Intelligence is a slippery virtue. Take a savant out of his comfort zone and place him in an unfamiliar intellectual arena, and he may seem mediocre or worse.
I have been humbled myself. Although people tell me that I'm smart, from time to time, their words bounce right off me. I know that in certain areas, I am not smart at all, but middling or worse. Chemistry mystifies me. Biology eats me up and converts me into adenosine tri-phosphate. Physics makes me sick. Calculus makes me cuss.
When someone tells you that you are intelligent, bear in mind that human intelligence tends to specialize. Taken out of your niche, would you still be at the top or would you be another amateur?
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