University marks and intelligence.

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As others have said, good grades in college classes does not always mean high intelligence. The reverse is also true: low grades in college classes does not necessary mean low intelligence either. Some of the smartest people that I know (PhD level chemists and physicists) did not graduate with a 4.0 GPA and neither did I. (Mine was in the 3.20 range overall. You had to maintain a 3.0 GPA total to stay in the program at any time.)

When I was in grad school, an potential chemical employer dropped by to talk to us about his company. Well, the 4.0 GPA grad students all thought that they were shoo-ins for the jobs that they would offer. However, the employer said that "they would rather see someone who struggled with school with a 3.0+ GPA, but learned from it than to have someone who was book smart with a 4.0 GPA, but learned almost nothing from it". It wiped the smirks off of so many faces that day, I absolutely loved it. Many of the 4.0 GPA grad students that I knew were not very good in the lab, they were book smart/lab technique dim. One just could not learn column chromatography if her life depended upon it, yet her research involved column extractions of certain compounds.

The key is to realize that people learn differently depending upon their strengths/weaknesses and what they are interested in. Those who have to put effort in to learn something tend to hold onto the information longer than those who just memorized it for the upcoming exam. One thing is for sure: if you are not interested in a subject, it tends to be harder to learn the specific details when compared to something that you do like. I face this all the time with my chemistry students, as they come in hearing how tough chemistry course are without even giving them a chance.

Biochemistry can be a challenge sometimes, as it covers a lot of material. Some universities use it as a weed-out class for med school students on purpose. I totally understand not being interested in certain parts of it, as I had to take a whole year version of it as an undergrad. It was not my favorite by far. Certain topics from that class still make me shudder when I see/hear them.

So true. My foster brother failed every single school exam he sat. The only subject he liked was commercial practice. Some teachers regarded him as stupid - and told him so. He left school unqualified at 16 and set up his own business.

He is 74 now, still the owner of that business which has thrived under his sole management for half a century. That's pretty good for a start-up started by a "stupid" person with no business experience! He had innate business smarts though, and schools weren't the least interested in testing him on those. He believed in himself and took no notice of them. We were quite neglected by our caregivers so we would just go off from a very early age by ourselves every day and do our own thing. Although it was lonely at times, ultimately I think we learned something positive from the neglect - that we could function as individuals and do our own thing without adult help.

My brother was forced to drop out of high school and take his GED.

He is now a millionaire (not that he shares any of his money with me LOL).

He's actually a very bright guy--but he is a total noncomformist, to the point of being iconoclastic.

He didn't believe in the efficacy of education as an entity onto itself; he only believes in it as a way to obtain a good job. He scoffs at me because I DO believe in a well-rounded education.

Unlike my foster brother, I had no "business smarts" at all - so I had to get an education, academic stuff was all I was good at in terms of future monetary survival options as an adult! The thing is I guess is to play to your strengths, whatever they are.

I have "negative" business smarts. Not even none!

SM have you considered taking your classes through an Online University

No taxi.
No groups.
One on one interaction with faculty.
Go at your own pace.
and so on.

I don't even know what intelligence is anymore, but I would say no.

That would be impossible because there is no "actual intelligence." Intelligence is merely a vague concept; it has no coherent, widely-agreed upon definition, and it does not map to any definite or specific personal traits.

If you want to determine whether or not someone is intelligent, the best you can do is to decide upon a definition and then determine whether or not the person fits that definition.

Is there any way to move closer to your school?
3 hours a day traveling seems like sensory overload hell, even by taxi.

Can you get a different tutor who is more supportive and would ackshuly help you in some practical way like asking a student for notes?
This one seems useless and nasty.

As for studying and learning well things that are not interesting to you, I find that the way that works for me is to treat the thing not as a topic that is not interesting to me, but as problems to be solved by me, since I am always interested in problem-solving, even if the topic is horribly boring to me, e.g. economics, yuck, blech, vomit, but I will solve the problems anyway. So instead of studying from the book, you could try to solve problems or answer questions about the same boring topics, and it could be a much more interesting eggsperience.

From observation:

The more intelligent you are, the more conflicted you are.

The ideal life is blissfulness. A lifelong orgasm. Go to the beach, enjoy youself, party, have fun, live every day like it's your last day.

However, conflicted people can't do that. They have some internal conflict, perhaps a "mentally illness", a vice, addiction, a deadly sin, a passion .... that keeps them away from blissfullness.

Intelligence can be a curse as well as a gift.

Thanks all.

I will try to answer everything but I only have 23 minutes before my support worker gets here.

My course is based on essays (but none this year), tests, exams, and practicals (only one practical this year). I do best at essays, I got a First Class mark in my essays last year.

