When I Started Censoring My Intelligence

…and why I want to slap myself for it.

I was sitting across from a really cute boy I had recently met, and was looking forward to getting to know him over a sushi dinner. I must have only been 18 or 19 years old at the time, just barely starting to take the reigns of life into my nervous hands — dating life included. I remember that we started off with really normal small talk:

The weather.

Home towns.

What’s your family like?

Do you like sports?

Then this question came: What are you studying?

“Neuroscience!” I exclaim enthusiastically.

Pause.

I watch as this cute boy has a ~visually~ opposite reaction. His eyes get big, he exhales between his lips, leans back away from me and says “Oh. Wow.”

That’s it.

I nervously glance sideways to see if there’s anything else in the room besides me that could possibly be making him look this uncomfortable.

He stays quiet.

“Yeah it’s uh…pretty cool I guess.”

(Total understatement by the way. Neuroscience is mind blowing.)

Somehow we muddle through this awkward incident by ordering food, and finding a different topic of conversation.

Things are much more airy now. We are laughing about college and dorms and professors. Things are feeling good. As I’m talking about one of our neighbors, I use the word “asinine” to describe the sounds that come from their apartment at 1am every Wednesday night.

It was instantaneous, as the word “asinine” left my mouth. I watched the body language of my date go from open and engaged to small and shriveled, with a quizzical look on his face. His eyes shifting side to side, avoiding eye contact with me at all costs.

He is quiet again.

And that was when I started censoring my intelligence.

I wish I could sit my 18 or 19 year old self down, grab her face, and very sternly explain to her why this was so unnecessary. Why its much more damaging for me to play myself down so someone else can play themselves up. I’m mad that I let someone else’s insecurities change the way I presented myself for years to follow.

Initially, I felt bad. I could see how uncomfortable my date was. Maybe he was intimidated. Then again, maybe he was embarrassed because he was intimidated…by a girl. Because of course, men are meant to be more superior. Lol. *cue eye roll*

I dumbed myself down for a lot of boys. Not because I had self esteem issues (after all, I’m writing an article about being smart), but because enjoying a dinner with a fun cute boy was what I thought I wanted. But the dinners weren’t enjoyable when they all kept looking like they had food poisoning every time I stated my major or said a big word.

I figured that if I just censored my intelligence enough, so much so that they believed I was barely less smart than they were, that it would fix things.

However, as I later discovered, this methodology is seriously flawed.

I went on a lot of very boring, very repetitive, monotonous dates. Where I twirled my hair and laughed obnoxiously loud at stupid jokes and anxiously asked a lot of questions about “him” so that I wouldn’t have to answer any questions about me that might make him feel small. Most of these dates sucked.

You want to know what dates didn’t suck?

The ones where we ended up talking about politics, or religion, or philosophy. The conversations that challenged me, and made me reveal that I was smart enough to engage in an actual discussion of substance.

After enough of those dates you realize you have to quit lying to yourself (and your date).

After enough of those dates you realize that you don’t want to be with a boy who is embarrassed by being intimidated by you, or any other woman.

After enough of those dates you decide to stop censoring yourself, and call a guy out when he recoils after you say “Neuroscience” (true story).

I can’t go back and tell my young self that no man is worth being less than everything you are. Everything that makes you brilliant, and unique, and unapologetically you. (i.e. being a science nerd)

But I can look my 23 year old self in the mirror (the bathroom mirror of a restaurant, pre-date), and remind myself that I am intelligent, and sarcastic, and quick — and that it’s okay to let a man feel intimidated by those things.

The right ones are okay with being intimidated, and rise to the occasion. The appreciate the challenge the same way you do.

The wrong ones, no matter how cute, are not worth being half of who you are to make them feel whole in their own masculinity.

So here’s to living life, and living a dating-life, in a very uncensored way. 🥂