A Certain Type Of Stupidity

Have you ever had a crippling embarrassment over being incapable of possessing the same skills as others? Recently, I went to a college day that my art program was holding. Everyone seemed so much more experienced than I was. I felt embarrassed to even say that I had work to show. I had never experienced anything like it, and it made me wonder what made me feel this way and if others felt the same way at times. 
I realized that it happens a lot more frequently than we would like to admit. Truth is, in an ordinary school, the same thing is happening all the time. The school is constantly ranking us on our ability to follow their system of judgement. Follow instructions, do your work, get good grades, don’t do anything else. If you have a high gpa or if you have advanced classes, people often assume that you are a very intellectual person. I would try to stay away from that type of thinking since that means that those who don’t do the same aren’t very smart. Which is absolutely not the case. The people who are considered very smart are just able to follow or cheat the system into working in their favour. The others just aren’t interested or capable of this type of intellect. Which isn’t very fair since there’s many types of intellect, I think. Someone in a lower level class might possess a skill someone from a higher level class doesn’t. If we judge them solely by this skill, then we could say that the person from the higher level class is “stupid” in the area. We don’t often see it this way though, since we’re so used to a sole type of intellect, the one forced upon us by the educational system. We hold certain skills to have more value than others. But I leave you with one of my favorite quotes: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein