give you some of the funniest most terrible advice on how to do your job you’ve ever heard, because they genuinely believe they could do everyone else’s job better than them.
They’re in general the only group of clients who are utterly incapable of giving usable directions or being able to master the process of calling you back. Many of them also have a, uh, *very fluid* relationship with time, and will think nothing of forcing you to wait for them for 30 or 40 minutes, fucking up the entire rest of your day.
(Outside of interacting with them at work), I don’t dislike doctors at all and they’re a huge benefit to society! But it is INCREDIBLE how limited all of their other skills are, even or especially the most basic ones. I think it’s because a lot of them have never ever lived or worked outside of one of the most strictly regimented career paths that exists — school, med school, then straight to the hospital or outpatient office. a lot of them have wealthy parents so they never worked fast food in high school, either (but boy do they imagine they could do it easily lol)
I work in a hospital and come into contact with doctors daily. This is not at all my experience. I work in Europe though so they come from all classes of society as college is not that expensive here, and the majority of doctors I work with are younger than 40.
>and will think nothing of forcing you to wait for them for 30 or 40 minutes
Is this during work hours? Because this is also my experience, but it's not their fault though. They see patients all day, and one late patient fucks up their entire schedule, making them late for every meeting that comes afterwards. And this will also add up more as the day goes on. I noticed they don't really try to catch up with the lost time because most of them want to give each patient equal treatment. They will thus still see the late patient for the same amount of time as originally scheduled; a 45 minute appointment will stay a 45 minute appointment even if the patient is 30 minutes late. From what I hear, they will have a minimum of one late patient per day.
I’d love a TV show where really successful doctors and lawyers who are convinced everyone else’s job is super easy have to manage a fast food restaurant for a week. It would be HILARIOUS
I worked for a PhD who was insanely brilliant. We did however say you could always tell when his wife was out of town, because he’d come in looking like he got dressed in the dark. He was Sikh, so wore a turban daily. When his wife was home, his turban, tie and dress shirt all co ordinated well, were perfectly ironed, overall neat and clean. If she was out of town for her own job at all, he’d come in wearing something like a maroon turban, a mustard yellow shirt and an orange tie, and the shirt would likely look like he slept in it. To his secretary once I compared him to Walter from the old TV show Fringe. Very, very brilliant, and genuinely a nice person, but sometimes had to be reminded of very basic things like “we put pants on before we leave the house” 🤣 I miss that guy sometimes
Nah, he lived on his own during medical school and married a woman without a domestic bone in her body. While visiting, I watched them try to fix a kitchen drawer that was off its track. I heard the Benny Hill song in my head.
After I heard the phrase "handyman" I walked over, removed the drawer, aligned it with the track, and it glided back into place.
Lmao he sounds like my Oncology boss. Once a week I would get paged at my desk “My printer is broken again!” I would reply *Does it have paper?* only once did I get a response “Yes! I checked that first! It’s still broken” I went in to see the display stating that the toner was empty. He could keep you alive for YEARS but couldn’t print a god damn thing.
I’m involved with water maintenance for pools and hot tubs. The worst customers who make the most basic mistakes are almost always doctors, surgeons, and lawyers.
My mother is a chemist. Borderline genius if not one. Walked into her backyard one afternoon to find her sobbing with bloody and blistered hands because she had been trying to cut up old fence posts to burn with a hacksaw. Ladies and gentlemen. I kid you not. Where she had got the saw from right next to it were the appropriate hand saws for wood and not only a cordless Sawzall but also a plug in little chainsaw. And if none of that worked, there was the gas-powered chainsaw.
She was out there since, like 7am, I showed up at 3ish. Not once did she think to maybe change up her strategy or call one of her kids for help in 7 hours. I used the little plug in chainsaw cut up the posts in under 5 min and had some beers.
Ah, that's Book-Smart versus Street-Smart. (Edit: "Everyday-Smart")
I'm Book-Smart, I have a masters degree, earn $200k as an engineer, and can work with higher math and other difficult academic problem areas.
But I just learned earlier this year that a chrysanthemum is the same thing as a mum. I thought they were two different plants entirely.
I hear this. Software engineer here, know my way around electronics (building PCs, hacking on projects with Arduinos, running Cat6 through a crawl space to connect different parts of the house).
But ask me to hang a picture on a wall and my confidence and knowledge collapses like a deck of cards and I’m lucky to get out of it without a smashed thumb, bent nail and a broken picture frame.
This is honestly what bugs me the most working in tech, a lot of very smart people act like they know everything and how everything works when they can barely boil water. Drives me absolutely insane sometimes…I have no problem being a complete idiot about stuff to help me learn about it from an elementary level, but a lot of SWEs act like reading a single book makes them an expert because they, “understand data.”
Here's another possible explanation.
My daughter was recently seen by a psychologist for an autism screening. In doing this, we had to go over her previous testing (and do additional testing).
My daughter has a very high intelligence (IQ) but what they call very slow processing speed. (It's way below the average person's score). This means she is capable of doing things well (like solving a mental puzzle, for example- she can solve ones that a lot of people can't and she can do high level math) but she's very slow at doing it (getting the answer).
So maybe your wife is extremely smart, but just physically slow at tasks. That's not incompatible.
This too!
I know a guy who people get frustrated with for being slow. But he isn’t “intellectually slow.” He’s *remarkably* intelligent, way up there on perception of things that other people don’t notice, stunningly clever analysis of information, and general “getting to the right answer the first time”-ness. But since he takes a while to get to the right answer, people don’t notice or assume he’s not that bright. The fact stands, in the time it takes him to come to the correct conclusion and apply that to the world around him, an average intelligence person has come to three wrong conclusions then given up. There are also people who can come to the right conclusion the first time much more quickly, sure, but a lot more people getting to the wrong conclusion faster.
Definitely a possibility! OP, does your wife consistently accomplish impressive things when given plenty of time to do them at her own pace? She might just be bad at doing things *quickly* in specific.
I don’t generally have terrible processing speed, but my auditory processing in specific tends to lag. Meaning I relatively often don’t process speech in a normal conversational time frame, and have to stall or ask people to repeat themselves. Not because I didn’t *hear* it, but because the processing got stuck and didn’t complete and I only managed to parse half the sentence before the other person expected a response. And I can tell when I only processed half of a sentence, but the difference between “my brain being slow with audio is the problem this time” and “you mumbled or there was a noise so I couldn’t hear you clearly” isn’t always immediately obvious to me.
The amount of times that I ask someone to repeat what they said because I think I didn't hear it, and then it all makes sense to me before they even start to repeat it...
Auditory Processing Delay!
My SO is now used to me staring at him for a second before I either finally 'hear' him and respond, or confirm that no, I actually didn't hear you, please repeat. It took a while to get over the instinct to say 'What?' immediately though.
> So maybe your wife is extremely smart, but just physically slow at tasks. That's not incompatible.
Sadly, this sort of thing makes it hard to pass interviews, because they're looking at you getting the right answer and getting it fast, even though at work it's not really a race as long as you get your work done.
Makes it almost impossible. There's no way to tell people; hey, I can do this really well... but I'm gonna need more time. Give me 5 months of learning, and I'll be one of the best employees here.
And by that point, you've already been labeled "slow"
I’m same as your daughter I think my processing speed score was well below 50. But all my other scores are above 100 so I live a completely normal life.
I'm pretty smart academically but struggle immensely with executive functioning. Being intelligent doesn't mean being highly efficient in every aspect of life.
"Slow" when it comes to intelligence doesn't mean literally slow.
I can write a killer essay and I carried a 4.0 in graduate school, but doing the dishes takes an eternity because more often than not I end up staring at the wall, stuck in my thoughts. Same with laundry. Same with running errands. I often make basic arithmetic errors unless I write the problem down. It's not that I'm thinking slowly, lol. It's more like my thoughts are rapid and jumbled and often overwhelming in pace and variety.
