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At some point years ago I did some online test and it turned out my English language vocabulary was somewhere in the top 0.01% or something like that.
Which is kinda ridiculous because I’m not a native English speaker.
I think it’s the result of years of lots and lots of reading things in English: books, newspapers, magazines, even online.
Then on top of that I moved to Britain, which did wonders for learning the local slang of at least the part of it were I lived and even meant some words I learned I only really know them in English (for example, terms used in professional Finance) because I learned them in English, not in my native language.
Also, a lot of the most supposedly sophisticated words are basically the Latin or Greek words barelly changed (sometimes not at all) or technical terms that originated in the dominant language at the time that tech was invented, so they’re pretty much the same in all languages I know (so, say, the word “heliocentric” is pretty much the same in my native Portuguese, in Spanish, French, English and so on) so for things like scientific and technical terms having a good vocabulary is mostly language agnostic.
I mean, it unlocked big ideas earlier than most people, and I got a head start on serious critical thinking, which has shaped my life in many positive ways. But it didn’t, like, directly lead to financial prosperity. Honestly it probably hampered it because I had too much context to exploit others with a clear conscience way before I had the means to do so at scale.
“Reading level” is more about literary comprehension than technical understanding. And embracing baser modes of expression has only made it easier to effectively communicate.
Above-average reading level is only really helpful long-term if you specialize in literature.
Hey, I’m proud of my kid knowing words other than “six seven” like a god damn imbecile. Surprises me regularly with his lexicon.
Even if it doesn’t help the way we expect in the future, it sure as shit isn’t hurting.
Yeah. If anything, admitting that you’re an avid reader will have people saying “You think you’re better than me because you read?” Or some other dismissive comment regarding people who enjoy books.
So I’ve personally chosen to absolutely agree to that question: people who read are better than people who don’t.
And it doesn’t even need to be boring books. Yes, I will even count comic readers amongst our reading brethren. Anyone who reads with actual intent is alright in my book 😉
Seems a bit shallow to tie that much of your identity to reading books. who cares if you read?
I’ve realized the most efficient way to succeed in life (hours spent studying vs perceived achievement) is to be able to talk to people and talk to them well. If you’re born with a golden mouth, you’re set.
It sure as hell didn’t get me as far as my mother expected. But she was drunk half the time anyway so meh
Me reading at a collegiate level in 2nd grade then ending up as a dumbass adult.
I think we have to separate achievement in this capitalist society from the skills we were told to acquire.
Being a good reader has a million benefits. If let’s you think about ideas that you might not encounter in real life. It allows you to live inside someone else’s mind. It makes you more empathetic. It makes you capable of thinking more creatively. It makes you consider things that you might not have been able to otherwise. Being a good reader makes you a more well rounded, intelligent and creative person.
Just because it didn’t get you a high paying job in this grifters economy doesn’t mean it was useless. Keep reading. Keep dreaming of a better world. Keep striving to be a real human in a world full of grifting capitalist drones.
I had a collegiate reading level in 3rd grade.
Most people assumed it was because I was wicked smaht.
It’s because I had no friends and hated life and used books as escapism. And just learned a ton of trivia along the way.
I like to joke that my knowledge base is vast as an ocean, but deep as a puddle, and if you aren’t careful you’ll fall into a sinkhole like astronomy, geology, or lord of the rings lore.
Same for me was told I was super smart but if it ain’t history, evolutionary biology, geography, cartography, or mechanical technology it’s basically all just a puddle. Knowing how to read maps good and which way is north instinctually is fucken useless nine times out of ten nowadays.
I can relate to this so hard. I’ve no idea how many books I read as a kid, but often several per week. I still love reading, obviously, it’s just that I don’t dedicate as much time to do it anymore. Been trying to pick the habit back up though.
One of the quirks I developed as a result of my reading habits, is that I’d use very dated terms when speaking my native tongue. I have so many early-1900s insults in my head, it’s almost unfortunate I never get to use them.
Everybody gangsta until you drop a grammatically correct “heretofore”.
English isn’t my native tongue, and that’s not an insult, but that shouldn’t be very hard. The word is self-explanatory.
