Ashley Ladyman

October 10, 2005

Successful Intelligence Paper

Am I Successfully Intelligent?

In Robert J. Sternberg’s Successful Intelligence, he discusses three different aspects of intelligence: analytical, creative, and practical. Each of these aspects makes up intelligence as a whole. From the readings in Successful Intelligence and the activities that we have done as a class, I have discovered what intelligence is made up of. However, I have yet to discover whether or not I am successfully intelligent. So, here’s the question of the hour, Sternberg, am I successfully intelligent?

I am eternally jealous of people who are analytically intelligent. These are the folks who are really good at taking tests and memorizing information. They are considered “bright students” (128). They score high on standardized tests and look very good on paper. But, they have no dimension to them; they are “uninspired” (129). Their work is “technically excellent, but dull” (129). These people do well in secondary education because intelligence is measured on how well you are at “remembering and analyzing other people’s ideas” (129). It is hard for them to actually come up with their own ideas, so they tend to fail in “advanced schooling, where (as in life) it is necessary to have original ideas” (129).

I am totally not analytically intelligent. I have such a hard time with the memorization and retention of facts. I am a horrible test taker. I have learned these truths the hard way, after spending many a night up until the wee hours of the morning studying, only to fail the test the next day. I have found that it is literally impossible for me to remember most of the things that I study and what little I do retain immediately leaves my brain when the test is set down in front of me. It is almost like I panic when it comes to test time. So, needless to say, I am not one of the kids like Alice or Ben that Sternberg talks about in chapter four.

Sternberg brings another character to the table to describe creative intelligence, Barbara. Her grades were “good, although by no means spectacular” and her “test scores were very weak” (137). However, her “undergraduate teachers thought she was just terrific” (137) and she had a highly impressive portfolio. Why was her schoolwork so full of mediocrity then? It is because she was creative and creativity cannot be measured by a standardized test. Those kinds of tests only measure how good you are analytically and in reality, it is so much more important to be creative.

I have figured out that I am more creatively intelligent. I am an “independent thinker” (139). I like to go against the grain and be different. However, this is not so readily welcomed in today’s educational societies. It has been my experience that teachers care more about the analytical intelligence of today’s students and they discourage them from exploring the more creative aspects of their intellect. This is why I love the PORTfolio program so much, because I feel like students are encouraged to utilize their creativity. In the real world, this aspect is what will take me farther. No employer is going to ask me to memorize dates and facts and take a test on them once a week, they will want me to be able to creatively handle the different daily aspects of my job, and I will know how to.

Practically intelligent people are “good, but not great” (141). They have an abundance of “simple common sense” (141). People who are practically intelligent are able to adapt to their surroundings and figure out a way to succeed in that area. They know how to “interview effectively, how to interact well with others, and how to get [their] work done” (142).

My time at Virginia Wesleyan College has proved to me that I am practically intelligent. In order to come here, I had to get a scholarship and in order to get a scholarship, I had to go to three different interviews with different people in the Virginia Wesleyan College community. On paper, I was okay, nothing special. My grades were “good, but not great,” to reference Sternberg. However, I knew how to interview well. That is what got me my scholarship, I believe. Not book smarts, but rather my ability to adapt to my environment, to the people I was interviewing with.

So, now the question arises as to how you can become successfully intelligent. “Successful intelligence is most effective when it balances all three of its analytical, creative, and practical aspects” (128). More importantly, it is more important to know “when and how to use these aspects of successful intelligence than just to have them” (128).

So the real question now is if I, Ashley Ladyman, from all of my readings and teachings and class activities, consider myself to be successfully intelligence. I don’t know. You see, I consider myself to be creatively intelligent. I think outside the box, I don’t like to do things the same, exact way as everyone else. I feel like I fall into the category of successfully intelligent people who, “buy low and sell high” and “defy the crowd and, eventually, come to lead it” (189). I also consider myself to be practically intelligent. I have common sense and I am able to adapt to my surrounding and I understand how to complete “real-world tasks” (229). What makes me question my intelligence is the analytical aspect of it all. From my experiences in the past and my experience in this class, I realize that I am not so analytically inclined. Analytically intelligent people “think carefully” (168) about things, rather than just jump right into them. I am more impulsive, I think that that is my creative side coming out. Also, although analytically intelligent people may not always make the correct decisions, “they monitor and evaluate their decisions and then correct their errors as they discover them” (171). Although I may discover a mistake, it is hard for me to remember how to fix it later on down the road. I am halfway there in my analytical abilities; I have pinpointed my problem, now I just need to figure out how to fix it.

Sternberg has taught me a lot in this book. I used to think there was only one type of intelligence. You were either smart, or you weren’t, there was no gray area and no exceptions. But, now I realize that there are so many aspects to intelligence, there are different ways to be smart. You can be book smart (analytical), idea smart (creative), and street smart (practical). With all of these aspects, every single person can be considered intelligent in their own way. So, Sternberg, I guess I can consider myself to be successfully intelligent.

Work Cited:

Sternberg, Robert. Successful Intelligence. New York: First Plume Printing, 1997.