Life of a Non-Genius

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Life of a Non-Genius

• SaMyia Smith

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Chris Langan

• Mother was estranged from family
• Had four brothers all with different fathers
• His father disappeared before Chris was born he
  was said to have died in Mexico
• To this day I havent met anybody who was as
  poor when they were kids as our family was,
  Chris Langan Says.
• Offered two full scholarships to Reed an the
  University of Chicago
• Went to reed for a whole school year but dropped
  out cause his mother was confused of the parents
  financial statement paper so his scholarship
  money was no more
• Enrolled in Montana State University But only
  went for a semester because the transmission fell
  out of his car and he didnt have a way to school
• Dropped out of Montana State cause he decided he
  could do without an higher level education

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Robert Oppenheimer

• Parent considered him a genius
• Was doing lab experiments by the third grade an
  studying physics and chemistry by the fifth grade
• Once when he was nine he told one of his cousins,
  Ask me a question in Latin and I will answer you
  in Greek.
• Went to Harvard and then on to Cambridge
  University to pursue a doctorate in physics
• Struggled depression his life, grew despondent
• Had a gift for theoretical physics
• His tutor Patrick Blackett forced him to attend
  to a minutiae of experimental physics which he
  hated
• Grew more emotionally unstable and then in an act
  so strange oppenheimer took some chemicals from
  the laboratory and tried to poison his tutor

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Whats the difference between these two?

• Two brilliant young students each who runs into a
  problem that troubles his college career.
• Langans mother has missed a deadline for his
  financial aid while oppenheimer has tried to
  poison his tutor.
• To continue on they are required to plead each of
  their cases to authority
• Langan gets his scholarship taken away and
  oppenheimer gets sent to a psychiatrist.
• Both are geniuses but other ways could not be
  more different besides the way they were raised

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Hes a Genius

• Chris Oppenheimer

• Chris Langan

• Twenty years later he was appointed to be the
  director of the Manhattan Project that lead to
  the atomic bomb effort.

• Married and now Lives in rural Missouri on a
  horse farm
• On a typical day He gets up make a cup of coffee
  and sit in front of the computer then begin
  working on whatever he was working on the night
  before

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• Would Oppenheimer have lost his scholarship at
  Reed?
• Would he have bee unable to convince his
  professors to move his classes to the afternoon?
• Of course not.
• And not because he was smarter than Chris Langan.
  Its because he possessed that kind of Savvy
  that allowed him to get what he wanted from the
  world.

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Practical intelligence

• -Knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say
  it and knowing how to say it for maximum effect
• (For Example)
• The practical skill that allows you to talk your
  way out of a murder rap, or even convince your
  professor to move you from the morning to the
  afternoon section
• Analytical Intelligence
• Which is an ability measured by IQ you can either
  have lots of it and very little of practical
  intelligence or lots of Practical Intelligence
  and not much Analytical Intelligence
• Which in a Lucky case someone like Robert
  Oppenheimer had both

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Where does something like practical intelligence
come from?

• We know were analytical intelligence comes from
  its something at least in part thats in your
  genes.
• -Chris Langan started talking at six months and
  taught himself to read at three years of age. He
  was born smart.
• But social savvy is knowledge. Its a set of
  skills that have to be learned where most people
  seem to get these kind of attitudes and skills
  from our families

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• Annette Lareau who is a sociologist who conducted
  a study of a group of third graders. She picked
  both black and whites and children from wealthy
  homes and poor homes. Lareau visited each family
  at least twenty times for hours at a stretch.
• She found that there were only two parenting
  philosophies and they divide almost perfectly
  along class lines. The wealthier parents raised
  their kids one way and the poorer parents raised
  their kids another way.
• The wealthier parents were heavily involved in
  their childrens free time. While the lower class
  parents saw as if it was their responsibility to
  care for their children but to let them grown and
  develop on their own.

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in conclusion.

• In Lareau study the working-class and poor
  children were characterized by They didnt know
  how to get there way, or how to customize while
  the Higher Class knew how to interact, and ask
  questions if they are curious.

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• This is the advantage that Oppenheimer had and
  that Chris Langan lacked. Oppenheimer was raised
  in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in
  Manhattan, the son of an artist and successful
  garment manufacturer. His childhood was very
  exciting

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• While Chris had only the bleakness of where he
  lived and a home dominated by an angry, drunken
  stepfather. And that was the lesson Langan
  learned from his childhood distrust authority
  and be independent. He never had parents to teach
  him how to speak up for himself.
• -If Langan had been born into a wealthy family,
  if he was the son of a doctor who was well
  connected in some major marked and if he was he
  would have been one of those guys you read about
  knocking back PhDs at seventeen.
• Its the culture that he was in that determined
  that