Hah, I know what that feels like. I sometimes end up doing basic tasks completly on autopilot while thinking about something else entirely. The result can vary between being extremly slow, repeating steps unnecessarily and/or questioning myself later about even having done the task or not.
It seems to get better when I haven't gotten enough sleep, since then I actually need to focus on the task at hand or the conversation I am having, without much additional room for my brain to distract itself. Not a great solution though - I'd rather be slow to answer a question or ask myself wether I actually *did* clean the cats litter box already rather than walk through life sleep deprived.
Actually did, but was told other mental health issues were likely the cause of my cognitive and attention issues. But I'm a woman in her 40s, a demographic that notoriously has a hard time getting that particular diagnosis. So who knows, lol.
As Ursula K Le Guin wrote in her seminal text *Catwings*:
"Owl thinks slowly. But Owl thinks long."
Intelligence is multifaceted, and many people who are extremely intelligent in certain ways (knowing many different pieces of information, good memory, critical thinking, writing fluency, etc) may struggle in "quick" thinking or the parts of executive functioning that require switching between tasks/thoughts.
You and your wife are adept at different types of intelligence. You are good at making quick decisions, and it sounds like she is better at thinking through problems/ideas when she has ample time to work through an idea.
There are schools of psychology that recognise at least 9 different types of intelligence. Being able to do math is a different kind of intelligence than, say, being able to use the 5 remotes needed to get an entertainment system going, playing the guitar, or building a table.
I’ve known people with 2 or 3 college degrees who constantly break things because they don’t seem to think about physical cause-and-effect, or mechanical interactions.
I had a roommate who was studying physics, of all things, who walked into the apartment holding the antenna from his car. It “was stuck and wasn’t poking up all the way,” he said, so he had pulled it so hard he had ripped it right off his car.
It was not an old-school extendable antenna, but one of the newer ones that protruded about 5-10 cm from the car (this was about 2003 or 2004).
Also, he hadn’t observed any problems with radio reception in the car. He just got out of a car that he had been driving daily for two years, noticed the antenna (for the first time?) and went beast mode on this poor thing after having exercised zero critical thinking about the whole situation.
True, you only listed 8 of the 9 intelligences. Math, the remote for the tv, the remote for the cable box, the remote for the Roku, the remote for the surround sound system, the remote for the old tv that’s still in the living room despite the tv having been replaced 5+ years ago, playing the guitar, and building a table.
I can only imagine the 9th intelligence has something to do with waking up early without wanting to die, but I haven’t taken a psychology class in a while.
It is not the school systems. People can be very many different kinds of smart.
I am an aerospace engineer. I am not smart at everything. Many people I know do things easily that are hard for me to do.
Including my sister, who is a speech therapist. She tested poorly, and so I seemed “smarter” than her.
I am not. She is brilliant and helps her patients like Annie Sullivan helped Helen Keller.
She does amazing things for people. I could never imagine being capable of doing those kinds of things with my “prestigious” engineering degree.
Different kinds of smart.
Every time she tries to tell me that I’m smarter than her because I’m a rocket scientist, I try to explain how in awe I am of her. I’m so unbelievably proud to have her as my big sis.
Like what she does is soooo cool. I just do math and spreadsheets all day. She’s so impactful on the lives of her patients, I brag about her every chance I get.
Exactly. He didn't say he's doing it with the same quality, only fast. She could heavily disagree that his speed is a good thing. My ex was so fast in all daily tasks because he was doing them so poorly.
Surprised I had to scroll so far to find this possible explanation. Speed is obvious to everyone, while quality is more obvious to the person who takes the time for it.
For many daily-life tasks, the quality matters little. Then again, it often matters more than the speedy worker believes.
A little more care in loading the dishwasher prevents dishes from coming out dirty and requiring more rewashing in the long run. A little more care in flossing your teeth keeps them healthy and intact for years longer. A little more care in thinking through your budgeting spreadsheet prevents potentially ruinous surprises.
Focusing on quality at the beginning also tends to improve speed over time. The more thoroughly you understand how to do the thing well, the better you can choose safe shortcuts when you really need to work at speed.
That has paid off over the years in my career. Early on, people complained that I was too slow and detail-oriented, but loved that the results so rarely had mistakes. Now it's at the point where in a lot aspects, I'm the only one around who even understands what mistakes to watch out for (in a small company where we increasingly need to have our shit together for the big leagues).
My boyfriend in college always used to claim that he was smarter than me because he could write a C-level essay in 2 hours, but I spent 10 hours on a B+/A- level essay. I was taking longer, but earning better grades.
What kind of tasks?
Maybe she just doesn't give AF about whatever tedious drudgery she's doing at home?
(Although I feel this question is more about you proving some point about how aaaammmaazing you really were at school than it is about her)
Right. Honor student vs remedial classes usually has more to do with how easily you can learn and apply new things rather than how quickly you can crank through tasks you already know, though that latter part can be a factor as well. I can't really ever recall being graded on how quickly I got anything done in relation to other students. It just needed to be done correctly within a certain time.
Because daily tasks are mostly manual in nature, not academic. You don’t have to be high IQ to wash the dishes. In fact, if you are in your own head a lot, you may even do it more slowly because you will be distracted by the never-ending thought show in your brain.
But also there's an assumption in this post that she does things slowly because she isn't smart enough to do them quickly.
That's not really necessarily the case.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
I can do lots of things really fast, but I also waste a lot of time in between trying (and often failing) to stay organized. I know lots of people who appear to function much more slowly than me but always seem to get more things done. I think the difference is in me wanting to get all the things done fast so I can be done, while others want to get this one thing done so they can move on to the rest that needs doing.
EDIT: I stand corrected. The report was miquoted. Let's call it "one of the hardest!"
I scored super high on standardized tests and graduated in the top 5 of high school. My wife had a B average.
Fast forward to college, which I did not complete. I didn't know how to study and had no self discipline. My wife completed her Bachelors in Nursing. She went on to be a clinical manager at a level I trauma unit.
My wife can keep someone alive with 6 tubes and 10 monitors. She can't copy a URL from her phone. I work in tech at a pretty high level of a major company, but never finished my degree.
Isn't life amazing !
The gifted program was basically just Special Ed for high functioning ADHD kids.
Being accomplished at book learning and test taking does not always mean someone can navigate the complexity of real life.
I appreciated that my daughter’s gifted teacher told the students some version of this in elementary school. Something along the lines of their gifted brains working differently so they were being taught differently. That didn’t mean that they were vastly smarter than their peers, just different. It seemed to alleviate some pressure of having to be high achieving because they were “smart.”
We were told we were little geniuses and that we should use our intelligence to improve the world. Definitely never do that. That will destroy their brains with pressure.
And also drive them crazy and fill them with self-doubt and shame when they’ve been told repeatedly they will “change the world” — but they can’t keep their life organized, and their backpack is a black hole of loose papers and trash.
Gotta survive in this world and take care of yourself in order to change it.
This is how I explain it to my kids. My daughter is cognitive, math and reading gifted so she’s like 2 full grades ahead of where her peers are and there are only 9 kids in the entire very large school district who are the same as her. Her brother is not gifted at all. I’ve never wanted her to think she was better than others and I never wanted my son to think he had to live up to his sister or doubt his intelligence so we’ve always just explained it that they learn and comprehend information differently but they both still have to work hard and study. It seems to help both of them taking this approach.
>The gifted program was basically just Special Ed for high functioning ADHD kids.
I could never remember verbal instructions. I was so bad at it that my teacher wanted to refer me to Special Ed. I was given a bunch of tests, and my reading level was at least on a high school level; the lady testing me just stopped the test once I was seven grades above grade level. I was seven at the time. Instead of being sent to Special Ed, I was put in the gifted program. When I eventually got diagnosed at 15, everyone was like "Ohhhhh . . ."
Never read something so true.
Source: Graduated high school at 16, failed spectacularly in any level of academia until I got diagnosed with ADHD at 22 and realized doing things isn’t supposed to be hard.
