Gaining Access

Intelligence is not just about basic comprehension, application, and regurgitation - which is why many university subjects and grades fail to accurately measure intelligence above a certain threshold or obscure talent. Depending on the speciality, they don't always reflect one's capacity or high levels of abstract creativity. To a degree, pun intended, university is there to assess verbal acuity. It teaches students how to navigate the university system and its methods of evaluation. For instance, in certain first and second year university exams, the questions are often recycled past exam patterns, reshuffled with only slight tweaks to the details. It is not difficult to game the system.

What I find particularly interesting is that university, for certain subjects, is appalling in terms of encouraging those who would make a difference. The true disruptors see through the system, often perceiving university as something to endure. Only those who make it through the "training", despite it being counter to their nature, gain access to do what they truly desire.

Psychology, often dismissed as a "fluffy" subject in some universities, is so rigid with its emphasis on terminology and research methodology that many naturally perceptive individuals, who grasp the human psyche as effortlessly as breathing, despise it due to its frustrating inflexibility. These are the very visually-inclined minds that blend logic with intuitively perceived observations to create new insights. You often see these types emerging as leaders in alternative grassroots forms of effective holistic healing.

Similarly, studying law often involves learning critical thinking, reasoning by analogy, and rapidly extracting ratio decidendi and obiter dicta. While theoretically interesting, it is also heavily structured - like law itself. Yet the best lawyers excel at discovering loopholes created by nuanced interpretations and creatively shaping narratives to introduce enough doubt to persuade.

University, in many ways, is the penalty some must endure to gain access to a gatekept area within society - a future barrier to entry for some - it is also the means through which they can unleash their unhinged creativity and potential in their desired industry.