I will not apologize for my brain

Recently there have been a number of articles and stories on various social media platforms about women who are smart/clever and how they are treated by both their professions and other people.

I have even heard that old chestnut that men should have more education than their wives. Smart women are dangerous. And a new one that all smart women are part of the gay agenda. I checked with my usual suspects and they informed me that they appreciated smart women, but they were not part of their agenda.

I have a brain that goes a mile a minute and works through all kinds of things. I have a thirst for knowledge. Those who know me know that I will research a subject I am interested in until I know as much as I can know without reading or speaking a foreign language. I will read translations in a pinch. I can come up with an idea or a solution to a problem pretty quickly.

I will go through half a dozen ideas and discard those that will not be suitable for the problem at hand and give my best.

I also retain a lot of what I have read and learned over the years. I can still recall cues to plays I did back in college and chunks of the scripts as well. Peter uses this skill when he needs to know something for a project he is working on. I use him for the same thing since he also has a high level of retention. Except for people’s names, we are both crap at that. It can take me a while to learn someone’s name and even longer as to how they pronounce it if I don’t hear it from them several times. Dyslexia at its finest.

People are astonished to find out that I am severely dyslexic. Right and left do not really work in my world. I can work it out, but it can take me a bit which can be bad when giving directions. And I do mix up letters. I figured out how to read and I can read really fast, but I don’t read the way that they teach in school.

I have an undergraduate degree from Emory University and an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. Both took a lot of work and both were worth the work. Peter finished college and then jumped into the work force learning as he went. I am one of those women who is frowned upon as a wife to some people. I don’t think I am smarter than Peter. I believe we are pretty much intellectual equals with our strengths and weaknesses. It is one of the many reasons we are so compatible with each other.

I was once told by my boss before he moved onto another job that I was the smartest person not only in the department but pretty much the whole company. I thanked him for the compliment then he said that he was giving me a warning because others saw me as competition because they could see how smart I was and how I could do their job and my own without breaking a sweat. Reflecting back on some other jobs I had, I could see that might have been the reason that some things just didn’t happen for me or I was blocked from rising within the company I was working for.

I know I scare some people because I am smart. But I was raised by two college professors to be proud of what my brain could do. And, honestly, I feel that my brothers and sister are smarter than me. I do know when the four of us brainstorm it is very special because we build on each other’s ideas. Nothing is dismissed out of hand but considered then discarded if it doesn’t fit with what we are doing.

I feel the same way when Peter and I work through story ideas and concepts. We are totally honest with each other that if an idea doesn’t work, we say it out loud or give a way to make it work for us.

I uses to hide my abilities because I didn’t want to cause problems and fit in with the group I was working with. I stopped that years ago. One has to deal with me as me not a dumbed down version of me. I don’t know if it is age or knowing my ideas are as important as anyone else’s out there.

Intellectual is not a dirty word as much as others would have us believe. It is the clever intellectuals that have made the leaps, so we have new things and ideas to play with. I may have grown up on the grounds of the ivory tower, but my parents made sure I knew what was going on outside academia. I appreciate those who have knowledge and skills they learned from outside the college setting. I firmly believe that those people are just as smart and clever as people who went to college.

I am smart and I will not apologize for that. I take pride in my abilities and use them to be my best.

I am grateful I grew up in a household where thinking outside the box was encouraged and no idea was dismissed as stupid (OK there were a few but they were very stupid).