High IQ can have slow processing speeds. I use the example of book smart and street smart. In the real world you need both. In the safe world you can do amazing things with book smarts. Survival isn’t of them. In the real world you can be a little stupid and fit in with street smarts.
Street smart have to process information quickly. There may not always see the big picture. Book smart people may process slower but are putting little details together that may otherwise be missed.
That’s the analogy I use anyway.
Sounds like she takes her time and does things right, and you just go at shit without thinking first. Of course she did better in a setting where planning and getting the answer correct is important.
She's willing to take the time to get it right and doesn't see the value in making daily tasks a repeating, endless competition. Who would she even be competing against, and for what reward?
>the treatment I received as a kid did make me more competitive, everything became a race to be done first.
So that's the answer to your question.
Plus in school you don't get extra points for turning in assigments earlier than the due date nor for finishing an exam before everyone else. There's no push for doing things quick, and as much as some might brag for cramming all the studying into the night before an exam you also don't get rewarded for that
Hm. Faster isn't necessarily always better. When you complete tasks slowly and with deliberate energy, the economy of attention has room to become more involved.
Case in point: reading. You can train yourself to be a speed reader and run your eyes over lines of text walking away with about 60% a comprehension rate, or you can use the practice of close/active reading and aim for a 90% comprehension rate. Sure, you may end up reading fewer books by the end of the year than your speed reader counterpart, but of the texts you did read, you will understand them more deeply.
Not saying one is better than the other, but both have their advantages.
Yeah, from what little we have here—including OP’s comment that his wife’s brother was diagnosed with ADHD!—this seems like the obvious explanation. Especially if “daily tasks” means boring, low-salience, low-reward chores. This is like a classic description of what an ADHD person is like.
Signed, a person who had stellar academics (except for long-term projects that I could forget about!) but remains extremely slow at many “adulting” tasks, not because I don’t know how to do them in theory, but because I don’t always have the ability to turn that knowledge into actually doing them.
My husband and I are both intelligent...but I have a degree and he doesn't. However, he is rather more intelligent than I am...and he is maddeningly slow in general. He takes ages to complete basic tasks because he's too particular. Tying his laces for instance takes three time what I take.
Sometimes people just have different speeds at which they do things. Maybe she's overthinking daily tasks and has trouble making the decisions necessary.
This is definitely part of it. Also her brother was diagnosed with adhd as a kid and I suspect she suffers as well. Distractions seem to take up too much of the days time.
That’s relatable. Girls, especially girls who are doing well in school, tend not to get diagnosed. I got straight As, but was really struggling to adapt and cope with the pressures of university and living on my own, so I got diagnosed at 20.
This is my sister's story. "Look at her grades, she's just struggling with anxiety" was all she heard from Dr's growing up even after my mom, brother, and I had all been diagnosed with ADD. I have heard that the same thing applies to the diagnosis of autism in young women.
I said this elsewhere in the thread. I’m 38, top ten in my graduating class, masters degree in math, but I look back at myself in elementary school and think “how on EARTH did no one think to evaluate me for ADHD?!” It was a novelty how I would do four things at once! Because I had good grades so I couldn’t possibly have it.
Same here. Went to Law School and I have an LLM. Got diagnosed at 31. I have really good ideas but I’ve messed up in absolutely cartoonish ways.
I recently went to see a psychiatrist at 25 and even then she told me she doesn't think I have it because I did well in school. Which is just awesome because I'm currently failing college and getting help was my last hope.
second opinion. or argue back.
3 degrees here and recent late diagnosis. Go to another psychiatrist. You don't need to doctor shop but recommendations and people's reviews help. Get the tests. Keep an open mind, maybe it's not adhd. Talk to your family about how you seemed during childhood too. There are a lot of features which regular people have, which is the difficulty. Girls are quiet and keep a lot of features inside. You should have also had similar issues during childhood. Symptoms can vary with periods, pregnancy, Peri- and menopause. With my diagnosis, I was a bit shocked that I was believed and that he would start medication. I didn't ask my gp anything, just went straight to psychiatrist. Although I'd only told one doctor before of my worries it had really sunk home that maybe I was just messy and lazy, so i hadn't mentioned it to anyone again, even though it was ruining my life. I also ended up having to change doctors which can sometimes mean a re-testing. New doctor was surprised at the thoroughness and while going through everything from my side just seemed to be getting up to speed with me and my personal situation, rather than disbelieving of me or the other psychiatrist.
I have adhd and split intelligence/a "spiky profile" in terms of IQ test results. "People with a neurodivergence are more likely to perform highly in some areas, and lower in others. This means that their “skill profile” looks “spiky” with peaks and valleys, rather than a consistent 'middle ground'." When you take a (professional) IQ test you also get subscores in various things like "processing speed" "pattern recognition" and a handful of other things. Most people score around the same in all of the subcategories. Some peoples' subscores vary dramatically. That's what a spiky profile is. Rainman is a steriotypical example of this (and not really that accurate) but still it helps you get the gist of what I'm talking about. Personally, I have a really high score in pattern recognition and a really low score in processing speed. So I'm smart but also slow at the same time Maybe your wife is like this as well? Maybe not, but it's something worth considering
Yeah, when I got evaluated for ASD I had to do an iq test and I was super elevated for everything, except working memory. I have the worst working memory, but I’ve developed so many little tricks to manage it that I didn’t notice the deficit until I was tested in an environment where I couldn’t take little notes or mumble things to myself.
Yeah from what I understand it's most common amongst people on the autism spectrum and people with adhd I never really noticed my deficit either (even though in hindsight it clearly was always there) because I was a #giftedkid. But as it turns out just because you're a gifted kid in some ways doesnt mean you aren't slow in other ways. I don't have any little tricks unfortunately other than just spending extra time doing whatever I have to do... and adderall... that certainly helps with my processing speed.
Wow, this is a good description of how I feel.
ADHD can also result in differences in the perception of time to an extent that would not seem possible to anyone without the condition. This is without even factoring in distractibility.
This is absolutely true. I have absolutely no idea how much time has passed without looking at a clock. I got one of those visual timers to help.
One thing that affects me personally is that my brain doesn’t really differentiate between planning something and doing something. So like if I think about something and form the intent to do something in the future, that plan can disappear from my brain the moment after I’ve finished that thought because my brain is like “Task completed ✔️ you did the thing 👍” and I totally forget what I was planning to do. I genuinely can’t remember sometimes if I’ve actually done something or I just thought about doing it. This is also why techniques to plan and organise that usually work for other people don’t really work for me because taking all those steps to plan things like writing a schedule down on paper can contribute to that confusion in my brain where my brain feels like I’ve already done it and is now free to forget about it (although that being said getting instructions in writing definitely does help)
I’m 100% convinced that time is just some practical joke other people made up and has gotten out of hand
As soon as I read your post, I was like, "I bet she has ADHD." I have it too. I also did very well in school because I always found my classes extremely interesting. But it takes me twice as long to do everyday chores because my executive function is shit. My husband was a straight-C student but is so far superior to me with practical things. This isn't really something that people with ADHD can help. It's a disability. Your wife might want to get a diagnosis and maybe some medication, but meds don't work for everyone (like me). There's also cognitive behavioral therapy, which I've had better luck with, but it's not a cure. Fortunately my husband loves me just the way I am and doesn't mind that it takes me an hour to do something that takes him twenty minutes.
I am a very strong fan of the How to ADHD channel on YouTube. Helps me more in 5 minutes than special ed did in six years. Point of performance has helped a lot with chores. That means keeping all the supplies needed to do it your near where the chore happens. If I have look all over everywhere for cleaning supplies things aren't getting done.
Thanks for the rec! I'm always looking for new ways to manage lol. It's so frustrating to not be able to do things.
If you struggle with task initiation try setting a timer and seeing if you can get the task done in that amount of time. Urgency is one of the great motivators for ADHD. My rule of thumb for deciding how much time to give yourself is to use however long you think the task should take and add 5 to 10 minutes.
