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I am not smart

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Original post by Anonymous1502
I am tired of people telling me that I am smart because in my head I know I am not and nothing can change that I feel extremely inferior compared to others.I am not smart enough for my school I am not smart enough for my teachers I know i am not smart I am tired of hearing lies because i know I am stupid.


I can totally relate to this. I remember in year 7, there were so many people whom I deemed objectively smarter than me. It seemed that they were somehow beyond me. This is a lie. In an assembly one day, I heard one of the teachers mention this: success=talent * effort^2. I cannot express how true this is. Excluding the occasional sublime genius, there is either no true thing as being smart or the difference is so insignificant that effort will always triumph. People who get all the A*'s aren't necessarily clever. The international students you mention probably work a lot harder than you do(I think this is just a difference in culture- the uk takes a laid back attitude).

Take me for example, I can certainly tell you that I am not super 'smart'. I got 5A 4B 1A* at GCSE mocks last year. Once I realised that effort determined success, I worked very hard and turned my GCSE's into 9A* 1A. I cannot stress this enough, I went through a pretty terrible time thinking I was not clever, often attributing successes to luck. This even applies in subjects like maths.
Original post by Anonymous
I can totally relate to this. I remember in year 7, there were so many people whom I deemed objectively smarter than me. It seemed that they were somehow beyond me. This is a lie. In an assembly one day, I heard one of the teachers mention this: success=talent * effort^2. I cannot express how true this is. Excluding the occasional sublime genius, there is either no true thing as being smart or the difference is so insignificant that effort will always triumph. People who get all the A*'s aren't necessarily clever. The international students you mention probably work a lot harder than you do(I think this is just a difference in culture- the uk takes a laid back attitude).

Take me for example, I can certainly tell you that I am not super 'smart'. I got 5A 4B 1A* at GCSE mocks last year. Once I realised that effort determined success, I worked very hard and turned my GCSE's into 9A* 1A. I cannot stress this enough, I went through a pretty terrible time thinking I was not clever, often attributing successes to luck. This even applies in subjects like maths.


How did you improve your grades, dont just you studied/revised more tell me what techniques/methods did you use. And how can you become better at maths,except doing past papers, i do past papers but i dont get better at maths because i have no idea how people get the answer to a question.
Original post by Anonymous
How did you improve your grades, dont just you studied/revised more tell me what techniques/methods did you use. And how can you become better at maths,except doing past papers, i do past papers but i dont get better at maths because i have no idea how people get the answer to a question.



HELM - Helping Engineers Learn Mathematics - is a major 3-year curriculum development project to support the mathematical education of engineering students. The project is sponsored by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) through phase 4 of the Fund for the Development for Teaching and Learning (FDTL4).

http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/jav/soton/HELM/helm_workbooks.html
Original post by Kiritsugu
Adapt the Growth Mindset. That will really help.


I agree with Kiritsugu, it literally changed my life. Adopt it and truly believe in it, everything will seem much simpler and clearer OP, trust me!
Play to your options, if you can't have brains have brawn. Hit the gym and graduate from the academy of gains
Original post by Anonymous
How did you improve your grades, dont just you studied/revised more tell me what techniques/methods did you use. And how can you become better at maths,except doing past papers, i do past papers but i dont get better at maths because i have no idea how people get the answer to a question.


Maths is an interesting subject and there are a bunch of ways to 'better'. Firstly, doing past papers certainly helps, but before you do them, you must understand the fundamentals in a very deep way. If you understand the topics thoroughly, rather than blindly cramming formula(i.e understand how and why they work and the whole thing will make sene

Alternatively, albeit a much longer and time consuming task is to do the maths challenges. They teach you to think in a way that immediately makes GCSE and A-level maths trivial. The Art of Problem solving books are good for this and you can start at any level. But if you are in yr 11, this is probably a bit late for doing this.

As for how I got my grades, I just worked incredibly hard, Id say 2 hours on weekdays and around 6-9hrs on weekends in the 3 months preceding GCSEs. For languages, you have to continually learn it if you want to do well, cramming doesnt work.
Also, a good detailed set of notes(made by you), I found very useful especially for the more essay style subjects. For physics, dont revise it like the other subjects, its more of an understanding subject that memorising subject.
Reply 26
I was the same as you, basically a straight A pupil that people considered smart but I myself never thought I was. What you need to do is altogether remove the thought of 'how intelligent am I' I know it sounds like a rather stupid thing to say but trust me, if it makes you depressed then just consider it something not to worry about, as long as you're happy with what you achieve that is what matters.
Original post by Anonymous1502
But I want it I had been dreaming so much about going to a top university it is my dream I sacrificed a lot to get to where i am.


The sorts of grades you are getting right now are enough to get you into a russel group uni (some of the best), but if you keep being so hard on youself and slipping down a slope of anxiety and low self worth you are going to do less well at college.
One of the best ways you can help yourself and keep working towards you dream is to make sure that you have good mental health. Stress and anxiety lead to impared brain function and a big limit on how much of you intelligence you can actually use and how much more you can learn. I sugget that you work on making sure you have a good mental state.

Also remember that going to a top uni isn't always everything. Different unis have different ways of working and different focuses. You may actually find that going to a uni that is a better fit fo you benefits you more than going to a better ranked uni.

Btw with unis it isn't all about grades either. If you want to impress on your personal statement get some volunteering hours, take up a sport or join a group like scouts or cadets. There are a lot of applications for top unis compared to places available and most of the applicants with have basically the same grades. You need to sell yourself as a person as well as an accademic and that means finding something to set yourself apart from the rest. Even better if you can appky it to what you want to study (although at this stage you may not have made your mind up about that).
Taking some of your focus from school and putting it into something like that could really help your application and hopefully also improve how you feel mentally a bit.

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