When I was young, like many young people, my mission was focused on failing to meet expectations. The expectations of other people for me were high, at least to begin with. See, I was obviously intelligent. This fact deeply misled my parents. They did not realize that being anxious, neurodivergent, and prone to alcoholism could trump intelligence any old day, especially in a time when the larger world and their little world was falling apart.

Someone in a group of my friends the other day was talking about how brilliant he was as a child, and another person was talking about quantum mechanics in the context of a spiritual life, and I was faintly amused. I, too, once thought being smart was important. And I read a lot of books on quantum mechanics, deluding myself into believing I could understand it. Nobody understands it.

The thing is, intelligence as we measure it by IQ is not the metric it purports to be. First of all, the whole idea is deeply tainted by eugenics, and IQ has always been boosted by culture and affluence. Second, the range is very small. The smartest person and the dumbest person are really not that far apart, compared to my cat.

Not only that, but being acquainted with the precepts of quantum mechanics is not a flex. For anyone who doesn’t have to use it in their work, it’s a niche interest, like trainspotting or collecting fountain pens.

My parents allowed me to go off to college when I had just turned 17; I had been “skipped” in second grade because of testing, so now I was not only struggling, I was isolated and immature compared to everyone else around me.

Because things were different then, I got into a good college on the basis of my SATs and the high school I went to; my college was Barnard, the women’s college of Columbia University. (When I applied, I didn’t even know the campus was in New York City.)

I’ve been thinking about Columbia this morning, because I dreamed I was assigned by my editor (I am not a journalist in waking life) to write a profile about a Columbia professor, and was pursuing him through crowds of students in Low Library, because he didn’t want me to interview him.

Columbia students all seemed to me to be remarkably intense and focused when I was a student there. They weren’t necessarily intense and focused about their school work, especially since I arrived in 1968 right after the first student strike had shut down the campus. But they were bright people, and driven, even the guys I hung out with at the university radio station. Even the guy who went on a blind date with me because he had fallen in love with his roommate and wanted to see if he was really gay, he was smart, too.

In the end, I did not graduate from Barnard, mainly because I didn’t go to classes or do any work. I was too busy trying to destroy myself. For another thing, political strikes shut down the university both spring semesters of my time there. Lastly, my parents, with me not there to provide fodder for their arguments, were getting divorced. I left after my sophomore year, got a job as a waitress in a chain restaurant, and eventually went to art school because my grandmother was paying for it.

Last night in my dream, pursuing the distinguished professor through the crowds of intelligent people, I was amused by all of them, especially by how seriously they all took themselves. They thought they were superior. I cornered the professor finally and asked him what his biggest challenge was, and he quoted Thomas Hardy. I wasn’t familiar with the quote because I have never read any Thomas Hardy, despite being an English teacher and English department chair for many years of my career.

It didn’t bother me at all, in the dream, that I have never read any Thomas Hardy. I realized that when I woke up. It just didn’t matter. All those people in Low Library probably had read Hardy, though, or else they were engineers. Or theoretical physicists, who understood why they didn’t understand quantum mechanics.

Whenever I look up people I knew back then, though, a whole lot of them got MBAs, and became vacant ghouls. I bet they don’t read any Thomas Hardy any more.

I did eventually stop drinking, graduate from the art school, get married, have a kid, get a master’s degree and a Ph.D., build a distinguished career with many awards, publish several novels, and compete internationally as an athlete. Intelligence had almost nothing to do with any of that series of accomplishments, oddly enough. It turns out, persistence and the ability to show up are much more important than being smart.

Pursuing niche interests also leads to some interesting accomplishments, I will grant you that.

So yes, I ended up very focused, and very intense. But I still have not read any Thomas Hardy. I continue not to meet expectations. Whose expectations I’m not meeting, I have no idea.