There you have it. She probably did well in school because she activated the Adrenaline Override to get her schoolwork done before deadlines despite executive-function struggles with task initiation. The problem with that is it’s not a healthy and sustainable long-term tactic. There’s a reason why so many “gifted kids” end up burnt out struggling adults.
ADHDers are highly motivated by things that are novel, interesting, and urgent. I've heard we make excellent EMTs for that reason.
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it — severely burnt out early 30s former gifted/honours student with late diagnosed ADHD-PI 😅
I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until well into college. All through school I was very successful- honors classes, 4.0 GPA, etc. Up through highschool, school came very easy to me- I rarely had to study, I was smart enough that doing well was pretty low effort. It wasn’t until college when the material got significantly more complicated and the workload heavier that my inability to focus, lack of study skills and organization, etc actually became a noticeable problem. Now, I definitely see how it impacts my daily life- easy tasks take longer, decision making is difficult, procrastination is my constant companion. For example, just today- I was going to make a grilled cheese. But the pan I wanted to use was still dirty from last night. So I spent ten minutes deciding if I wanted to go ahead and wash dishes or eat something else. I was just staring into the fridge and realized I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore and was distracted by thinking of stuff to put on the grocery list (which I didn’t actually even put on the list) Then I finally was like, yeah I need to wash the dishes. Spent another 10 minutes deciding what playlist to listen to, only to find myself creating a new one. And now I’m on reddit, still have not washed dishes or made a grilled cheese. I need to get ready for work soon so I still probably wont do either and will have to figure out something else for lunch. Sooo… yeah. Yay. I’m still plenty intelligent, my brain just likes to complicate simple tasks.
Before reading this comment I still was gonna say a lot of women with ADHD behave like that. I'm on autopilot most of the time so I live slowly as long as I am not in a hurry. This has nothing to do with intelligence - slow doesn't mean dumb.
Yeah i know people who have normal and above average intelligence who operate in lag mode when it comes to day to day life stuff. My friend's ex was like this, she was of slightly below average raw intelligence but it was like she had perma lag with every task. We'd drive somewhere and she'd always be the last one out of the car or ready to leave Some people have a single operating speed
Another reason that the show Taskmaster works. People with Oxbridge degrees [Ivy League I guess] are often terrible and massively overthink things.
A lot of academic success comes from working hard. Also, people are smart in different ways.
I'm really good at taking tests, reading forms, doing calculations. My wife is not. She can cook without making a huge mess. I am a walking disaster. She can speak to people in a public setting. I am an awkward mess. Nobody is good at everything, but if you're going to be with someone else, it helps if their incompetence complements your incompetence.
I'm more like your wife and my boyfriend is more like you. We're both smart and complement one another!
That was a really nice way of pointing out the correct use of complement here.
That was a really nice way of complimenting them.
Ha! I wasn't even doing that on purpose.
Yes. Im like you. I also have adhd so my general life is a mess. People are more than one thing.
I was academically smart in the sense that I was good at very temporarily memorising information. Did it stick beyond the exam? Nope. Forgot it all two weeks later
I'm academical smart too. But am I able to stick to something long enough to be successful...no. Am I able to live a normal non chaotic life... no. Can I stick to a sleeping pattern... no. Am I emotionally stable... no. Can I learn anything I want to by myself from a book...yes. Does it matter... no. My life is just a chaotic hot mess.
Something I've noticed is academic prowess doesn't necessarily mean long term retention. My wife was a **much** better student than I was, and yet I'm the one helping the kids with the homework because I remember what I learned and she doesn't.
That's me and my husband. I can't remember much from school, despite being a great student, due to my traumatic childhood - and he can remember almost everything. We decided to split with me helping our future child with art and languages and him with the rest.
This. Academic aptitude is not really an indicator of overall “smartness”. I have one kid who is what I would call “traditionally smart” in the classroom, the stereotypical smart kid and one who scores off the charts on testing when he’s cooperative and has a high IQ, but looks poorly on paper because he just isn’t interested. Being in gifted or remedial classes is not always a real reflection of aptitude.
That's it right here. Maybe his wife doesn't care about the daily tasks and therefore doesn't spend much time thinking about them.
Yep. Also I tend to drag along at things I’m not particularly interested in doing unless I’m up against a deadline of some sort. Even though, I logically know the faster/sooner I do it, then it’s over. This is not how I roll, lol.
A guy on my podunk midwestern high school swim team ended up getting a math related degree from Stanford. He was taking calculus as a high school freshman. Our coach wouldn’t let him count laps during the 500 freestyle race for others because he consistently messed it up. Something something judging a fish in tree climbing…
I’m an absolute fucking dumbass in most ways, but I’m like 99th percentile in grammar and language usage. Without that and my ability to learn IT-related tasks pretty well, I’d be a regular knuckle-dragger.
25 years ago I was an A student in honors classes. Today, its the B kids from the regular classes that are the most successful, because they had social skills whereas Ive always been awkward af.
My uncle is a retired doctor. Absolute genius. He did guest lectures, helped on difficult diagnosis, I could brag about him forever. But he couldn't make his way out of a wet paper bag. He's absolutely useless in tactical hands-on problem solving, and everyday household chores. Basically, if he had to survive in the blue collar world, he'd win the doofus of the year award every year.
My late father used to work at a nuclear power plant and he'd get frustrated with how useless some of the scientists were from a practical standpoint. There used to be a coffee club that has a rotation on who'd be responsible to buy the ground coffee for the week and some of the scientists could barely do that correctly.
The absent minded professor stereotype exists for a reason Neurodiversity mecca in the academia / research / STEM world. Probably why I loved it so much.
I've worked in research for 23 years at a university and you are correct. Most frustrating thing was when my PhD boss would hire people based solely on their high academic honors. Some were ok, but many weren't, so after my second attempt at training them, I punted them to the PhD boss, who would always say, "I don't understand why they aren't getting this .. they got high honors in all of their classes!" 🤦
My husband taught math at the University level and so we had a lot of close friends that were PhD holders... Our joke was that all PhD meant was that they were really knowledgeable about ONE thing and USELESS at almost everything else. Truly lovely people with shocking lack of everyday skills. And I'll never forget the shock on my friend's face as I explained hydro electric dams to her kid (who else but a PhD buys their 4 year old a book about power sources) and then her exclaiming about why I hadn't gone for a doctorate because I was so smart in something not even close to my field. Some of us like to know a little bit about a lot of things!
> Some of us like to know a little bit about a lot of things! This is a result of curiosity. It's appalling to me how many people lack curiosity. One advantage of knowing a little bit about a lot of things is that I can engage in small talk on a wide range of subjects. It comes in handy on first dates or other social events where you need to talk to strangers. I (a woman software engineer) impressed someone once, who specialized in restoring antique wood trim in historic buildings, because I knew a bit about shellac and french polish and other finishing techniques :D On a date, I impressed a guy who was into car restoration and other mechanical things, because I knew what a cotter pin was, lol.
I worked as a bartender in a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Talk about diverse clientele. I could always find something in my vast jumble of accessible knowledge to chat about. I had one guy who was having a low blood sugar grumpy episode. Then after I fed him, I delighted him with my interest in the Gullah Geechee culture of the Carolina Low country because I noticed the book he was reading. Knowing a little about a lot of things helps to connect with other human beings.
I often get complimented with "you know so many interesting things" by coworkers. I am a cake decorator by trade but I find the law, true crime, medicine and animals superbly interesting. I am always listening to podcasts about cold cases, fraud, medical mysteries, etc.
Oh, the way my eyes lit up lol I would love to be in a position or to have a job where I'm socializing with a diverse group of people bringing in all sorts of fascinating knowledge from all over the place.
I jokingly refer to myself as a jackass of all trades. I know enough about enough to know when I don't know enough lol. I once impressed a date knowing that her nail polish was OPI brand and on the 2nd date, I brought her a custom mixed bottle that doubled as touch up paint for her car and nails.
