The "dumb" one?

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I don't think I've ever been seen as 'dumb' per se. I did quite well academically up until college, when I got completely overwhelmed, immersed myself in <cough> chemical extracirriculars and flamed out. This does not come highly recommended. I'm a compulsive reader, always have been, and co-workers sometimes comment on how smart I am, which drives me nuts. Fairly sure I'm seen more as weird and awkward, which is not necessarily inaccurate. I'm sure I often come across as lacking in common sense. When I'm tired or overwhelmed I can have trouble managing familiar procedures and seems to forget (temporarily) basic steps I know quite well.

People often think I am stupid and I really don't know why. I always had top grades and will soon get a MA degree. I usually was the best student in class and still some teachers would tell me that I look like I don't get it. People who don't know me tend to perceive me as a dumb blonde...

I've always been considered slow and not all that bright by peers (school), mainly due to my slow speech and mannerisms, and also poor academic performance in the latter years.

Intelligence is a subjective thingy though. I see a lot of "smart" people do stupid things, for example.

Yes and Yes.

Yeah, it happens to me quite a bit. Several days ago, a friend called me awkward, quiet, and both meanings of dumb.

Sometimes, it can take me a little longer than others to get a joke, or a few seconds of being confused before I realize the person is being sarcastic, or laughing/staring blankly at a person when I take something literally. I also have to have people repeat things several times because I'm either spacing out and deep in thought about something else, or I just can't hear them over the background noise. Oh, and when my guy friends make those dirty jokes and comments, they often use terms I don't understand. I guess when you add those things up, I CAN seem a bit slow at times?

Another friend once told me that I can be a dumb blonde. Which is... odd, because we had a heated discussion about theories of time travel, time dilation, black holes, warping space-time, and such before.

That's one of my major issues, I call it the "blank sheet" phenomenon. Someone will ask me a question and I can't answer it because either the question didn't get processed in my aspie brain or my response is simply delayed. Some people get really pissed off by this; I hate it because I don't choose to have these blank moments, they just happen!

Blank sheet phenomenon... that's actually a really good name for it!

I got called mentally slow again by someone today in English class.

Sometimes, when I can't make out what the other person is saying, I'll just give some random answer or pretend like I knew what they were talking about. It's not to be mean, I just don't want them to get irritated by repeating themselves too much. Once, I was asking a friend (who might be an Aspie...) what high school he was going to, and I had to get him to repeat four times before I heard what he said. In a more recent experience, a classmate was asking me something, and the background noise was just drowning everything out, and she had to repeat seven times, and I never was able to hear what she said. She was also... barely a foot away from me too.

Yes! I've often felt that when compared to my siblings, I'm considered the "dumb one" of the family, but I think some of that is because they've both graduated from college, whereas I have not.

I space out a lot and spend a lot of time in my own little world while I'm outside of the house, so most people think I'm a complete and total airhead. The fact that I have no common sense doesn't help me at all, either. However, after I end up having to work with someone on a project or someone around me starts getting lost with whatever's going on in class, I immediately become their own personal Wikipedia.

It's like an instant promotion from Ed to Scar.

When I was about twelve, my mother basically told me that I was the stupidest person in the family, with the worst grades and the least potential (that's right, I had a B- average! woohoo!). It was hard hearing her say that, even though I knew it was her tiger-mother approach to trying to get me to achieve perfection. It was also hard failing at stuff intentionally for years just to get her to say the words "so long as you do your best I'm proud of you." After that I could relax and go back to working hard like I wanted to all along. I just had to prove to her that there are more important things in life than grades and comparing yourself to others.

Yes... I was a stubborn little martyr like that.

no mostly people consider me intelligent