someday you'll find

personally, i think intelligence has many wings. there is the ability to be witty and sharp, the ability to focus for long periods of time, the ability to grasp concepts very quickly, and most importantly (to me), the ability to make moral decisions about what is right and what is wrong. all these things require the brain to be functioning and are all at least important. but as karen said to me, singapore and by extension singaporeans have such a narrow perception of what intelligence is, it's so rigidly delineated and institutionalised, and it's such an easy way out, because it's so definitive: if i get a good score or a grade, then i can be absolutely sure that i am 'good.' but i think it's better to make the choice to view human beings' 'intelligence' as more complex than that. so maybe the problem here isn't that you've lowered your standards, but they were limited in the first place, and that you need to fix them instead of fixing your SAT score.

-Hoh Jian Yang.
I still remember being on 156 with him one fine day in sec one. And getting off at the same stop, and watching him walk ahead in front of me and noticing that his right bag strap was almost torn and hanging onto his bag by a few thin threads. And that his bag had his initials written on.
Well.. I saw him again recently, he's really tall now. And much less of a twit than what I thought he was then. Many years ago.
This was written as part of his response to Chu Ting's LJ entry about her lack of response to her 'regressed' SAT score.
Man am I proud to have friends like them who are so able to articulate their feelings, and word them so aptly. I must say that clearly, her SAT result of 2100 (in comparison to others who do better) means nothing to me as I (and many others should) acknowledge the fact that she had the brains and metacognitive thinking ability to confront the issue. And the insightful people who commented on her posts.
I'm impressed, truly.
Makes me wish I never left GEP. Oh wait, when have I ever stopped wishing that? Sometimes I think maybe if I stayed I could be like them. (Though I was never one of their circle except at a few points of time.) But I doubt it. And that statement in itself, that I doubt it, is proof that I have lowered my standards for myself and settled for the fact that my brain and intellect has degenerated.
Disappointing?
Much.

posted by jallyre @ 2:03 AM