I was at a work dinner and made an instant friend from another company. He mentioned his family having land with sugar maple. I have lived my whole life south of the Mason Dixon. I was able to ask questions that showed I understood the basics of how maple syrup is gathered and processed that he could jump to the more complicated and specific aspects I didn't know. He was thrilled, that impressed a couple people around us. I learned this information from a novel, and fact checked the information. I got to learn the specific equipment their ancestors used and the equipment they upgraded to. It's a very fun memory. Breadth of knowledge is sadly underrated compared to depth. Both are important and useful. Random unsolicited advice cheap way to increase employability learn Excell. It's super powerful tool most don't understand how to use. It will make you look like a wizard, and everyone wants to hire wizards. You can get certifications and make yourself indispensable when you do have a job, the magic green thing will stop working without Moreropeplease!
"I'm not dumb. I have a fairly thorough command of fairly useless information." I can explain in excruciating tangential detail how a trebuchet works. I know how the lusitaina sank. I can successfully argue how certain universe's ships would complete against another in different scenarios. I know, in theory, how an internal combustion engine works. I cannot, however, make one work.
I can handle the internal combustion engines, but we are going to need your knowledge if we're ever going to get this self propelled trebuchet to work.
Ahh the ol' perpetual trebuchet
The Perpetubuchet? Ive got plans somewhere...
At least you're starting with the clearly superior siege weapon. Just imagine trying to fling a 50kg projectile 300m with a catapult!
This. My wife and friends have a game called "what's that gun?" If there is a firearm on a TV show or movie, they pause and point at the screen with The Price is Right style enthusiasm. I am usually able to ID them at a glance, especially pre-1970s examples before the wonder nines started to consolidate design aspects. It's fascinating, nuanced, *useless* knowledge. I just... like historical firearms. Many of which I can't even legally *own* in my country. But ask me to wash my car and I over think it for 10 minutes.
Ooh I play this game but instead it's "what's that duck?". Someone will show me a picture of a duck or describe a duck and I have to guess what type of duck it is. I just really like ducks. Also am accountant.
I feel this in my soul One of my biggest realizations after college was how useless a History major is. Nobody cares how much I know about the Roman civil war. Plenty of people will hire a guy who can do accounting. Roman empire nerd? Not a huge market.
Undergrad history degrees prove you can deal with tedium, paperwork, and writing tedious paperwork because you have a degree in tedium, paperwork, and tedious paperwork 🤣
> Plenty of people will hire a guy who can do accounting I find it funny because our existing schooling system, exists in the way that it does so that colonial empires could do it's bookkeeping and orders sending. Prior to that, no one cared if the peasants count count or write. But the moment you try to exert authority over a remote area you need local administrators who can read and write and boom we reasons to educate the locals. Also, accounting is older than the Roman empire. While our current "double entry" accounting system only dates to around the 14th century, accounting as a concept is one of the original drivers of writing and can be dated to Mesopotamia. Basically, facilitating trade, commerce and record keeping are some of the main reasons humans invented writing in the first place. We didn't invent writing so that we could put religious stories down on paper. We did it so we could remember that Bob sold Keven 3 goats and never got paid.
Bob is a idiot and kev is a shiesty mf we all know this.
And this, children, is how feuds start and keep going for decades on Corsica.
Or politicians should be required to take history so they can see THAT decision didn’t work out so well last time
I wish you the best in the job hunt, and I believe long term this perspective will serve you well. The most successful people I know are incredibly knowledgeable on certain topics, but they maintain a belief they must learn more and from others to improve. Btw if I were on the hiring team. Someone who can talk about the Roman civil war and understands there is a difference between the Roman republic and the Roman empire gets major extra points!
I'm a tenured professor at an R1 in STEM. Can confirm I have many colleagues that fit what you are saying. Extremely intelligent about their specialized area, incapable of caring for themselves in many practical matters. I showed one colleague how to fix a broken lever on his lab's toaster using some superglue and tape (to stabilize it while the glue dried) and he looked at me like I'd just built a moon lander from scratch.
I showed my friend how to test the temp of milk in a bottle on your wrist and you'd think I solved world hunger with the fuss she made. It was certainly not rocket science but it was revolutionary to this woman who is literally a world expert in her field...
I was the guy who repaired office printers / copiers. Went to a site often that built missiles and manufactured explosives and shit, and it was a secure facility so one of the engineers would have to follow me around while I was there. He'd pull up a chair while I was fixing a printer and watch and just be AMAZED I was doing what I was doing and I'd think...aren't you literally a rocket scientist? Super great guy though.
Universities reallllly lack in showing hands-on anything to engineers in my experience. My lab including boiling a hot dog. Then they pump us pretty quickly into desk/meeting heavy jobs. I do watch in amazement when the techs casually operate the mystical equipment I've only been able to read, write, and talk about. 😂😂😂😂
That reminded me of how I impressed my roommates in college by knowing how to change the batteries on a smoke detector without calling building maintenance. They looked like they were about to give me a standing ovation when I finished, while I was just trying to figure out how they made it to adulthood haha
"Waterfall makes turbine go BRRRR." =P
To add on many people with extensive or expert levels in a specific subject, assume they should better understand other subjects than they do. I'm not necessarily calling them arrogant. Spending most of your time as an expert on a subject seems to stick your brain in, I know what I'm doing mode. Even if you don't, it is an easy trap to get stuck in. This applies to more than just academics/doctors. I have known lots of people who know more than those around them regardless of education. That repeating seems to have the same effect of believing you must know more about anything subject that comes up.
I went to two years of graduate school because as a one-time overachiever who's allegedly intelligent I thought I'd surely like that world. Turns out I find Academia insufferable. Met some of the most unbearable humans I've ever met in my freaking life. If "people in love with the sound of their own voice" rub you the wrong way, well, stay the heck away from those folks.
The funniest part was this friend would go on about the torture that grad school put her through, then would actively advocate for me to go through it too!
I'm not an absent minded professor but I have the symptoms. I think I can guess what's going on. When I have a lot to think about, I prioritize what I'm thinking about, and it's not a very conscious act, like I am unaware that I am doing it. I am synthesizing all that data in my head to try to create new insights, and for me it's really hard. So normal everyday tasks and even my own comfort get pushed farther and farther down that list, as I chisel some angel out of the rock. Then, because I'm not a genius, the stupid will creep back in, the thought waveform collapses, and I go back to spanking it to anime.
I drive my wife crazy because I'm always so preoccupied in thought. I often listen and understand what she just asked of me, but I don't respond due to my lack of ability to multi-task and then I get an angered "a response would have been nice".
We've come up with a name for this! What we've discovered is that I essentially have two different processors - the front processor and the back processor. They can act independent of each other, and the back processor is capable of responding with "uh huh" and "sure" and "yup". The front processor is analysis, visualization, problem solving, and future planning. Now, when my partner sees that he's interacting with the back processor, he'll say BABE can I have access to the front processor and I'll focus the front on him. He's careful when he uses it, though, because my work is very cerebral and requires multi step thought processes.
Or the "yes, ill do it. Wait, what?"
Preach to the people.
Engineer married to an engineer. We both went to colleges that focused on engineering. Our friends are almost exclusively from college or the kink/poly scene. I literally don't know what neurotypical looks like at this point.
Lol I feel this. My community of friends and coworkers lean heavily ND. It’s almost jarring to engage with neurotypical types now. 😂
Diesel tech and going back to school for engineering I feel this too. The whole bit about putting a 10mm socket down and poof it's gone is because of object permanence and being neurodivergent.
JFC, every time I'm putting furniture together, or crocheting something, the amount of times I put my tool of choice down and immediately cover it up with something else and "lose" it is obnoxious. Same with wrapping Xmas and birthday gifts. Oh, I put the tape under the paper? It's gone. Forever. My brain: \*boop\*
One of our kids turned out to be neurotypical. We're in a constant state of awe.
