They Can't Even Define Intelligence, Much Less Measure It — by Steven Goldthwaite

By Steven Goldthwaite

I wasn’t the best student. It wasn’t that I didn’t like learning. I did. I was curious about all kinds of things. The problem was that they weren’t always the things I was supposed to be learning. I probably spent too much time pursuing whatever interested me at the moment and not enough time on classwork.

After my freshman year at Lehigh, I received my grades. They were bad. Actually, they were terrible. I remember calling my father from the phone in my dorm to deliver the bad news. I read him my grades. His response was something I have remembered and repeated for most of my life now.

He said, “They can’t even define intelligence, much less measure it. Do the best you can.”

He didn’t tell me the grades didn’t matter. He didn’t tell me I was smarter than my professors thought I was. And he didn’t tell me I needed to work harder. He simply put grades in perspective.

What I heard was: Don’t let someone else’s measurement define you.

There will always be people, institutions and systems trying to put us into categories. Successful or unsuccessful. Smart or not smart. Qualified or unqualified. Good student or bad student. Some of those measurements are useful. But they aren’t necessarily definitions of who we are or what we’re capable of becoming. That distinction became important in my life.

Not too many years later, I started my first company. There was no grade telling me I was qualified to do it. No one handed me a certificate saying I was ready. I certainly didn’t know everything I needed to know. I just started.

Over the years there were many more businesses, successes, failures, difficult decisions and things I had to learn the hard way. Looking back, I think some of my willingness to take those chances came from the confidence my father gave me. Do your best. Learn. Most importantly stay curious.

But don’t let somebody else’s definition of you become your own.