Intelligence and wisdom.

Ever wondered how two similar things can be so dissimilar? Quite a paradox!

Our blood and body fluids physiology lecturer left us with a statement after his class, from then he ran off to his car and went home after complaining of rising temperature with aa splitting headache but not before wishing us a merry Christmas.

He is a person who likes to tell stories about his school days when he was a medical students like we are. Today, he gave us a story about a guy who was in his class. The Guy was a very intelligent personality. You see in medschool, at least in ours, there's a distinct difference between the person who has more knowledge(which we call stuffs) and the person who passes exams. There are two things involved says the teacher, "one has to be intelligent and at the same time wise in order to succeed".

Okay so to cut the long story short, this very brilliant guy in my teacher's class who seemed to be more knowledgeable than other people failed his first medical board exams which warranted his withdrawal. Wouldn't you be surprised if the person who is the most brilliant in the class fails the exams without any external factors like illness or absenteeism? Of course they were surprised. Later on they came to realise that although he was intelligent and read his books, he wasn't wise enough. By wise here I mean he skipped alot of lectures (probably due to him thinking that he already knows what's going to be taught), he missed attendances and this led to him not understanding his teachers. To succeed, one must know and understand his teachers, my predecessors have been ringing this in my ear ever since I came into medschool. You have to read but you also have to give the lecturer what he wants in exams. For example, my Cardiovascular System Lecturer is only interested in keywords, if he asks you a question and you end up writing long paragraphs without including those keywords he's looking for, you're doomed. You can write very little but provided those keywords are well represented, you're good. That's wisdom. The most intelligent person isn't always the best.

Someone once said,

"Intelligence is your level of awareness of what's going on around you while wisdom is how you react to them".

The above quote hit me like a bulldozer truck. I have come across many intelligent people in life but the way they behave or reacts sometimes makes me think that they were just putting up a show. The form of intelligence mostly represented by academic performances is crystalline, fluid intelligence has more to do with wisdom. In a world where it is imperative upon each and everyone to maintain our sanity at all cost, wisdom is very much required, knowing what to act upon, knowing what to ignore and knowing what to do, when you couple this with intelligence, you know what to do and how to do it.

In this life, a person need not be intelligent to succeed. There are different levels of intelligence depending on the individuals involved. Very little can be done to develop a person's intelligence compared to how one can improve his wisdom. This is like a survival instinct.

Intelligence gives you the ability to know things or gather information and how they are interrelated with one another. What then is wisdom? It is simply the ability you have to put your intelligence into profitable use and use those interrelations to better your own life.

I believe that every wise person is intelligent but not every intelligent person is wise. For you to be wise, you have to be intelligent (not necessarily bookish intelligence) but the fact that you're intelligent (bookish intelligence included) doesn't necessarily mean you're wise. So people, let's work on both:Intelligence and wisdom to make the world a better place for us and those around us.

Thanks for reading everyone.