Maths, Brains and Critical Thinking

I had a maths test today. My revision comprised of text-book skimming this morning. I was gravely concerned that I was going to fail.

We were given 1 hour 15 minutes to complete the test, but I was done in 40 minutes. I was the first to hand the test up, followed by a friend 10 minutes later. Nobody else handed theirs up until right at the end.

The teacher marked mine almost immediately, as I was slightly smug about handing it up first, a fairly rare occurrence. She called me over after a few minutes and showed me my mark.

51/52

I've never really been smart. In primary school I never quite understood things like characters development and themes at the basic level we were expected to. When I hit year 5 lots of my friends were streamed into a smart class and I was left behind. I was lucky to have a great teacher that year who always encouraged me, especially with music. I still stop by his class to play flute occasionally.

I always wanted to do well in school and I've always acted smart, but I've never been able to keep up with the brainy kids. Recently however I seem to have surpassed them.

I can only think that this is because of my critical thinking skills. I have a great objective eye and I can comparatively work and re-work things until they're better things. In English I continually ask myself "Does this sound like -something well written- yet?"

I still don't have a fast brain, but I get there in the end. Lately, I'm getting there better than people who should be smarter than me.

So, yeah. At the moment I feel like I'm consistently smarter than lots of the people I know, because I know how to be. I've had to work to get here, but they haven't. I've picked apart every little thing I've done for the last 6 years and it actually feels like it's made a difference.

This is all really disjointed. I don't know why I felt the need to write any of it. I feel good about myself for the first time in a while and I guess I want to latch onto it as much as possible.