Not smart?

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Me too. My special interest is a musical group. I mean, I really enjoy them, but, like, how am I going to get a job with that? I can't join the band, I can't become a roadie for the band. At least I have some other interests as well.

All of my life I've been told I was smart, intelligent, and genius. But, my areas of interest are typically not widely understood by neurotypicals. Plus, I can go into great detail about my interests, that being electronics and technology, and that makes me sound intelligent. Plus, Aspies can use vocabulary in a way that it makes them sound intelligent. But truthfully, I'm only smart and intelligent with my interests and how things work, and very dumb when it comes to understanding gossip and the more subtle social cues. I'm almost certain I have an average IQ.

But it all depends on our special interests. For me, I'm very smart when it comes to my special interest. It just so happens it's complex enough where most neurotypicals think you have to be "smart" to understand it. I love electronics, and being my special interest, most neurotypicals call me intelligent and even genius, but I still have a lot to learn.

For one thing, I am taking an extra semester of high school, or at least, that's what other people want. I think that people who take an extra semester of high school aren't that smart, so see? Got it?

I'm dumber than a box of rocks.

No, you need not be a genius to be an Aspie.

Does it matter if you're smart if being smart isn't really doing anything for you to improve your life? The assumption tends to be that a higher IQ must equate automatically to an easier time of it. I question whether that's really true.

army psych. lewis terman wrote about gifted [highly intelligent and talented] folk in his seminal book, "the gifted." a large public library ought to have a copy. this book describes intelligent people.

Sometimes it's just how a person appears, lots of subtle things. Interestingly many of the stereotypes of the "intelligent nerd" and the "intellectually disabled person" are the same stereotypes, the same appearances, mannerisms, etc. because both are partly derived from autistic people. So sometimes all you have to do is be autistic, and then do something that un-associates you with being intellectually disabled (in people's heads), and people will suddenly see you as incredibly inteliligent regardless of your cognitive skills. I even know intellectually disabled autistic people who have this happen to them if they just do something like type on a computer and then people think "oh an intellectually disabled person could never do that" which is far from the truth, so then they associate unconsciously the mannerisms and appearance with "intelligent nerd" and make that conclusion.

In my case, most people tend to see me as profoundly intellectually disabled or as some kind of genius. (Note that I don't think intellectual disability and intelligence cannot go together, I'm just talking what most people think.) I once had a medical professional in a hospital just spend a few minutes with me and tell someone else in my hearing that I had the cognitive capacity of an infant. Other people insist I have all kinds of intellectual skills I actually lack.

Very few people can see me as I am, which is someone with extremely varied cognitive capacity, who has a few really good skills (but that aren't in the areas people think) and a lot of really massive deficits in various cognitive areas people can't imagine a person having deficits let alone a person who can pass as having good language sometimes (even if the language is coming from a really weird place for language to come from). Most people just see one tiny bit of me and fill in the rest of the blanks with some ridiculous image that has nothing to do with who I am.