The More You Study, The Dumber You Are
A rather harsh discourse on the non-link between intelligence and studying
The headline and initial give-off may make it seem like I’m measuring one’s intelligence based on how much they study, and that the more you study the less intelligent you are; yet this is not exactly what I mean.
Students from Middle School all the way through to University seniors are conditioned to study (and think that studying is good), an act of sitting down and going through notes, revising countless academic topics, and trying to fill their vase of a brain to the brim with material for a test. The institutionalized education system promotes that the more you study the smarter you are, but flip that around — is your intelligence calculated by how many hours of studying you conduct?
However, I rarely see this (studying) act as an act of diligence and hard work, cramming for exams and spending over 3 hours a day ‘studying’ makes you dumb. In my opinion, those who are truly ‘smart’, bluestockings and geniuses of the crowd, don’t need to spend all this time crouched over books and a screen, in fact, they don’t want to. Many people I personally know dedicate copious and irrational hours of their day to studying and they define this as a good work ethic and a school-oriented personality. But if one was to spend too many hours studying, relearning topics they should have learned during lessons, how smart is that?
Students typically utilize the excuse of “I can’t ____ because I need to study” and this statement irks me incredibly. Another thing that annoys me is when people having nothing else to their personality other than being an avid ‘studier’, the only conversation they can maintain is one about work and school — if this resonates with you, sorry not sorry. If you study to the point where you have no space to do anything else in your life, how is that healthy? If your entire world revolves around work and school, how smart are you?
The actuality of things is that the smarter you are, the better you are at balance. Balance translates to the absence of the need to overly-focus on studying, school, tests, and the vast realm of academics. For young adults, school is often the centre of their universe, but even so — the centre of the universe does exist without other things around it, if you place something in your view and erase the existence of everything else, that balance is lost. Once the balance is lost, you’ll simply fall into a pit of despair and ultimately, you’re not getting any smarter. Being able to balance the different aspects of your life is what makes you smart
This argument may seem inconsiderate and ignorant of the people who are studying to their maximum capacity to reach a certain important goal, mayhap a goal to get into a good university, to fulfil a scholarship, or to ease external pressures. It’s true, studying is essential to succeed, yet the fact of the matter is that you don’t need to spend infinite hours studying to get good grades, to achieve your end goal. Focusing during lessons and understanding the topic is one thing, self-confidence is another thing. Piling on the extra hours is a result of feeling like you don’t know something well enough, when most of the time the veracity is that you do know it, you just don’t believe it.
To rehash, I’m not saying that studying makes you dumb and that only dumb people study; what I’m trying to say is that knowing how to study and how much to study is what makes you smart.
Attaining a balance between academics and everything else is smart. Overdoing the revision makes you dumb. There are a plethora of ways to obtain good grades and excellence without having to overcrowd your mental space with the school. Lastly, self-worth is never determined by how high your grades are.
