2 kinds of smart people

I always had great relationships with my professors, especially the math ones (I majored in math after all).

I don’t remember what the lesson was about that day, but I remember one random day of 8th grade math when the teacher stopped talking about trigonometry and said: “There are 2 kinds of smart people: There are the naturals, the ones that just get it and don’t need to review or study to do well. Then there are the disciplined, the ones that don’t get it and need to stare at the textbook for hours, solve hundreds of exercises, and days later they finally understand the concept.”

I’m definitely a type 2. I’m smart but not natively intelligent. I need to put in a lot of effort to actually digest new ideas, and the good grades I got throughout school were the result of not having a social life being nerdy and disciplined. This is something I’m proud of: I did well because I earned it.

Not trying to throw shade at the geniuses, but I do hope that this is a reminder that it’s okay to struggle. To not get things right away. To have to put a lot of effort into doing well. But when you finally succeed, you’ll know that you deserved it.