The Makings of a Dexter (of Laboratory fame, not the TV Serial Killer)

Disclaimer: If you are/were a classmate of mine, I am not, I repeat, I am NOT writing this as a justification of my academic career or 'to help me sleep better at night'. Not that you'll believe me, of course.

Also, this article does not discuss important requirements for intelligence like emotional and mental stability so don't hate on me for that.

“XYZ is sooo smart”

If I had a gum-ball for every time I've heard that, I'd have died of hyperglycemic shock by now (sorry, little doctor humour there). But what do we mean when we call someone smart? What empirical tests to we run to decide if somebody is smart or not? Well, we mainly judge someone's 'smartness' by his/her score in tests like school exams and the SAT and occasionally by his/her ability to answer teachers' questions in class. But everyone agrees that although tests are the best method to gauge somebody's 'smartness', they are limited in scope. A test is made by a human being. Which is a problem right there; the test is limited by the 'intelligence' of the examiner. One way to overcome this is to have an examining board make the paper, so your career doesn't rest on the vagaries of one man/woman. But problems remain. Studies have shown no correlation between test scores and the usual indices of success. Google it lazy bones, I'm not citing all my sources.

Notice how I use the word 'smartness' throughout my post but refer to the examiner's 'intelligence'. That was on purpose. I differentiate between the two. See, I have a few theories on 'intelligence'. 'Smartness' is a subset of intelligence, in my humble opinion. 'Smartness' is a unique combination of 90% book-smartness and the remaining 10% being variably divided between street-smartness and creativity. This is the kind of person XYZ is. Our tests are 90% recall from the books and the remaining 10% require you to have the two other characteristics I've mentioned. Of course, this is assuming there are no 'past papers' and repeat questions from these in the test, which would further increase the book-smartness percentage.

Book-smartness, Street-smartness and creativity are what I believe to be the three facets of intelligence.

So what do these three terms mean?

Book-smartness: What the archetype nerd has. Yes, I know the archetype nerd only exists in the movies and that they don't really wear suspenders, get atomic wedgies, or their heads flushed in the toilets by bullies in real life. But urban legends are heavily distorted facts, like the one about swallowing a fruit seed and a plant growing from your crap (Fact: crap is a fertilizer. Fiction: the acid and lack of a million other things in your stomach will stop the seed from growing there), or the one about how saying 'pig' will rescind 40 prayers of yours (Fact: Pig is a naughty word. Fiction: You won't believe some of the lies elders tell kids).

Basically, if you have a photographic memory and can memories countless facts, then you're book-smart. In fact, you'll ace all the medical school tests. Which is not to demean book-smartness. Facts are important and there are some that must be committed to memory. But book-smart people tend to store all these tidbits in their brain's short-term memory compartment. To commit them to the long-term section is what is important. Most of the facts you learn are like the tide, they're there for a short period of time, but they gradually fade back into oblivion (excuse my poetic analogy).

This brings me to another theory I have regarding memory. When memorizing something, in order to commit it to your long term memory, you will try to come up with a mnemonic (the less successful method) or you'll try to relate it to something you already know (the more successful method). Taking the example of what I'm studying in Med school these days, if I am trying to memories the names of the blood vessels supplying the bladder, prostate and urethra (that's your pee pipe), I can come up with a mnemonic for it, but chances are I'll forget in a few years what a few of the letters in the mnemonic stand for. Or I can relate it to pre-existing knowledge that I have gained over my schooling years. In 13 years of schooling, there is some biology that I've done repetitively. For example, I've done the fact that your crap-hole is called the anus and above that is the rectum. So using this knowledge, I can remember that since the bladder is at the same level as and next to the rectum in males, one of the arteries supplying part of the bladder and urethra is the rectal artery. Now, someone who did not take biology in school but entered med school would have a much tougher time learning this piece of information. I have had 13 years of studying this, so my basics are quite strong. However, 5 years of med school requires me to digest whole textbooks of information, with little or no repetition, which means most of the info is in my short-term memory and I will forget it after med school. However, if medical school was say another 20 years with a lot of repetition, I wouldn't forget anything. Proof from my life is Mathematics. I took further math in my A' Levels. A year out of high school, and I've forgotten virtually everything in a subject I got an A in. I haven't forgotten addition, subtraction, simple differentiation and integration because practice makes perfect, but all the advanced stuff I learnt in further math I've forgotten.

My point being, book-smartness alone can only get you so far.

Street-smartness: I don't literally mean knowing how to deal with punks who infringe on your turf (that's always a plus though) but having presence of mind and decision-making powers. You can have all the knowledge and creativity up there, but when you're in a tight spot, you need to have the ability to connect the dots, come up with a plan and put it to action within a very short timespan. But you still need book-smartness to have the basic knowledge to come up with a plan that actually works, and creativity so you can deal with any outlandish situation. A good way to test this in people is to hang them upside down from the ceiling, make them slowly descend toward a tank of piranhas, giving them only a razor and a rope to use to escape.

Creativity: Books will have problem sets. A book-smart person will memorize these problem sets and pray that in real life, he only comes across the problems his/her textbooks have described. If only life were that easy. Creativity, innovation and initiative is the final piece of the puzzle. You need this to deal with new situations. Converting the formulae for energy conversion to the workings of a hydroelectric dam requires creativity.

These are what Noble Prize winners are made of (NOT that that's the golden standard of intelligence!)