(Pre-College Series: Chapter 6) Are you “smart”? How are you suppose to even answer that question? There are so many factors that go into the definition of “smart”, and we tend to only look are some of them individually to classify someone as “smart”. For this episode, we discuss what being smart means to us using different perspectives, and answer the questions do you have to be smart to go to college and does college make you smart.
Episode link: https://play.headliner.app/episode/15943674?utm_source=youtube
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Welcome to the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses all the things that schools
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may have missed with your hosts, AJ Couty and Jason Gordon. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show
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We are the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses all the things schools may not have
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prepared you for. As always, I'm AJ sitting across me, Jason. Jason, how you doing? Doing well, AJ. Been busy lately, so that's always, you know, double-edged sword, right
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Good and bad associated with that. Yeah, end of the semester. Well, it's past us now, but end of the semester, man, it's rough
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Of course, I always teach during the summer. I think you do as well
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So, you know, we have this little break, but then it kicks right back up. Yeah, that little break is just getting ready for the next semester
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Yeah. Not a whole lot of downtime. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be. Are you doing all in class or are you doing
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I have a combination. I have a combination of online and in person
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I mean, I would prefer for them all to be in person, quite frankly. But, you know, it's we COVID and evolution towards online classes
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Students expectations have changed over these last couple of years. You got to meet the demand. Right. I mean, that's kind of one of those core concepts of business that we talk about
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But it doesn't mean that it's engaging for the professor. Yeah, that's the tough part is I miss the engagement side because I feed off of the engagement, the participation
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And so when it's kind of a downtime for students, I can feel my energy go down as well to match theirs
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Oh, yeah. It's very difficult to teach to icons on a screen. Right
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Or even if people turn the camera on, it's just not the same. You don't get to know the person
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There's this hesitance to speak, right, and ask questions and things like that
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So it's just different, you know, but there is a balance there
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You know, you have some classes that are in person and you have to balance those against those that are online
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Yeah. Have you had the student that has their camera on, but they're like watching a movie in the background
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Well, I have I normally don't have that. What I have is students that that log in and then walk off
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So I ask them a question and it's just radio silence. Nothing
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You can type up a message in the chat. Nothing. Nothing. Right. Well, today's episode, we are going to be talking about this topic that kind of, I guess you'd say, is central to what people go into college for or they kind of assume college
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You bring to college or you get out of college. But it's smart. You know, what is smart
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And really, the title of our episode is, Are You Smart Enough for College
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So that's going to be interesting. I have a feeling when we were going through this, it's going to be a pretty deep one because there's so many different areas you can go into what is smart
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So I can't wait to get into this. And it's one of those, you know, classism, separatism type thing, you know, what college means and things like that
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So, yeah, I'm looking forward to jumping into that one. Before we do, though, remind everybody, visit our website
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Check us out at reschooled.com. So again, drop us a line. Let us know what you want to hear about. Visit our social media platforms. And of course, your favorite podcasting apps. Got to give us those five stars or four stars or however many stars they'll let you give us. But regardless
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Give us 10 if you can. Yeah, give us as many as you can give us. Notifications when we drop new episodes. But you can find all that stuff on our website. And we want to have a conversation with you. So please reach out
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so quick question of the day today this is kind of a grade yourself I guess we're going to use a
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scale of one to ten uh how smart are you how smart am I I am I would say I'm six and a half to seven
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and a half given given the day I feel like this is the first time ever that we have done any grade
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yourself that you've given yourself potentially lower than a C, so lower than passing. And this
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one's the ones dealing with smarts. Well, you know what they say, the more you know
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the more you realize you don't know. Yeah, that's true. And the more things you tackle
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right, the more you realize you're incompetent at some things, right, no matter how confident you
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are at others. So, you know, in reality, most people gravitate around a five. So I'm still
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giving myself a positive there on the curve those uh seven eight nine even tens of intelligence
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those are the outliers right if you were to do that statistical ysis they are they are way
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on the far end of the uh bell curve so yeah i'm i think i would be probably maybe right around it
