How do I tell if somebody is intelligent?

How do I tell if somebody is intelligent?

There was a tall, lanky fellow who always wore long sleeves and sat down the table from me in engineering class. He didn’t talk much, had a strange sneeze and mostly kept to himself.

I had a sneaking suspicion he was smart, really smart. I shouldn’t have cared either way but between my bloodthirsty competitive side and penchant for people watching, my radar was always on.

And it wasn’t like I had any evidence, grades, test scores or even a remote conversation to draw my conclusion from.

All I had was a subtlety I’d noticed: His body language.

It was a cool confidence juxtaposed with a complete lack of stress on his face.

This absence of stress is not to be confused with slackery. He was laser focused on our material but rarely took notes. That pencil just sat by his hand begging for playing time, but no. Class didn’t seem to faze him. It was as if he was just in cruise control, coasting along

 

while we all paddled to keep up.

He would go on to graduate first in his class.

But I had confirmation before that.

One day towards the end of the term, our teacher put a very high level problem on the board and asked who knew the answer. I immediately looked at him - he knew the answer. I could tell. His head sat still while his eyes were darting around waiting for someone to answer.

He was smart. He had it in his pocket. But he wasn’t looking for attention.

The teacher reiterated, “Anyone?”.

Finally, he slowly raised his hand and read off the answer like a trained assassin: calm, cold and collected.

You don’t need test scores to realize someone is smart.

Just watch them, it’s usually there. And it’s usually the quiet ones. Still waters run deeper.