Scientists have encountered a species in the Amazon heretofore believed to be extinct.
i like the mental image of a huge body of water where most places are only a few inches below the surface but youll randomly find little lava tubes that go unexpectedly deep (evidence of temporary hyperfocus), several deep valleys (more enduring fixations), and a couple mariana trenches (special interests). reminds me of the train on the water in spirited away.
also this was me…
If you feel like it, tell me the first random astronomy thing that comes to your mind 👀
a black hole’s radius grows linear with its mass. but its volume grows with the third power of its radius. so, the more massive a black hole gets, the less dense it gets.
The actual black hole doesn’t get any less dense though. The event horizon just starts encompassing a larger amount of space.
Space is REALLY BIG and SUPER EMPTY
There are sections of space called “voids” where there’s almost nothing. Like even LESS nothing than usual.
The largest one we know of is called the Böotes (super)Void. In 200,000,000 light-years, there are around 60 galaxies.
You could duplicate our galaxy around 2,300 times and still not reach from edge to edge.
If we were in the center of the void, we wouldn’t have discovered other galaxies even exist until telescopes got sophisticated, large, and sensitive enough to see the faint and distant galaxies that were closest. Sometime in the late 1960s/early 70s, most likely.
Space is big like really big. It would take well over an hour to walk from here to the moon and the moon is really close
Big if true
More than two hours, I’d say
Same, though I also think that the people testing me did not have the requisite reading comp to make a test… I sure as hell did not get Ender’s Game when I first read it, even though I passed the AR test
Oh I hated the accelerated reading tests. To prove a point in 5th grade, about how it’s not actually making me want to read because of rewards, since I could read 20 kindergarten level books and get more points than the 2 500+ page books I was reading, and it would take less time.
Also pro tip for anyone who considers it, Battlefield Earth is NOT child appropriate. Or appropriate for anyone to read, honestly. Just skip anything by Hubbard…
I was always good at taking tests and a rather fast reader, so I didn’t care at that point. What sucked for me was a few years later when I had to write summaries of the “book I read that month” because I had to be writing about the same book for the whole month when I would finish the book like 5 days in, so I was remembering what happened like 6 books ago by the end of the month.
Also unfortunately I then, many years later, learned and realized that the books I was reading were written by a pedophile. one of the series ended with them making a pedo god, and the other one had far too many details and seperate instances of children sexually exploring for a 40+ year old man to be writing about… Now I’m terrified of recommending shit I read or watched as a child because what if I am just not remembering some horrific thing that happens in it.
I was there by 5th grade and read grade 5 in first grade. I never read a ton, but I gave cred to my grandma, who would read me “the pokey little puppy” when I was 2 and 3 and 4 years old like every night I was there (a lot).
I had the book memorized and was able to follow along to all the words without knowing how to actually read or anything about sounds. Apparently that was a big leg up in learning to read.
Having someone read to you when you’re little often is a huge leg up, whether or not you even try to follow along with the words yourself
Systemic failure we’re all dealing with. You did all you were told to do, you went to school, you sat down, you listened and you got the degree. Then maybe you got the job, maybe you just now lost the job, and the wages didn’t keep up with inflation, so you can’t get the house and you can’t get the family, too expensive.
Everything got expensive, then the world complains why you aren’t having any children, why you’re not consuming. You turn on the tv or your podcasts and you see illiterate people get platformed spouting nonsense about conspiracy theories and to do your research.
Then you see this comic and you see the connection. You see that a promise was broken. You did your part but the system ripped you off. You’re angry or depressed. It’s time to take action. Vote for Count Binface.
For every millennial called "gifted, " there was a Boomer parent crowing about how smart their kid was.
Boomers gave us all trophies so they wouldn’t have the kid without the trophy. The same thing tricked down generations.
The whole thing is a scam to placate middle class parents. It has very little to do with the kids.
I just couldn’t disagree more, as the millennial you’re describing and the parent to an 8 year old. There’s nothing at all wrong with a participation trophy, in fact, it boosts kids’ interest and it helps them feel like they belong. Don’t think they’re not also acutely aware of losing a game, or who on the team are the most and least skilled.