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depends because it depends on on like there'll be times where i'm around people i'm like i'm a
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freaking nine. But then there'll be times around I'm around people and I'm like, I'm a two
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When you hang around threes, you think you're a nine. You hang around tens, you think you're a one
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And they say, if you can't find the dumbest person in the room, then you're probably it
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There you go. Right. And I just, I don't, cause there's, there's, and we're going to talk about this in a minute
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but like there's so many different ways to look at smart. And so I would say on average
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I would say I'm probably a six and a half to seven. Just, I do feel like I'm, I'm, I don't even want to say, cause I don't, it's like tooting
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your own horn. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but like, I do feel like I'm a little above average
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in the smart side. Cause it's definitely not the athletic sides that got me to where I am
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It's had to been the academic side. Um, so I would have to say that I'm a little above average
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So yeah, I think I would, I would agree with you on that. So you bring up a good point there, and that's kind of the first topic we're going to talk about
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What is smart? In my opinion, right, you've heard me say before that strategy is the most misused word in business, maybe in anything
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But smart has got to be the most misused word in life, or at least it's the most poorly understood
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so everybody knows you've you know historically we've called people smart based upon what they
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know right some people call other people smart based upon what they can know right that's the
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whole iq thing about your ability to yeah see patterns and put things together but once again
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you can have a really high iq and have a low knowledge base of most things you can have a high
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understanding or knowledge base of so many things and not be that terribly smart, right
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You've had low intelligence quotients there with chess masters. You probably have people that win at jeopardy, right
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That have a massive amount of knowledge who really just when it comes to just the ability
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to figure out problems is not that strong. Then, you know, you've got this whole new realm of understanding people, right
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How you interrelate and things like that. Your emotional intelligence right On that EQ factor where you can basically identify other people feelings emotions their reaction to how you you acting
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And you usually the EQ is how you can control yourself with regard to what you perceive in them
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So all those things together. Right. I mean, how do you come up with a definition of what is smart
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Right. When you got all these ways that you can measure it. Yeah, I'm a firm believer that there is a difference between book smarts and street smarts. You hear that a lot. Somebody's book smart or somebody's street smart. Which one are they? They tend to be not. And I kind of look at that as IQEQ. IQ being more book smarts because you're looking at more patterns. You're looking at more what they consider the intelligence side of it
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So it's the stuff that you would study for, the stuff that you get really quickly, more math-based STEM stuff, those kind of things, versus the street smarts, which is your EQ, more of your EQ
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How can you survive, I guess you would say, in the streets
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Like are you able to read people? Are you able to communicate with people, gain those relationships, be able to identify their feelings based on different factors, whether it be facial cues or body language or tone of voice, those kind of things
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And then also there's some other areas within street smarts. You know, it's the stuff that you get from experience, not from the books
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And we all deal with people, too, that seem to have neither one of those
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Right. They don't have a lot of common sense. They don't have a lot of, you know, they're don't seem to be able to learn or put patterns together very well when you speak to them
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But they have a incredible understanding of whatever area or field they're in
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Right. I know. I mean. I can say I know people across that spectrum, some people that are just emotionally intelligent and they can interact with anybody, which means they recognize other people who they are and then they can assimilate accordingly to who they're dealing with
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That is a level of intelligence. The ability to recognize irony and things like that, the intelligence level of comedians and stuff like that, that's obvious
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Right. They they they're able to figure that out. Mathematicians, things like that are obviously incredibly smart
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But sometimes you I don't know how many you've met, particularly in that science based field where they have so little personality or so little ability to deal with other people
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Right. There's something terribly missing. OK. And their knowledge base may not extend much further than their area of expertise
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So the idea of smart is relative to, I guess, whatever you're talking about. But I guess for us, what matters is how does smart relate to college? Right. I mean, how does it relate to formal education? How does it relate to your career path and what you're going to undertake
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Yeah, I'm always drawn back to that quote that's cited by Einstein
