as the title says. for years i’ve always felt very insecure about my intellect— it’s weird to explain, but in middle school i used to feel like i was “too smart” to hang out with the “popular” kids, but then i also felt like i was too dumb to hang out with what you would consider a nerd. as i’ve gotten older my friend group n the type of people i gravitate towards are far more intellectual than i am, since up until recently i’d been a STEM major (i tried to study physics, but… that didn’t work out and it worsened my own feelings on how “smart” i think i am 🥲), and now that im in my mid 20s i feel like im severely behind on so much. at my lowest i remember looking up something silly like “how to get smarter” and came across an old reddit post where the top comment was telling them to just read more. i have adhd so there was a while as a kid where i read so much and then i fell off of that habit as a teenager and up until recently i found it hard to even get started on a book and actually go through with finishing it. plus, the fact im neurodivergent has it so that i can’t help feeling like there’s a clear solution to this problem when im likely overthinking this whole process in the first place. i’m not saying all of this to fish for sympathy, i just want to provide some context for how i’ve been feeling because of it.
i really want to be more knowledgeable on just… anything, really. i’d like to know more about different concepts within sociology, and my personal politics, and i want to be more well-spoken than i am because i feel like im losing my vocabulary. i wanna pick back up and actually read the classics we were supposed to read in high school that i used sparknotes for because i was a lazy student. i wanna be the kind of person who doesn’t stutter or forget easily or misquote things and who has reliable information. not that i expect to know everything and remember everything accurately, but im just so tired of feeling like nobody believes in me when it comes to absolutely anything. im making it sound simpler than it feels but it really does have to do largely with how i present myself. which, as it currently stands, i don’t think i give off a very intelligent first impression. or at least, maybe i do, but its so surface level that when people get to know me they learn how much that isn’t true. imposter syndrome is a real bitch.
i frequent twitter a lot and my feed on all my social media is very left-leaning, like extremely so, but i feel like that makes it even harder to find anything good to read. on one hand, i know that reading books that challenge your beliefs is a good thing because it broadens your perspective or whatever, but on the other hand im always seeing people say “anyone who is actually smart doesn’t read x, y, z” or i’ll see someone recommending nonfiction books to read and then another person comes in to say that the information is outdated or that the author’s argument is actually extremely ableist and/or misogynistic. and as much as i know being able to recognize when that happens is something else entirely, i also don’t want those kind of books to be the only reference i have for how i began to understand something, so i just. i don’t know where to start. i suppose being as online as i am doesn’t help bc there’s going to be mixed opinions on everything, and that’s inevitable, but all of the people i personally admire and look up to and want to be more like seem to fall into that category and are very clearly well-read and im not close enough with any of them to even ask them a question like this.
so… does anyone have any recommendations? anything i should note about a certain book before getting into it? how will i know if something im reading is as unbiased as it portrays itself to be? the thought of consuming any form of potentially harmful stereotypes/propaganda and then going around acting like i was finally enlightened on something when everyone else already knew how incorrect the author was for all these years feels very…. idk. humiliating is one way to put it.
sorry if this all comes off like im more worried about the way im perceived than anything else. it admittedly is a big part of it, but with me being neurodivergent i kinda can’t help that a little. i do for the most part really think i’ll benefit from knowing how to become more well-read in subjects that i actually have an interest in, but i just have no clue where to start and its frankly a little bit intimidating because of that. 😭 i’ll take any book/author recommendations or advice you guys have, or if your politics sound similar to mine, what authors you think would be best avoiding unless you think i should embrace books that don’t lean as left as i do, etc. i hesitate to put a label to my political beliefs because i truthfully am not well informed enough to fully claim one, but i suppose socialist is the best way i could put it. im also a puerto rican american, if that helps narrow it down.
by hengmis
1 Comment
Honestly, if you want a broad range of knowledge, you need to read a broad range of subjects.
Just read. Read articles, books, everything. If you’re interested in something, google it, find a reputable source, and read some articles about it. As for books; read everything. Read a travel book, science book, or a classic novel like *David Copperfield* or *Madame Bovary*. Read some poetry by Rumi or Keats, an autobiography of Winston Churchill, the Koran, the Bible, Siddhartha, The Da Vinci Code, or Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Good books, bad books, books about people you admire, and books about people you don’t like. Just find topics that may interest you, and start reading. Those who are “well read” are that way because they’ve read lots of different things – for various reasons.
Edit: also, I will add: don’t worry about your intellect or “intelligence” too much. It’s not worth as much as you think. It’s always good to better ourselves, and learning things is important, but, a smart person is worth no more than a so called stupid person. Emotional intelligence and kindness are far more important to the world. We need clever people, of course, but the clever one is not better than the dense one.
Don’t ever think you’re beneath another person because they’re “smarter” than you. Likewise, never consider yourself better than another person if you’re “smarter” than them.