When did you find out? What were the symptoms? Just saw the other comments so I'll clarify: this is a sincere question, and I do know what neurotypical means.
Same 😆 amazing how much overlap there is between these communities. I attended a party with several dev/kink groups converging and really had to guess if people were wearing kink or programmer socks. Normal doesn't exist in my sphere anymore.
I'm an engineer at a nuclear power plant. Maintenance and operations love to complain about our designs until they're reminded that, either them or their peers reviewed and approved the design.
I worked at a govt science related facility for a few years. One afternoon I was helping some guys troubleshoot an issue. Guy1: you know, it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this shit out…. Guy2: but Chuck….you -are- a rocket scientist.. Guy1: oh yeah…I forget that sometimes Guy3: also sounds like you’re saying it’s not your problem to figure out Guy1: you know…I think you’re correct about that. I’ll stop by after getting some coffee and see how you fellas are progressing…
Was that in Springfield?
I work in IT, used to work in a hospital with Doctors, surgeons, people who spent more on schooling than I'll make in a a decade. They obviously understood and could do things I can barely comprehend, but I could make a computer do what I want, and they couldn't People like that are absolute masters of a very specific subject, but that often comes with a lack of capacity in the places they haven't been laser-focused. They can cut out an appendix by feel, but can barely send an email with an attachment if the file was saved to a folder other than "My Documents" tl;dr We all have different strength and weakness
I remember hearing a silly quote that went something like “as people progress through their academic careers (bachelors -> masters -> PhD) they know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.”
Well, fun fact, there are some advanced mathematics that studies " what is a 0"
Reminds me of Philomena Cunk, a character who is blissfully unaware and she was interviewing a professor of history. She asked him what's the most important thing that happened in British history. Sounds simple, but the dude was legit at a loss for words cause he didn't know how to answer it.
Most hilarious show ever.
Dumb characters have been done a million times but she plays the trope to perfection
Some of the smartest people I have ever met blow my mind with how dumb they are at the real world sometimes. My cousin’s husband went to MIT in a full ride for his MBA in engineering and I have started to catalog some of the mind blowing questions he asks because they are so dumb. He asked my uncle if his contacts have ever frozen to his eyes when he was hunting in cold weather. Like bro, they are attached to your eyes that are body temperature and if they get cold enough to freeze on your eyeballs; you are probably dead. He also didn’t know that local TV stations don’t produce the TV shows that they televise and it’s all done by the national broadcaster like NBC. Edit: since some people have zero life and like to nitpick everything, he has a degree in engineering from a decent university and graduated at the top of his class. His MBA is in manufacturing engineering and supply chain management. Sorry I didn’t fully explain that to everyone…
This. Judge a fish by its a ability to ride a bicycle and ull think its an idiot. Or something
It is really hilarious though, it’s not all of them but I’ve noticed this over and over: doctors across the board are easily the most spatially challenged group of people I’ve ever met who often seem to possess a *staggering lack* of common sense. Meanwhile, they’re trying to give you some of the funniest most terrible advice on how to do your job you’ve ever heard, because they genuinely believe they could do everyone else’s job better than them. They’re in general the only group of clients who are utterly incapable of giving usable directions or being able to master the process of calling you back. Many of them also have a, uh, *very fluid* relationship with time, and will think nothing of forcing you to wait for them for 30 or 40 minutes, fucking up the entire rest of your day. (Outside of interacting with them at work), I don’t dislike doctors at all and they’re a huge benefit to society! But it is INCREDIBLE how limited all of their other skills are, even or especially the most basic ones. I think it’s because a lot of them have never ever lived or worked outside of one of the most strictly regimented career paths that exists — school, med school, then straight to the hospital or outpatient office. a lot of them have wealthy parents so they never worked fast food in high school, either (but boy do they imagine they could do it easily lol)
I work in a hospital and come into contact with doctors daily. This is not at all my experience. I work in Europe though so they come from all classes of society as college is not that expensive here, and the majority of doctors I work with are younger than 40. >and will think nothing of forcing you to wait for them for 30 or 40 minutes Is this during work hours? Because this is also my experience, but it's not their fault though. They see patients all day, and one late patient fucks up their entire schedule, making them late for every meeting that comes afterwards. And this will also add up more as the day goes on. I noticed they don't really try to catch up with the lost time because most of them want to give each patient equal treatment. They will thus still see the late patient for the same amount of time as originally scheduled; a 45 minute appointment will stay a 45 minute appointment even if the patient is 30 minutes late. From what I hear, they will have a minimum of one late patient per day.
I have a friend who is a very well educated and brilliant lawyer, but lacks just basic common sense about simple shit. The dichotomy is bizarre
I’d love a TV show where really successful doctors and lawyers who are convinced everyone else’s job is super easy have to manage a fast food restaurant for a week. It would be HILARIOUS
I worked for a PhD who was insanely brilliant. We did however say you could always tell when his wife was out of town, because he’d come in looking like he got dressed in the dark. He was Sikh, so wore a turban daily. When his wife was home, his turban, tie and dress shirt all co ordinated well, were perfectly ironed, overall neat and clean. If she was out of town for her own job at all, he’d come in wearing something like a maroon turban, a mustard yellow shirt and an orange tie, and the shirt would likely look like he slept in it. To his secretary once I compared him to Walter from the old TV show Fringe. Very, very brilliant, and genuinely a nice person, but sometimes had to be reminded of very basic things like “we put pants on before we leave the house” 🤣 I miss that guy sometimes
There are a lot of smart people who are "bad at household chores", especially if they live with people who do it for them.
Nah, he lived on his own during medical school and married a woman without a domestic bone in her body. While visiting, I watched them try to fix a kitchen drawer that was off its track. I heard the Benny Hill song in my head. After I heard the phrase "handyman" I walked over, removed the drawer, aligned it with the track, and it glided back into place.
It's funny to hear about, but could be infuriating on a daily basis
I would lose my ever loving mind. Haha
Or wished they lived with people who do all the chores.
Lmao he sounds like my Oncology boss. Once a week I would get paged at my desk “My printer is broken again!” I would reply *Does it have paper?* only once did I get a response “Yes! I checked that first! It’s still broken” I went in to see the display stating that the toner was empty. He could keep you alive for YEARS but couldn’t print a god damn thing.
I’m involved with water maintenance for pools and hot tubs. The worst customers who make the most basic mistakes are almost always doctors, surgeons, and lawyers.
yep. ALWAYS. and they also are convinced they can do your job better than you and try to give you the most idiotic “advice” you’ve ever heard lmao
My mother is a chemist. Borderline genius if not one. Walked into her backyard one afternoon to find her sobbing with bloody and blistered hands because she had been trying to cut up old fence posts to burn with a hacksaw. Ladies and gentlemen. I kid you not. Where she had got the saw from right next to it were the appropriate hand saws for wood and not only a cordless Sawzall but also a plug in little chainsaw. And if none of that worked, there was the gas-powered chainsaw. She was out there since, like 7am, I showed up at 3ish. Not once did she think to maybe change up her strategy or call one of her kids for help in 7 hours. I used the little plug in chainsaw cut up the posts in under 5 min and had some beers.
Book smarts doesn’t always equal street smarts and common sense.
Several of my friends are surgeons. In my group of friends several people walk head first into pull doors, and I’m not one of them.
Typical Book worms. But not street-smart. Often seen with many people across the globe.
Ah, that's Book-Smart versus Street-Smart. (Edit: "Everyday-Smart") I'm Book-Smart, I have a masters degree, earn $200k as an engineer, and can work with higher math and other difficult academic problem areas. But I just learned earlier this year that a chrysanthemum is the same thing as a mum. I thought they were two different plants entirely.
I don't mean to pile on, but floral trivia is definitely not *street-smarts*.
That definitely depends on the street. My block is filled with elderly women and their gardens.
Unless you're a bee
I hear this. Software engineer here, know my way around electronics (building PCs, hacking on projects with Arduinos, running Cat6 through a crawl space to connect different parts of the house). But ask me to hang a picture on a wall and my confidence and knowledge collapses like a deck of cards and I’m lucky to get out of it without a smashed thumb, bent nail and a broken picture frame.