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I don't know if he actually said it. There's some dispute about that. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it'll live its whole life believing it's stupid
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Yeah. I mean, and when I heard that, I was like, okay, that makes complete sense because we're all, I mean
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and the beginning of that quote says everyone's a genius. And I do think that is partially true
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I think everyone is smart in their own right. What we're talking about in this episode is smart from the perspective of college. And again, that does not, in my opinion, it does not have to mean that you're going to be an A student. You know, you're going to have that 4.0 student. 4.0 students don't necessarily mean that you're smart. It means that you can study well and you do very well on tests. But it doesn't necessarily mean you're smart
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To me, again, one of my things that I've really tried to focus in on through my college career, and you can call it because I'm lazy, I do think that's part of being smart, is efficiency, is strategy
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I use strategy in a lot of things, and I use that strategy, my knowledge of strategy, and my ability to create strategy to compensate for different things
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Whether it be to figure out a more efficient way of doing something, more effective way of doing something, you know, things that cut time down, things that don't necessarily have to do at this moment or, you know, I think that's part of being smart
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That's kind of where my smart because it was definitely not in the book's smart area. Like I was not a studier
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I had to figure out ways around it. Well, we do know that people learn things, right, based upon repetitive exposure to it
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And certain exposure is more meaningful than others. That whole thing about, you know, I'm a visual learner versus I'm a reader, blah, blah, blah
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That means you soak things up a little bit better than one, but everybody learns better reading
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Everybody then learns better. And so the hierarchy is pretty much the same for everyone in terms of how things stick in your mind
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And people who tend to make 4.0s or very high grade average over long term performance tend to have a discipline characteristic, right
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They're very disciplined in what they do. They tend to be organized, measured, things like that
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Now, what that translates to is a better acquisition of the knowledge that's before you
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That's why it does so well in school, because school introduces you to things that needs you to learn
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It takes you a long time to learn it. You stay diligent at it. You embed it
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It tends to stay longer. So you know more. You understand more about it
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Now, your ability to figure out things versus somebody else may be lower
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But if you put in that amount of diligent effort, you will understand the topic and have a stronger base to work from from somebody else
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But what we also know is the more you learn, the more you can learn
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because the stronger the base that you're working with means that when you encounter new things
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you can relate it back to other things and associate. So somebody can actually make themselves smarter in terms of your overall ability to process new information
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and put it in a usable form. So people who start out in a way, they don't process things as well, right
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If you were to give them a math problem, for example, or you were to give them pattern problems and things like that
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And they might not score as high on an intelligent quotient. Right. But as through diligent effort, as they acquire more knowledge, it means that one, yes, they understand that field better
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But they also begin to understand future fields better. Right. You and I both, we we've taught a wide range of students. Right
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Very smart students and students who are very much struggling. And that's one thing I've noticed
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Right. Probably the underlying ability to learn is the same from the outset
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But the fact that one student has been diligent longer and has a stronger base to work from, they learn so much more efficiently
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They are able to acquire and use information so much better than the students who have fallen behind
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Right. That and that's an important aspect of school. That's the type of performance that school measures
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And oftentimes in the workforce pure intelligence doesn go very far Right In terms of your ability to solve problems and things like that because most of your day is just use of information towards an objective that you have that is routine right You have a routine thing that you do over and over
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So diligence is still in every facet, in every form, whether it's academics or whether it's work
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accomplishment is most closely tied to diligence. The idea that people make it somewhere, right
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They make it successful and people all of a sudden call them, oh, they're smart. They must be very smart
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Well, that's not always true, right? In terms of by comparison, you wouldn't just comparatively how their brain works, the amount of knowledge they've acquired, things like that may not be superior to others
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Usually people who make it high in organizations tend to have a very high EQ, right
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They deal with others very well. And oftentimes they have, by comparison, a lower IQ