I have done a degree with the Open University before but my dad said that he won't agree with me going back to them as they are "not highly respected" or whatever.

I cannot move house because I am extremely attached to my outer London borough, I was born here, I grew up here etc. I have severe difficulties with change. There is a possibility that I might be going back to supported housing (a big possibilty), but that would be in Sutton, which is a bit further out even.

My tutor is extremely unhelpful so I'm thinking changing tutor is a wise idea. I am not sure how the process works however and I might be dumped with an equally unhelpful one. I will ask the uni disability services.

I am going to just focussing on passing this exam and then next year might be bearable (although I have an immunology half module to do - YUCK).

I am just running out of energy. My migraines and OCD are really bad these days and I just feel like sleeping all day most of the time (although I end up doing the opposite as OCD stops me from sleeping easily despite being on three sedating meds).

I have the Stryer book for biochem but the lectures I've been given are so varied that I'm studying from four separate textbooks, and some lectures can't even be found in textbooks and I'm revising off Google! Even the lecturer who did the most inaccessible lectures said "you can't find much information in textbooks on these lectures - look at research papers and Wikipedia" - research papers makes sense but Wikipedia?!

I will ask my support worker to help me communicate to my tutor that group study is a definite no, and that speaking up around students in practicals is a near impossibility - AAC sounds useful. I'm not sure how AAC will be accepted among my lecturers in practicals though - even my support worker said I'm more severely affected by autism than any of the other students she supports.

I sound high functioning and eloquent on the screen, but in real life I am not high functioning. So AAC may go very well, as my typing language is far superior to my speaking.

I have 4 credits from year one and so far 1 credit from year 2 (as I missed the biochem exam last year due to being hospitalised for a very severe migraine that left me completely blind for several hours, so I had to repeat). So 5 credits in total out of 12. Biochem will get me to 6 credits.

Meeting is a good idea. I'll email my support worker asking about a meeting with tutor, disability services, support worker and me.

The meeting sounds like a really good idea, as does the AAC. Good luck!

Sounds exhausting.

Also, would interfere with:


And potentially quite messy.

I am sure you don't really mean this, but I can't help but read it that way.


Also, what does " live every day like it's your last day" really mean? You would not do any long term activities like learning something complicated. Also the people I love would get irritated with constant farewells, last suppers, etc.

I have the same book, but mine is either the 3rd or 4th edition. (I think it is on the 7th edition now.) It was not the best textbook to use for a course. The one that I liked best was 1,300+ pages long, but I cannot seem to remember the full title to it. A "friend" borrowed it and never returned it back to me. It was cream colored and had a picture of DNA looking through the Z axis on the cover.

Have you used Khan Academy for biochemistry yet? They do a good job on quite a few topics and they are free to use. Here is a link to them:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 0BD2F0FDFE

I highly recommend them as a tutoring guide to any topic in STEM fields. Many of my students love to use them as reviews before exams. I hope that this can help you.

Your professor wanted you to use Wikipedia for information on class lectures.... That is sad.

I typically only use Wikipedia for finding references to certain information that is hard to find. The problem with that site is that anyone can put information up on it which is problematic, since it is not always purged if wrong. In some of my university classes, I require either a research paper or a poster project on a chemical topic. Wikipedia is not what I classify as an accurate source for scientific materials, so they lose points if they reference that website alone. They can however use it to find different sources for their information, as long as they look up (and cite) the original article that the information came from.

I never even went to university. Although I'd done well in school, I'd been having an increasingly hard time learning in a classroom situation, until it was all I could do to hold on, so I figured going to university would be even harder, and I got a job instead. The guy interviewing me for the job couldn't understand why I was selling myself so short.

At the time I thought I'd simply reached my academic ceiling and just wasn't bright enough for degree-level material, but looking back it was all about problems focussing on the spoken word and on unclear instructions. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could achieve impressive results with electronics and computer programming when my special interest (music recording) required me to fathom those subjects.

I graduated with a 2:2. I had expected (and had been expected) to do better given the grades I'd got at school. I found university a real challenge but it didn't test my intelligence so much as my stamina and my ability to deal with social situations. My degree was geology so there were lots of field trips and this meant living in dormitories with a lot of very rowdy and drunk (and usually wealthy and arrogant) guys. This was total overload for me. I wouldn't sleep for nights on end and consequently I wasn't in a fit state to work well. I also found that I didn't like being out in the elements and looking back I think that was a sensory thing. If they could only have brought the rocks indoors - then I would have done fine

That means "lower second-class honours," right.

Congratulations on graduating, despite those drunk idiots.

Do you intend on going to Grad School?