I think of myself as having average or even low IQ. Some background: I was partially raised in government housing as a child, had parents who were drug and alcohol abusers, and was never encouraged to do anything intellectually stimulating while growing up. I lived in a poor mixed raced city and attended a mostly nonwhite high school. Learning was never a concern of mine while in high school, not getting my face smashed in was (which happened).
I was not in an environment for intellectual growth, nor was I in an environment that would have indicators of high IQ.
Through pure luck, I had a high school teacher that somewhat set me on the right course. For half a day, two years long, I had this teacher for a CAD class. He told me attitude was everything and encouraged me to enroll in college. My first two years weren't great. I struggled in classes like algebra. I also didn't know how to study.
After two years of getting nowhere, I moved to a large US city as a result of certain life circumstances. I finished up my undergraduate degree and took a year off. I didn't feel very happy though. I wanted to get a graduate degree. My company was willing to pay for it, as long as I worked 40 hours a week and made good grades. It was a complete change for me, kind of a fresh start. I decided I would take the university serious. Because my undergrad wasn't computer science, I had to complete all of the undergrad computer science courses. So I had at least four years ahead of me to get my masters.
Only because I worked really hard and studied a lot, I would often be the top performer in my 3 calculus classes, discrete math, and so on (this wasn't always the case... but hey, I was working a full-time job too). I ended up with a masters in computer science, something I never thought was possible for me.
Something that inspired me was that I'd see the international students (mostly east Asian and Indian) study very hard. They would study all day long in the library. They seemed like the very definition of self-discipline. I adapted to that the best I could while still working 40 hours per week doing .net programming.
It seems like I fit the premise of this paper and can relate: Low to average IQ who often did better than my higher IQ classmates and friends.
I've had a similar experience to yours. I grew up with an alcoholic and domestically violent father in a poverty stricken neighborhood. I was encouraged to go to college by a girlfriend of all things. I graduated in the lower half of my class and scored only a 900 on my SAT but despite this I finished my BS with a 3.55 overall GPA and a 4.0 in computer science. I'm currently working on my Master's degree.
I also feel like my intelligence is average but what helped me succeed is how much I enjoyed all my computer science courses.
I think of myself as having average or even low IQ.
I'm curious. Did you actually know for sure that your IQ score was below average? ( or the score from similar type of test, like the SAT). It would be interesting counterpoint to the validity of IQ/SAT testing if you actually tested below average, and then ended up in a career that requires much greater than average cognitive skills.
The executive summary is that children's ability to delay gratification at age 4 was one of the best predictors of future academic success decades later.
Anyone who's participated in academics /should/ know this intuitively- but people seem to really, really want to believe that academic performance and intelligence are the same thing.
So, to turn this around... Google hires primarily for self-discipline, not intelligence?
I can certainly see why discipline would be important for the majority of your team-- but I've always wonder how many geniuses Google passes on because they don't fit this mold.
They did tell me this when I was an teenager: "You're a smart kid, but you need to put in more effort".
I tried putting effort towards school for a while. I figured if I had to play, I may as well win. The problem with treating high school as a game is that it's not fun. Learning the material doesn't get you anything, not even more advanced material to dig into.
For me, digging my teeth into a difficult problem is it's own reward. In high school I wasn't asked to work on difficult problems. Instead I sat in the back of the class, ignored the lecture, worked on whatever I was doing at the time, and coasted through the tests well enough to pass.
Plenty of effort. Plenty of work ethic. Plenty of smarts. Nothing I wanted to work on.
I'm with everyone else in not being at all surprised. Maybe that's because of the fact that as an adolescent, I had a high-IQ, low self-discipline, and a low GPA.
Come now. High School curriculum doesn't require much intelligence. Most of it is just completing brain dead assignments. It would be interesting to compare the results to something much more challenging.
"the only one among 32 measured personality variables (e.g.,
self-esteem, extraversion, energy level) that predicted college grade point average (GPA) more robustly than SAT scores did."