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And they also have a lower proficiency rating and total acquisition of knowledge
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Right. There's been Carl Icahn, I remember, is famous for saying that, you know, CEOs are never the smartest people
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They just get along with everybody else, friends and enemies alike. They're the least disagreeable person. Right
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So he said he can always create value in a company that he takes over by replacing the CEO
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Right. And I and I thought that was pretty insightful. Right. Somebody who makes it to the pinnacle of an organization
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So once again, we just talk about these things and it just comes back to the definition of what is smart
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Right. What is useful and what, you know, but we do have this context. Right
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We're talking about college. So, you know, you know, you mentioned something, too, that I think is interesting that kind of I've always felt like the GPA standard
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in school, especially graduating from college, I always felt like that was such a bad metric
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I mean, it is good for its end point. Like this is the results of what you did. That's great
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And that's, but I think there should be more context with it, not just as simple that you
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got a three point, whatever, or a four point, because I think at least in my classes, and I'm
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sure this is in your classes and this is classes around the nation when it comes to college classes and high school classes, but you really have three types of students in your class. You have
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ones that are going to come in, make an A on every exam, and they're going to make an A in the class
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And those are the ones that are just, you know, when it comes to that subject, whatever you're talking about, they know how to study. They know what they're doing. People see them as smart
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And that's how we see it. A 4.0 is smart, like you were saying. Then you have the ones at the
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bottom that come in with an F leave with an F and they, they don't, they don't either, they're just
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not getting the subject. They're not getting what's being talked about. They, they struggle
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with tests. They don't study whatever the reason is. They're more at the bottom. And those kind of
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that's what you see when you get this GPA of a 4.0 or a 2.0 or a 1.0, or if you're in the
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you know, square root club lower than a one. So, but it never shows those people in the middle
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And I think the people in the middle, and when I say the middle, I'm talking about the ones that come in and are struggling and they make maybe a C or a D at midterm
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And then all of a sudden by the final, they have a high B or low A
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Those to me show growth. And I think that's something more important to me from a business perspective when I'm hiring people is I want to see somebody that's going to be able to grow
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I want to see because, again, it shows growth and it shows also that at a time of adversity, they were able to overcome it
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They were able to get past it and not stress out about it, not just, you know, leave it as is
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They were able to make it better. And I think that's a quality to me from a business perspective and hiring that's more important than getting somebody that's a 4.0
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Because 4.0 just means that you know that topic. So I will say this, you know, and we're a little bit biased because we both teach in the business field, right
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Yeah, of course. Business is not a hard major by comparison. It's one of the easiest, quite frankly. So it is easy for us to measure, oh, is a student diligent or not by looking at their GPA. It is almost without question somebody who makes a 4.0 is a diligent studier
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But if you don't or are unwilling to put in the effort, it's easy to have a 2.0, a 3.0, right
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Now, there can be all kinds of reasons why you can't put in the effort. You work all the time
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You just don't have the time to memorize, internalize, apply the material that's before you, right
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You made a great point about, you know, students who come in very low, they put in the effort and they do better towards the end
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That growth is always incredible. You do get the impression of growth sometimes that people just figure out the system, but they're not trying harder. Always look for that. Is someone putting in the effort towards improving themselves? Because, you know, we teach in business. Our objective is to prepare somebody for the business world. And luckily, most jobs in the business world don't require all of that knowledge that we expose you to in business school
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You only need a fraction of it. And studies show students forget about 90 percent of what they learn in traditional school. Right. But that 10 percent is plenty. Right. Is plenty to give them the background because whatever you go and do, you're going to learn how to do it type scenario
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But school tends to mold people's mind into an openness, right, a way of thinking
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So the value that comes from that exposure is understandable. Now, somebody's willingness to learn the requirements of the job, it's, you know, to see somebody's GPA or to look at their overall involvement in things
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does tend to tell a story about how diligent they'll be in whatever task or responsibilities they're given, right
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If somebody, right, is unwilling to do the work that they don't like to do in school
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there's nothing, they don't have family issues, they don't have other obligations that keep them time-wise from doing the work
