Smarties

#16-"Someone can be very intelligent and still flunk out of three schools."

Before I give my opinion on statement 16, I would first like to say I strongly agree with Sam about how disapproval by a person’s peers can cause a teen to have a mental breakdown. It’s human nature to want be accepted and well liked by our peers and it’s very tragic what happened to Raymond Chase because of the extreme disapproval by his classmates. Also, I agree with Sam that even though high school may seem like a life time and the important things are your status or acceptance from others, but it truly isn’t. Once out of high school, what you wore on Tuesday won’t matter as nearly as much as your achievements and knowledge you have acquired through high school.

Now onto statement 16, I would have to say I both agree and disagree with this statement. If the statement was reworded to “Someone can be very smart and still flunk out of three schools” then I would agree because I define “smart” as being book smart and "intelligent" as being able to make smart, good choices. If a person was intelligent, they will not make the stupid choices of potentially ruining their future. For example, Holden seems like a pretty smart guy. I think he has the potential to be smart and can be smart if he wants to be (like in English), but he’s not wise or intelligent in the sense that he got kicked out of three schools and isn’t thinking about his future. Another example is this one guy I know who received straight A’s his entire school life; he was smart and had a promising future. He changed high schools couple of times before coming to Fremd and never had a problem in any of the schools he previously attended. However when he transferred to Fremd during his junior year, he, over time, grew to hate Fremd. He hated Fremd so badly that he started getting into bad stuff and started ditching classes which led to him not attending school and finally resulted in him not graduating or receiving his diploma. For him it was quick, dumb decisions piled on another that kept on building up, most of them were mistakes and even though he was smart he wasn’t intelligent enough to realize ,in the moment, the harm he was doing to himself and his future. Now he has a part time job and he realizes all the mistakes he made and regrets deeply about not getting his high school diploma. This story comes to prove that it is very possible for someone to be smart/intelligent and still flunk out of school.