Is college GPA really indicative of anything? Probably more so than high school GPA, but given the wide variance in difficulty, perhaps high GPA people are simply the people that choose to do things that are easy...
Reading that, and the other article on grades, suddenly something clicked: what if the reason that getting rid of tracking (separate classes for high & low achievers) in schools hurts the upper end of students is because when they are competing against all the poor & mediocre students they no longer need to try very hard, and so they lose practice in self-discipline?
The article should be renamed to Parental Guidance and Aptitude Outdoes IQ. There's are a lot of "smart" people out there who are the result of very fortunate parenting rather than actually possessing any intelligence.
[+] [-] TheElder|16 years ago|reply
I was not in an environment for intellectual growth, nor was I in an environment that would have indicators of high IQ.
Through pure luck, I had a high school teacher that somewhat set me on the right course. For half a day, two years long, I had this teacher for a CAD class. He told me attitude was everything and encouraged me to enroll in college. My first two years weren't great. I struggled in classes like algebra. I also didn't know how to study.
After two years of getting nowhere, I moved to a large US city as a result of certain life circumstances. I finished up my undergraduate degree and took a year off. I didn't feel very happy though. I wanted to get a graduate degree. My company was willing to pay for it, as long as I worked 40 hours a week and made good grades. It was a complete change for me, kind of a fresh start. I decided I would take the university serious. Because my undergrad wasn't computer science, I had to complete all of the undergrad computer science courses. So I had at least four years ahead of me to get my masters.
Only because I worked really hard and studied a lot, I would often be the top performer in my 3 calculus classes, discrete math, and so on (this wasn't always the case... but hey, I was working a full-time job too). I ended up with a masters in computer science, something I never thought was possible for me.
Something that inspired me was that I'd see the international students (mostly east Asian and Indian) study very hard. They would study all day long in the library. They seemed like the very definition of self-discipline. I adapted to that the best I could while still working 40 hours per week doing .net programming.
It seems like I fit the premise of this paper and can relate: Low to average IQ who often did better than my higher IQ classmates and friends.
[+] [-] pepsi_can|16 years ago|reply
I also feel like my intelligence is average but what helped me succeed is how much I enjoyed all my computer science courses.
[+] [-] bokonist|16 years ago|reply
I'm curious. Did you actually know for sure that your IQ score was below average? ( or the score from similar type of test, like the SAT). It would be interesting counterpoint to the validity of IQ/SAT testing if you actually tested below average, and then ended up in a career that requires much greater than average cognitive skills.
[+] [-] btilly|16 years ago|reply
The executive summary is that children's ability to delay gratification at age 4 was one of the best predictors of future academic success decades later.
[+] [-] krakensden|16 years ago|reply
It would certainly make hiring easier.
[+] [-] Dilpil|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] webwright|16 years ago|reply
I can certainly see why discipline would be important for the majority of your team-- but I've always wonder how many geniuses Google passes on because they don't fit this mold.
[+] [-] pchristensen|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warwick|16 years ago|reply
I tried putting effort towards school for a while. I figured if I had to play, I may as well win. The problem with treating high school as a game is that it's not fun. Learning the material doesn't get you anything, not even more advanced material to dig into.
For me, digging my teeth into a difficult problem is it's own reward. In high school I wasn't asked to work on difficult problems. Instead I sat in the back of the class, ignored the lecture, worked on whatever I was doing at the time, and coasted through the tests well enough to pass.
Plenty of effort. Plenty of work ethic. Plenty of smarts. Nothing I wanted to work on.
[+] [-] GHFigs|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidenn0|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheElder|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doki_pen|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] queensnake|16 years ago|reply
Note that Flynn (yes, that one) is no racist.
[+] [-] mattmcknight|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwern|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icono|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] David|16 years ago|reply
Think I can successfully rationalize this as a focus-enhancing short term break instead of a lack of self-discipline?
[+] [-] ssn|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonjon|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mmt|16 years ago|reply
The title is pretty much true by definition, since the traditional "factory" education system is so highly structured.
Intelligence, OTOH, could be construed as an adaptation to an unstructured, real world.