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then if you give them in the employment context, they will also delay in doing the work they're assigned
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Right. There is some correlation there. Tests that tend to measure certain aspects like, you know, the SAT, the LSAT thing, you know, MCAT's actually subject matter based
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That's for medical school. But LSAT's for law school. So GRE, you know, those types of things, they don't tend to be a good indicator of performance in school once you get in
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The GPA tends to be a better indicator. But the combination of the two has been shown, right, to do a better job than any one of them individually
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Right. An average examination test score, right, for general capacity. And a high GPA tends to be a really strong, solid performer
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Combination of the two tends to be a very strong performer Low GPA high score tends to be a very bad performer right Just because the diligence or effort isn there in the acquisition of knowledge
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requires a lot of effort, right? Or, you know, to some people, that effort is so frustrating
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It's so repugnant, right? They won't undertake it. And students that fall behind, I can say
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without question, they tend to be so intimidated and they tend to be so disheartened by their need
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to catch up on fundamental concepts and principles before they can actually start internalizing the
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information. You know, a lot of my students can't write a full paragraph without making numerous
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errors. You know, and that's a that's a that's a huge fundamental skill problem. So it causes them
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to not be able to successfully perform any of the tasks associated with a job, right
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And so anyway, what I would say there is, you know, we ask the question
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do you need to be smart, right, to go to college? No, you really don't, not to go to college and be successful
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So if you are not prepared and have a lot of experience to draw on so that the tasks that you undertake are not easier for you, you have to be more diligent
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You have to be willing to undertake the effort, right, that it requires to perform the task of the job, the task of the class, right
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If you come from a very strong background and doing the tasks assigned in the classroom are not terribly challenging to you because you're drawing on a wealth of prior experience, right, then there you go, right
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It's not going to require as much effort, but a lot of people tend to see that background that you're drawing from as smart
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Now, if you want to test yourself on smart, right, go into something that you have no experience in
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I've dabbled in taking mathematics courses before where I don't have a that much background
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Right. I've dabbled in taking science and creativity courses, right. Technical courses, music, filmmaking, that type of thing with no background to draw on
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And I find it very difficult to internalize the processes and the workflows and everything
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It's just I have so little to draw on. And the technology aspect is so strong
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And people who are doing it have such a background in it already
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To pick up new things is so easy for them. So I feel very, very not smart when I'm doing that
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But in terms of what I do right in the business field, in the legal field, I've worked so diligently for so many years. Right. Every new concept I come across that might be difficult for many others isn't very difficult at all because all the pieces of the puzzle were there. It's so easy to relate the things together. Right
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So, you know, in my opinion, that's just a long form answer of saying there is no answer to that question
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Do you have to be smart to go to college? Yeah, I would agree
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I mean, I don't think you have to be smart. I do think part of smart, as I was listening to you talk about this, I do think part of smart is confidence
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You know, going in there with confidence, going in there with discipline, going in with a strategy
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I think those are inherently qualities of smart in some capacity. And so I do think you need to have some kind of foundation of those kind of things
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But from the knowledge side of it, I mean, to be smart, the only smarts you have to have at college is to be aware that you need to learn
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If you go into college going, I don't need anything, it's just going through this for the formalities, then of course you're going to be screwed
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But I think it's the want to learn, it's the drive to learn, the discipline to learn
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that's what makes you smart. I mean, what does it say? If you, I don't know, I can't remember what the quote is
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but if you're not learning every day of your life, then you're not living or something like that. Yeah
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And if that's not the quote, then I just made that one and I'll take it. You'll take it. But yeah, but I do think like, I try
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I try to learn stuff every day and I try to open my mind up to things that I may have been wrong in the past about
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And I think that's a quality of being smart. That's why I made that decision
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One thing that you were talking about that brought something else in my mind, and I want to talk about this because I think this is a real issue for some people, including myself because I'm going through it right now in my doctorate program, but this thing called imposter syndrome
