Showing Your Skills A lot of people don’t realize that there are intelligent people out there waiting to be found, waiting for their time to shine. Because everyone is intellectual in their own way whether or not they attend college. You would think that with the title of a degree would come with massive amounts of knowledge in a certain subject. But in reality college isn’t always the best way to show your strengths. Some of the most intellectual people you will meet will neither be a college graduate with a fancy job and lots of money, or a person who works at the local grocery store who has the memory of your home computer someone who can remember anything you tell them. People like that are just waiting for their time to show their skills. Someone who knows firsthand on the subject of blue class workers is Mike Rose who wrote the essay “Blue Collar Brilliance” where Rose challenges the view that intelligence can be measured by the amount of schooling a person has completed. He suggests that blue-collar and service jobs require more intelligence than meets the eye. He describes his experiences growing up; observing his mother as a waitress in coffee shops and family restaurants, Rose also talks about the language that the employees had. Rose states “Lingo conferred authority and singled know-how.”(244) He depicts his mother as a dynamic women who lived her job and put her heart and soul into being a waitress. He described the way she became a pro at deciphering the emotional needs of her customers and colleagues alike. He also details his uncle’s work at the General Motors factory and shows the amount of intelligence that was required of him as he rose from being in the production line to supervising paint job. He explains how he observed different types of blue-collar and service workers in action, and came to the conclusion that each of them have a skill that takes a lot of mind power to master. Even though jobs can have a way of developing someone’s skill set it would be easier if they did that in high school, offering courses that the students were interested in and would pay better attention to. Someone who argues for this fact is Gerald Graff who wrote the essay “Hidden Intellectualism” Gerald argues that many educators and other people do not take advantage of students full potential, stating that there is intellect far beyond academic skills, intellectualism can also be found in “street smarts” (382) Thorough out the essay, Graff supports his argument by providing us with his own life experience. Gerald was a man who loved sports, but hated books and anything involved with academics. Growing up in the Melting Pot of Chicago, being intellectual was not in favor for Graff. He lived deciding between two sides, having academic knowledge or street smarts. Little did he realize that the squabbling of sports with his friends was making him smart and intellectual, he was analyzing thinking, reading and learning. As Graff aged the brawl inside him solved, and the intellect part won; the experience he had as a child opened his eyes, and saw that the love of sports info made him smart. It was his street smarts that got him where he is; Graff continues that if there is no connection between text and student. Students cannot fund a life connection of their street smarts to the textbook thus making it boring and unappealing. Graff believes that street smarts are looked down upon because they are not good enough to teach, schools are missing the potential a student hold b not “encouraging students to take their nonacademic interests as objects of academic study”(386) Graff concludes the essay by reinforcing his point of having street smarts and can still be intellectual. Both essays are similar in many ways from how intellectual people don’t know actually how smart they are or just not getting the chance to really show how smart they are. They both talk about how intelligence is something that anyone can have from college students to working class people to someone who just loves something enough to remember a lot about it and become intellectual about the subject. Intelligence has its way of creeping up on you when you least expect it to. Some people that don’t go to college and are intelligent tend to learn in unconventional ways or are self-taught people. Like certain actors like Ben Affleck or Christina Applegate who are famous and are both high school drop outs. Or most musicians that are self-taught like Keith Moon, the drummer for the rock band The Who. Widely considered one of the greatest drummers of all time. The only training he ever received was at 16 years old when he had 3 or 4 drum lessons with Carlo Little (an early member of the Rolling Stones), who was also a self-taught drummer. Or David Bowie, singer, musician, multi-instrumentalist, actor, and painter, has never trained in any of the mentioned fields and only received a few singing lessons in the 1960s (as reported by his former manager, Ken Pitt). As a teenager he took some lessons on saxophone by Ronnie Ross. All other instruments (including piano, keyboards/synths, electric/acoustic guitar, harmonica, koto, limited bass, and percussion), he taught himself. His paintings and sculptures were created without any formal art school training. He took a few lessons in movement and dance with the Lindsey Kemps Dance company but trained himself in mime. There are intelligent people everywhere you go and everywhere you look. Intelligent people are always going to be there. But we can help them by giving them the chance to show their talents and make them assets then hiding them in the shadows of criticism and doubt. Everyone has a choice to make when they graduate from high school, do they go to college to further their education or do they go to work and further their work skills and experiences. Either one they choose both will help them succeed in one way or another making them intellectual in their own way.

Work Cited “They Say I Say” the moves that matter in academic writing second edition Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. W.W. Norton & Company New York, London. Blue Collar Brilliance Rose, Mike Pg. 243-254 Hidden Intellectualism, Graff, Gerald Pg. 380-387