At the same time, I’m of the mind that sports should be fun. Cutthroat competition sucks for kids, there’s no reason for it
I never thought of it that way, but now that I look back at it, it’s true. It was all way more for the parents. The kid was an essential asset for their ego. They were competing for who had the most successful child.
What can kids do? Read, and books=smart, so they were competing with each other at how good their kid was at… reading. So they came up with bullshit metrics like, “my child is in 4th grade but just finished a book at a 9th grade level… isn’t your child in 8th grade? Wow, my child is reading books he can’t even understand yet.”
It was always about the fucking parents.
You get it.
My parents, and dozens of others, got a hard sell to plop my useless-ass name into the book “Who’s Who of American High School Students.” As if it mattered at all. It was an ad for kids with dickbag parents that wanted to spend $150 to be in an asshole phonebook. And many did. And their parents were proud and bought the hard copy book for that year, and none of us gave two shits. It had no value, no bearing on anything. A complete waste of money for a fleeting ego boost to the parents.
Yeah, i think we were raised in similar narcissistic households and maybe others didn’t share that experience as much. My parents got a scent of the gifted child effect and tried to do everything to nurture it.
For so long they made me feel like I was super special but as an adult I can see how unhealthy it all was, and how much they fed off that attention.
Maybe for some children it was a normal gauge of how well the child is doing, but for myself every little achievement felt like, “oh so you felt okay with x? let’s see how well you can do x+1. You know there’s a kid who took college classes at 16? I think we should sign you up. What about astronomy? Have you heard of space camp?”
I felt like failure was terrible because of how disappointed they’d look if i didn’t take well to some new assignment. Completely fucked way to grow up.
Mine wasn’t narcissistic, but my parents didn’t mind a little free classicism. Then, after years of “your child is so smart!” in high school I didn’t want to do work because I was a teenager. So years of “just apply yourself!” lectures. Y’all, I can only do so much calc homework before I lose the will to live.
That you’re equating your parents signing you up for inclusion in “Who’s Who” with being assigned to gifted classes as kid is perhaps a testament to the failures of the American education system
Ironic you would make this comment as a slam on the American education system without having understood I only said my parents got a hard sell. I never said they went for it. The sales people filled the library with students in more than one AP course, and a few of the wealthier families with kids on sports teams.
Anyway, my point is that parents were pulled in and sold this, not a single student even knew what these books were, especially since the “Who’s Who” other titles are all about adults paying to be in a national registry of self-important people.
The idea of reading level targets is from decades of research in education and human development. It has zero to do with parents’ egos
Lol doing everything right and taking the advice of people that never actually did anything all that exciting without someone else to hand them that opportunity is pretty funny. Here’s an alternate translation of this: “I did the exact same thing everyone else did and expected that to lead to anything but what everyone else got, which considering everyone did it already, was very little “.
The answer is always to break the mold and disrupt shit.
Preach on
Yeah because when it comes to getting ahead skills don’t matter. What really matters is who your uncle is or whose ass you kiss.
One only need look at Donald Trump. Guy is the dumbest ass and would be working the drive thru at a Burger King (not even a McDonald’s) if his dad wasn’t a wealthy, uninhibited ghoul of a human being.
I had an uncle, Dr. John Potoooooooo who went to MIT who is a top professor. A genius. It’s in my blood. I’m smart. Great marks. Like really smart.
That means I have much better blood.
Weewf. Why you got to call me out like that? I was reading at a grade 10 level in grade 5. Now I just post stupid memes on the internet.
But hey, at least we’re harder to mislead and we understand the media we consume better.
Yeah, we’re not oblivious to the state of the world around us and that gives us —checks notes— anxiety and frustration with the people who are.
The tools to see the faults yes, we need to drive to take the steps to build the world we wish to live in.
But without the tools to see it’s faults we could never build a better tomorrow.
Same.
At least I can do a nice turn of word though.
the lack of usage paired with nobody knowing any of the words in real conversation led me to become out of practice and stupid
And it was worth it for all the Pepperoni Personal Pan Pizzas.
I have to constantly rein in my impractically large vocabulary to minimize the degree to which I sound like a pretentious prick, but just recalling how the crisp on the outer edge of those pepperonis was surpassed only by the crisp on the top of crust makes the world feel balanced again, if only for a moment.