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Have you ever had imposter syndrome? Yeah, most certainly professionally. Yeah. You know, I've got the accolades of professional practice that would say I have a strong understanding of all of these areas
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And then I oftentimes find myself in areas where I just don't know much about it
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I know I'm going to have to go back and learn it, but people are expecting me to be the knowledge base or the expert in the room, right
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Business hires me, right, to help them with some form of legal business transaction, right
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And they look to me to be the point of source of knowledge. I'm like, I am definitely the imposter right here. I do not have the knowledge base, the experience in this scenario. So, you know, it, it, yeah, I, you know, and I think that happens routinely with every professional, right
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Yeah, I think it happens a lot. And that's, like I said, that's what I'm going through in mind right now is because, I mean, I'm in this program with a whole bunch of other, what I see is very intelligent people in their own right, whatever their area of expertise is. And then they ask me a question about research or they ask me a question about stats, because stats kind of is my bread and butter of the program. I love stats. I love math. And I can just see, I see numbers move easier
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but I mean they'll ask me questions about stats I'm like well you have to look here
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and they say why do you have to look there and I'm like I don't have a clue I just know that's what we got to look for and I I and my grades and stats are fine like all the assignments we're
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doing is good I have you know high marks on those but I know it from the perspective of what the
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book says or how to do it in process but to really really really dive deep and explain
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these things, I'm like, I don't, I don't have a clue what this is. And, and as I go through this
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and ask me these questions, I'm like, I feel like I'm a fish out of water right now. Like in my
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grades say otherwise, but I can promise you, I don't have a clue. I know how to get by again
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It probably goes to strategy. I'm trying to get enough to get by. Um, and then it comes to like
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research. And we had a research paper that was due this past semester. I got really good marks on it
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as I was writing, I'm like, this is the biggest load of crap I've ever written
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And I'm like, and the professor's like, this is a really good paper. You can probably get this published
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you know, finish it. We only had, up to the potential possible methodology
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We didn't actually have to get data or anything like that. But we had to do the intro, the review, the methodology side
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but just forget the results and discussion. And he's like, well, if you finish this up
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this is probably going to get published. And I'm like, this is garbage. This is a load of garbage
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Well, there are a lot of academic papers like that, right? Yeah. But what's the rule out there
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As long as you have data and you use an accepted method
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It doesn't matter whether it makes any sense at all or has any applicability or anything
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It has data, so somebody will publish it. Last question. And this is, so this is kind of the part B of the question we just asked is, do you have to be smart to go to college
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Does college make you smart? Depending on your definition of smart. And honestly, depending on almost, yes, in every way, yes, it makes you smarter
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No question. Acquisition of knowledge helps you learn more, right? The scenarios you're in is actually training and practice towards things that can improve your overall ability to recognize patterns
31:07
So it can improve your intelligence quotient. Interacting with others. Is that opportunity to improve your EQ, right
31:18
Your understanding of others, your ability to recognize patterns in them so you can adjust yourself accordingly
31:22
Yes, it is. Does it improve? Now, the degree to which it improves will vary
31:31
But does it improve your learned knowledge, the things you got stored in the tank
31:36
Yeah, it does. Right. I mean, you wouldn't be able to pass any of the assignments if you didn't acquire some level of understanding of what they're putting out there
31:46
And because, you know, maybe not in some fields, but in most fields, everything you're learning, you don't know
31:55
Right. That's particularly science, math, things like that, that you don't know it
32:00
Business for nontraditional students, you may have seen a good bit of things. So a lot of what you're learning, you might already know
32:07
Not for the traditional student, right, who doesn't have that experience yet
32:12
But you're going to acquire something. So my answer is in every way possible that you could think to measure smart, college does have a positive impact
32:23
Yes. I was actually going to say no until you started talking about EQ
32:29
And I think that is a valid part because it doesn necessarily have to impact IQ because I seen people go into college dumb as a box of rocks and leave college dumb as a box of rocks But there are things I think the box is lighter though You right You right But I think that they even if you take GPA out of it you take their grades out of it
32:55
And believe me, I've seen students that took a test and they wrote on the test
33:01
This was a multiple choice test, by the way. They wrote on the top of the test
33:05
Hey, can I just, can you just please pass me? I didn't study for this, and I just don't know what I'm doing
33:12
And didn't even attempt, and this is multiple choice. This is not like you have to, like you could guess
33:17
And, I mean, I've seen these kind of things that they, some people just go off of looks from high school
33:24
Yeah. But even taking the academics out of college, you have experience, whether it be through fraternities, sororities, organizations, clubs, whatever it is
