Now, the second week of school is closing, and I have shifted to the pace of my classes. Now, after the glory of the holidays, everyone looks forward to summer. However, I revisited my fall professors, reliving the knowledge and conversing about the future.
Microeconomics has always been an interesting class. The concepts are diluted and simplified and lucid, yet the information still manages to drift away after some time. It is almost like Calculus, but can anything be compared to Calculus?
The root and breath of microeconomics lies in memorization; repetition and practice problems were the best methods to drink the chapters in.
Yes, it was surprising that I ranked top of the class, but what really surprised me was my professor's characterization of me as highly intelligent. This may seemingly parallel one another, but repetition and work does not guarantee intelligence. What are the study strategies but refined capabilities to understand terms in the full context?
I feel that the term "smart" is radically overused by peers. It has no substance for it is just a concept, approximations of how well particular abilities fit into individual rubrics. The undercurrent of my mind used to consistently meander through a personal classification. Was I able? What was my contribution to the world but a voice and two hands and scruffy feet?
I am questioning the substance of intelligence testing. Does it richly delve into the mind, or is it a wire trap meant to provoke falsities?
Is intelligence inherited? In which, then, evolution has created a natural hierarchy, a natural advantage which could lead to global caste system. Or is intelligence culturally constructed? Then, it would be arbitrary to society- an all too powerful decision to manipulate.
Or, even better, is it a combination to both ingredients?
I am taking a general psychology course this semester, and as I glaze over the sea of some 300 students, I recognize the intensity and great love of looking within. This science dives only into the individual. Vocabulary revolves around my breadth as human being...and I'm not so set on the idea.
The Washington monument has been targeted, pointed and probed by khaki-ed tourists with floppy sun hats. But one of my most missed moments of summer and home, besides the art museum, which always leaves me swimming, and crossing the avenues of Georgetown, which always leaves me exhilarated, is to go to the monument.
And sprawl across the wore stone benches amidst a whisper of a breeze due to the high altitude, and look up. Only then can the enormity of the world rise. And I realize the frivolity of concerns, worries, insecurities. We are fragments and shards and our deaths do not disturb the universe, but only awaken the endless cycle of life that is meant to happen anyway.