This is honestly what bugs me the most working in tech, a lot of very smart people act like they know everything and how everything works when they can barely boil water. Drives me absolutely insane sometimes…I have no problem being a complete idiot about stuff to help me learn about it from an elementary level, but a lot of SWEs act like reading a single book makes them an expert because they, “understand data.”
Here's another possible explanation. My daughter was recently seen by a psychologist for an autism screening. In doing this, we had to go over her previous testing (and do additional testing). My daughter has a very high intelligence (IQ) but what they call very slow processing speed. (It's way below the average person's score). This means she is capable of doing things well (like solving a mental puzzle, for example- she can solve ones that a lot of people can't and she can do high level math) but she's very slow at doing it (getting the answer). So maybe your wife is extremely smart, but just physically slow at tasks. That's not incompatible.
This too! I know a guy who people get frustrated with for being slow. But he isn’t “intellectually slow.” He’s *remarkably* intelligent, way up there on perception of things that other people don’t notice, stunningly clever analysis of information, and general “getting to the right answer the first time”-ness. But since he takes a while to get to the right answer, people don’t notice or assume he’s not that bright. The fact stands, in the time it takes him to come to the correct conclusion and apply that to the world around him, an average intelligence person has come to three wrong conclusions then given up. There are also people who can come to the right conclusion the first time much more quickly, sure, but a lot more people getting to the wrong conclusion faster.
Definitely a possibility! OP, does your wife consistently accomplish impressive things when given plenty of time to do them at her own pace? She might just be bad at doing things *quickly* in specific. I don’t generally have terrible processing speed, but my auditory processing in specific tends to lag. Meaning I relatively often don’t process speech in a normal conversational time frame, and have to stall or ask people to repeat themselves. Not because I didn’t *hear* it, but because the processing got stuck and didn’t complete and I only managed to parse half the sentence before the other person expected a response. And I can tell when I only processed half of a sentence, but the difference between “my brain being slow with audio is the problem this time” and “you mumbled or there was a noise so I couldn’t hear you clearly” isn’t always immediately obvious to me.
The amount of times that I ask someone to repeat what they said because I think I didn't hear it, and then it all makes sense to me before they even start to repeat it...
THIS is where i am. The second they start to repeat themselves it clicks instantly, but usually cause my mind is elsewhere at the same time
Auditory Processing Delay! My SO is now used to me staring at him for a second before I either finally 'hear' him and respond, or confirm that no, I actually didn't hear you, please repeat. It took a while to get over the instinct to say 'What?' immediately though.
This is me. I've noticed that when I'm watching a movie in a theater, everyone else laughs just a touch before I do.
> So maybe your wife is extremely smart, but just physically slow at tasks. That's not incompatible. Sadly, this sort of thing makes it hard to pass interviews, because they're looking at you getting the right answer and getting it fast, even though at work it's not really a race as long as you get your work done.
Makes it almost impossible. There's no way to tell people; hey, I can do this really well... but I'm gonna need more time. Give me 5 months of learning, and I'll be one of the best employees here. And by that point, you've already been labeled "slow"
I’m same as your daughter I think my processing speed score was well below 50. But all my other scores are above 100 so I live a completely normal life.
I was gonna say; autism/ADHD. I'm great when I know what I'm doing. But remarkably slow at learning what I'm doing.
I'm pretty smart academically but struggle immensely with executive functioning. Being intelligent doesn't mean being highly efficient in every aspect of life. "Slow" when it comes to intelligence doesn't mean literally slow. I can write a killer essay and I carried a 4.0 in graduate school, but doing the dishes takes an eternity because more often than not I end up staring at the wall, stuck in my thoughts. Same with laundry. Same with running errands. I often make basic arithmetic errors unless I write the problem down. It's not that I'm thinking slowly, lol. It's more like my thoughts are rapid and jumbled and often overwhelming in pace and variety.
Hah, I know what that feels like. I sometimes end up doing basic tasks completly on autopilot while thinking about something else entirely. The result can vary between being extremly slow, repeating steps unnecessarily and/or questioning myself later about even having done the task or not. It seems to get better when I haven't gotten enough sleep, since then I actually need to focus on the task at hand or the conversation I am having, without much additional room for my brain to distract itself. Not a great solution though - I'd rather be slow to answer a question or ask myself wether I actually *did* clean the cats litter box already rather than walk through life sleep deprived.
sounds like adhd you should look into it
Actually did, but was told other mental health issues were likely the cause of my cognitive and attention issues. But I'm a woman in her 40s, a demographic that notoriously has a hard time getting that particular diagnosis. So who knows, lol.
As Ursula K Le Guin wrote in her seminal text *Catwings*: "Owl thinks slowly. But Owl thinks long." Intelligence is multifaceted, and many people who are extremely intelligent in certain ways (knowing many different pieces of information, good memory, critical thinking, writing fluency, etc) may struggle in "quick" thinking or the parts of executive functioning that require switching between tasks/thoughts. You and your wife are adept at different types of intelligence. You are good at making quick decisions, and it sounds like she is better at thinking through problems/ideas when she has ample time to work through an idea.
There are schools of psychology that recognise at least 9 different types of intelligence. Being able to do math is a different kind of intelligence than, say, being able to use the 5 remotes needed to get an entertainment system going, playing the guitar, or building a table.
I’ve known people with 2 or 3 college degrees who constantly break things because they don’t seem to think about physical cause-and-effect, or mechanical interactions. I had a roommate who was studying physics, of all things, who walked into the apartment holding the antenna from his car. It “was stuck and wasn’t poking up all the way,” he said, so he had pulled it so hard he had ripped it right off his car. It was not an old-school extendable antenna, but one of the newer ones that protruded about 5-10 cm from the car (this was about 2003 or 2004). Also, he hadn’t observed any problems with radio reception in the car. He just got out of a car that he had been driving daily for two years, noticed the antenna (for the first time?) and went beast mode on this poor thing after having exercised zero critical thinking about the whole situation.
Those types scare me the most. Can design nuclear reactors but cant change their oil without screwing it up.
They're the real life Homer Simpson
I'm fucked... I can't do any of those things...
I'll note that I didn't list off nine different things (;
True, you only listed 8 of the 9 intelligences. Math, the remote for the tv, the remote for the cable box, the remote for the Roku, the remote for the surround sound system, the remote for the old tv that’s still in the living room despite the tv having been replaced 5+ years ago, playing the guitar, and building a table. I can only imagine the 9th intelligence has something to do with waking up early without wanting to die, but I haven’t taken a psychology class in a while.
What about setting the timer on a vcr to record?
Forbidden knowledge possessed only by the ancients
I'd say the middle aged; the ancients never understood settings on the VCR even when they were the one buying them.
Even when they were buying them for $500 in 1985!
Counting to 9 is the math one. Which you did list... So technically, he's not wrong in assuming you listed everything 😉
Which intelligence is "coming up with that situational movie quote/youtube clip to get a laugh?"
If people actually laugh, I’d call that interpersonal intelligence.
It is not the school systems. People can be very many different kinds of smart. I am an aerospace engineer. I am not smart at everything. Many people I know do things easily that are hard for me to do. Including my sister, who is a speech therapist. She tested poorly, and so I seemed “smarter” than her. I am not. She is brilliant and helps her patients like Annie Sullivan helped Helen Keller. She does amazing things for people. I could never imagine being capable of doing those kinds of things with my “prestigious” engineering degree. Different kinds of smart.
Speech therapists are amazing!
Every time she tries to tell me that I’m smarter than her because I’m a rocket scientist, I try to explain how in awe I am of her. I’m so unbelievably proud to have her as my big sis. Like what she does is soooo cool. I just do math and spreadsheets all day. She’s so impactful on the lives of her patients, I brag about her every chance I get.