33:36
you have this interaction with people that I think inherently has an increasing quality of
33:42
EQ or the street smart side of it that I think that potentially could help you in the long run
33:49
So yeah, I would have to agree. I do think in some form or facet and whatever quality that
33:56
you're looking at or all of all the factors and all the qualities that would go into smart
34:00
going through college is going to increase at least one of them
34:03
And I think that would mean that you're smarter by definition, what we were talking about earlier
34:09
It doesn't necessarily mean you're book smart. You're going to grow in book smarts, but it may grow in, like you said, your EQ, your ability to read people, your ability to interact with people, those kind of things
34:20
I think that's worth its weight in gold. I would say this. It is going to be very difficult to make it through college without getting somewhat better at book level rote learning, rote learning performance
34:32
Right. So I think it's going to make you better at that too. But then again, it goes back to – my mind goes back to what I kind of – I battle with – what I feel like I battle with some of my students with, and that is the difference between learning and memorizing
34:47
Memorizing for the purpose of the test, and if I were to give them that same test a week after, they wouldn't have a clue because everything that they learned went right out the window
34:56
Now, granted, I say everything. That's kind of hyperbolic. they would probably have some kind of foundation, hopefully
35:02
Right. Structures may. Structures stay. Right. You're learning about this topic. And, you know, so how you learned about it does
35:10
I will say this, you know, and this is the kind of other side of the coin. Can going to college in a way make you less smart or perceived as less smart by others And there is something I noticed over the past 10 years I have almost every semester in every class talked to my students in some way shape or form as to how they feel about
35:34
you know, college and whether it's making them smarter or how they're progressing and stuff like
35:39
that. And I reinforce that point that I oftentimes talk about, about how college tends to expose you
35:46
to things that you haven't been exposed to before. So it opens your mind, right? It helps with the
35:51
empathy. It helps with understanding other people's point of view, right? That type of thing
35:58
In that, right, that diversity of exposure, you start to expand your mind. It starts to change
36:05
your interests. It starts to change your desire to understand different things, right? And in a way
36:12
it can make you feel dumber for not having known that. It starts to make you aware of what you
36:16
don't know. But oftentimes, as my students, and I give them this as a point of comparison, you know
36:23
when I ask them whether college has impacted them in this way, and I say, it does, whether you
36:28
realize it or not. And I go through that same spiel that I just did with you. But I say, if you don't
36:33
believe me, go back to your hometown, wherever you're from. Talk to the people that you used to
36:40
hang around with that perhaps didn't go on to continue learning, that didn't go on to higher
36:45
education, right, that stayed in your town. This is really easy in smaller towns. When you go back
36:52
and talk with them, there's going to be a disconnect. The things that they talk about will still be the
36:58
same things that they used to talk about. But for some reason, your interest level will have gone
37:03
down, right? You will find it harder to find common ground on which to associate with people, right
37:11
Because they will not have expanded to the new interests that you have, to the new fields of knowledge, to the new depth of understanding, to the ways of looking at things
37:20
They will tend to be locked in to a point of view or way of thinking that they had early on
37:26
And that doesn't expand. Right. And that, you know, is a significant problem
37:32
And without fail, every time I ask this, students heads rock back and forth and they start telling stories of how that's true
37:41
Right. And that helps them in just realizing the value that colleges had in this
37:49
Even the students that say, well, I didn't learn anything in college. Right. I learned more from my job than I ever, you know, in six months than I did throughout my whole college experience
37:58
And I'm like, you think you did. But your job taught you how to do something
38:02
College taught you about things Right It exposed you to things And over time you evolved as a person based upon your exposure to so many things that because you had to process it you had to internalize it you had to work your way through it
38:20
And that helped you evolve as a person. Right. And those are the things you don't get credit for
38:25
Those are the things you don't realize. You mentioned earlier, growth is something you like
38:30
to see. Right. Sometimes we can't see the growth in the students. Sometimes the students can't see
38:35
the growth in themselves that this exposure to information is giving them
38:40
But once again, I tend to grade students based upon effort. I give lots of open book quizzes
38:48
I give lots of assignments that will expose them to things far more than I would test
38:52
them on just so they will have that knowledge base to fall back on in terms of, oh, I've
38:59
seen this before. I'm not scared of it. I've that type of thing
39:03
So I focus on diligence of effort because I know without fail, if they expose themselves to it, there will be some level of growth
39:14
And that growth ultimately will help them personally, professionally, career wise, etc
39:22
It's been a great show. I will say at the end of it, I'm starting to recalculate my scale of how smart am I that I talked about in the quick question
39:30
I'm thinking I'm a little lower than I thought I was. Well, we all, you know, if you ask survey everybody, everybody will say they're smarter than the average person
39:40
Well, then where's the average? I can say I'm pretty good at that old game show, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader
39:46
Yeah. Well, you know, there was a study out there that said something about 85% of men said they were smarter than average
39:55
Oh, yeah, well. So. That's wonderful. They took stats in college. Yeah, right
40:02
Well, that's just where the numbers come out. Everybody has confidence in their ability. They might either be overestimating themselves or they might be underestimating others
40:15
That's true. Well, you have any parting words before we head out? Just remind everybody, right? We're talking to you guys. Tell us what you want to hear about. Visit us on the website. Check us out on the social media platforms. Either way, we want to hear from you
40:28
well we appreciate your time we hope to see you next time until then goodbye take care
40:35
thanks for listening to the reschooled podcast be sure to head over to
40:39
reschooled.com for news and other information on things we're getting into
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