Street Smarts? Really?

I keep hearing students describe themselves as “street smart” rather than “book smart.”  I take this to mean they possess some exceptional type of savvy or sales skills that people who are “book smart” (I guess this refers to people who work hard to make great grades) don’t possess.

Really? You have to be kidding me.

First of all, look at the term “street smarts” itself.  It implies that such skills were literally learned on the street, as if one who possesses them was thrust into a tough situation early in life, where he or she had to take to the streets and wheel and deal to make ends meet.  Don’t get me wrong, this wheeling and dealing does actually describe the lives of certain people (and probably a few at this university), but the majority of the people who throw around the term “street smarts” are simply those who don’t work hard enough to be considered book smart.

Besides, who are we kidding? We go to the University of Alabama, one of the best public universities in the region.   It’s not like the majority of us grew up acquiring Slumdog Millionaire-esque street smarts.

I myself used to throw around the term in high school.  The “book smart” people, I criticized, however, were not those who possessed an arsenal of useless facts, but rather those people who worked incredibly hard studying to make high grades on upcoming tests.

Though they may not have cared incredibly about the subject they were studying (or even memorizing) for, they knew that the good grade they earned, along with a portfolio of other good grades, would significantly increase their chances of success in life.

It’s incredibly odd that this sense of “doing whatever it takes”, even if the manifestations of such labor may not appear until later down the road, is often the greatest quality that those who we say have “street smarts” possess.

I’ll make the concession that there are many life skills that cannot be learned in the classroom.  In fact, I often think these are the most important types of skills. However, just because you’re too lazy to open a book doesn’t mean you possess these skills.  No, my friend, it simply means you’re lazy.