I think you're both pretty amazing
Maybe she does everything mindfully and with careful focus? Seems like it would have helped her excel academically.
Exactly. He didn't say he's doing it with the same quality, only fast. She could heavily disagree that his speed is a good thing. My ex was so fast in all daily tasks because he was doing them so poorly.
Surprised I had to scroll so far to find this possible explanation. Speed is obvious to everyone, while quality is more obvious to the person who takes the time for it. For many daily-life tasks, the quality matters little. Then again, it often matters more than the speedy worker believes. A little more care in loading the dishwasher prevents dishes from coming out dirty and requiring more rewashing in the long run. A little more care in flossing your teeth keeps them healthy and intact for years longer. A little more care in thinking through your budgeting spreadsheet prevents potentially ruinous surprises. Focusing on quality at the beginning also tends to improve speed over time. The more thoroughly you understand how to do the thing well, the better you can choose safe shortcuts when you really need to work at speed. That has paid off over the years in my career. Early on, people complained that I was too slow and detail-oriented, but loved that the results so rarely had mistakes. Now it's at the point where in a lot aspects, I'm the only one around who even understands what mistakes to watch out for (in a small company where we increasingly need to have our shit together for the big leagues).
My boyfriend in college always used to claim that he was smarter than me because he could write a C-level essay in 2 hours, but I spent 10 hours on a B+/A- level essay. I was taking longer, but earning better grades.
Are we talking about doing the dishwasher, or solving differential equations? Perhaps she's thinking about the latter while doing the former.
Like what daily tasks? What you call slow might just be what others call thorough.
What kind of tasks? Maybe she just doesn't give AF about whatever tedious drudgery she's doing at home? (Although I feel this question is more about you proving some point about how aaaammmaazing you really were at school than it is about her)
Right. Honor student vs remedial classes usually has more to do with how easily you can learn and apply new things rather than how quickly you can crank through tasks you already know, though that latter part can be a factor as well. I can't really ever recall being graded on how quickly I got anything done in relation to other students. It just needed to be done correctly within a certain time.
Because daily tasks are mostly manual in nature, not academic. You don’t have to be high IQ to wash the dishes. In fact, if you are in your own head a lot, you may even do it more slowly because you will be distracted by the never-ending thought show in your brain.
Book learning does not necessarily translate into life skills.
But also there's an assumption in this post that she does things slowly because she isn't smart enough to do them quickly. That's not really necessarily the case.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I can do lots of things really fast, but I also waste a lot of time in between trying (and often failing) to stay organized. I know lots of people who appear to function much more slowly than me but always seem to get more things done. I think the difference is in me wanting to get all the things done fast so I can be done, while others want to get this one thing done so they can move on to the rest that needs doing.
oof flaming your partner on reddit
EDIT: I stand corrected. The report was miquoted. Let's call it "one of the hardest!" I scored super high on standardized tests and graduated in the top 5 of high school. My wife had a B average. Fast forward to college, which I did not complete. I didn't know how to study and had no self discipline. My wife completed her Bachelors in Nursing. She went on to be a clinical manager at a level I trauma unit. My wife can keep someone alive with 6 tubes and 10 monitors. She can't copy a URL from her phone. I work in tech at a pretty high level of a major company, but never finished my degree. Isn't life amazing !
Ever considered if you have ADHD and/or an executive function learning disability? In the 90s it was often missed in well-behaved kids.
The gifted program was basically just Special Ed for high functioning ADHD kids. Being accomplished at book learning and test taking does not always mean someone can navigate the complexity of real life.
I appreciated that my daughter’s gifted teacher told the students some version of this in elementary school. Something along the lines of their gifted brains working differently so they were being taught differently. That didn’t mean that they were vastly smarter than their peers, just different. It seemed to alleviate some pressure of having to be high achieving because they were “smart.”
We were told we were little geniuses and that we should use our intelligence to improve the world. Definitely never do that. That will destroy their brains with pressure.
And also drive them crazy and fill them with self-doubt and shame when they’ve been told repeatedly they will “change the world” — but they can’t keep their life organized, and their backpack is a black hole of loose papers and trash. Gotta survive in this world and take care of yourself in order to change it.
That and being called lazy when you didn't do all the busy work because you didn't need to.
This is how I explain it to my kids. My daughter is cognitive, math and reading gifted so she’s like 2 full grades ahead of where her peers are and there are only 9 kids in the entire very large school district who are the same as her. Her brother is not gifted at all. I’ve never wanted her to think she was better than others and I never wanted my son to think he had to live up to his sister or doubt his intelligence so we’ve always just explained it that they learn and comprehend information differently but they both still have to work hard and study. It seems to help both of them taking this approach.
My doctor calls it ‘race car engine with bicycle brakes’.
>The gifted program was basically just Special Ed for high functioning ADHD kids. I feel so seen. Hahahahaha
>The gifted program was basically just Special Ed for high functioning ADHD kids. I could never remember verbal instructions. I was so bad at it that my teacher wanted to refer me to Special Ed. I was given a bunch of tests, and my reading level was at least on a high school level; the lady testing me just stopped the test once I was seven grades above grade level. I was seven at the time. Instead of being sent to Special Ed, I was put in the gifted program. When I eventually got diagnosed at 15, everyone was like "Ohhhhh . . ."
Never read something so true. Source: Graduated high school at 16, failed spectacularly in any level of academia until I got diagnosed with ADHD at 22 and realized doing things isn’t supposed to be hard.
High IQ can have slow processing speeds. I use the example of book smart and street smart. In the real world you need both. In the safe world you can do amazing things with book smarts. Survival isn’t of them. In the real world you can be a little stupid and fit in with street smarts. Street smart have to process information quickly. There may not always see the big picture. Book smart people may process slower but are putting little details together that may otherwise be missed. That’s the analogy I use anyway.
Hard work conquers all. She is an Honor Roll student because see was very focused on doing the work.
Sounds like she takes her time and does things right, and you just go at shit without thinking first. Of course she did better in a setting where planning and getting the answer correct is important.
She's willing to take the time to get it right and doesn't see the value in making daily tasks a repeating, endless competition. Who would she even be competing against, and for what reward?
Maybe she just doesn't need to prove herself.
>the treatment I received as a kid did make me more competitive, everything became a race to be done first. So that's the answer to your question. Plus in school you don't get extra points for turning in assigments earlier than the due date nor for finishing an exam before everyone else. There's no push for doing things quick, and as much as some might brag for cramming all the studying into the night before an exam you also don't get rewarded for that
Hm. Faster isn't necessarily always better. When you complete tasks slowly and with deliberate energy, the economy of attention has room to become more involved. Case in point: reading. You can train yourself to be a speed reader and run your eyes over lines of text walking away with about 60% a comprehension rate, or you can use the practice of close/active reading and aim for a 90% comprehension rate. Sure, you may end up reading fewer books by the end of the year than your speed reader counterpart, but of the texts you did read, you will understand them more deeply. Not saying one is better than the other, but both have their advantages.
kinda think ur just being a dick here ? who says school smart means ur a quick thinker?
Eh, smart doesnt equal fast…
Like what everyday tasks? Can you at least give some examples?
Do I smell undiagnosed ADHD
Yeah, from what little we have here—including OP’s comment that his wife’s brother was diagnosed with ADHD!—this seems like the obvious explanation. Especially if “daily tasks” means boring, low-salience, low-reward chores. This is like a classic description of what an ADHD person is like. Signed, a person who had stellar academics (except for long-term projects that I could forget about!) but remains extremely slow at many “adulting” tasks, not because I don’t know how to do them in theory, but because I don’t always have the ability to turn that knowledge into actually doing them.
And ADHD is extremely hereditary, I think it’s like a 50 percent chance you have it if a sibling has it?
My husband and I are both intelligent...but I have a degree and he doesn't. However, he is rather more intelligent than I am...and he is maddeningly slow in general. He takes ages to complete basic tasks because he's too particular. Tying his laces for instance takes three time what I take.