Who's the smartest person you know who never amounted to much in life?

[OinkBoink]

Perhaps because he/she didn't apply himself/herself or because of some other factors in his/her life. Bet some of you are going to say, "Me".

 

[KidNiki1]

Me.

 

[Crono]

If I could put 3% of my ideas into action without being lazy or giving up, or had the money to invest in 20% of the things I really wanted to invest in but lacked capital, I'd be a very, very wealthy man.

So: me.
Still a chance if I quit ATOT.

 

[lxskllr]

I'll go with me too with the caveat that I don't like the way the question is framed. "Never amounted to much in life" is usually code for didn't make an amount of money suitable to impress the neighbors. Another definition might be "didn't put name in the history books", IOW, wasn't a game changer. Most people aren't game changers. They're just cogs in a machine with an inflated sense of self worth.

I'm a realist. Life is what it is, and is what you make of it. I could have changed things to put more money in the bank, or gain greater notoriety, but if I could go back, there's little I'd do differently.

 

[shortylickens]

Bush.

180 IQ, right?

 

[SKORPI0]

Correct question should be "You never amounted to anything."

Could might as well apply to me from a certain viewpoint - the accumulation of wealth/prestige.

Top 10% of graduating class of 52 people. Labeled "Most like to succeed". But I hated all that attention and expectations from other people.
Had all the opportunities opened to me, but choose the easy life. I've had friends make a lot of money/buy a big house just to impress their parents/friends/neighbors.
And they look a lot older than me years after because of all that job stress they put themselves into. They hardly enjoyed life despite all that money they made.
Met the group a few years ago and they give me this look and wonder why I'm now just this simple guy. Not the tech guru they knew in the late 70s early 80s.
Some of them end broke, lost their job, unhealthy for their age.

 

[twinrider1]

High school friend. Eagle Scout. Top 10 in his high school class. Given full 4-year scholarship to Heidelberg University. Drank his way out after just one year.

 

[mmntech]

There's a guy I knew in high school. Great guy, very bright. Always got high 90s on his tests and assignments. Especially math. Found out he's working as a security guard. Thinks he's working his way into becoming a cop, which is a great career. However, I always figured he'd become a scientist or pilot.

 

[Ksyder]

I have a buddy that is a brilliant auto mechanic and computer guy. He could have gone into engineering or IT easily and would have fit right in with the crowd here.

He is still very smart with computers and is expert at pc repair, hackintoshes, etc and also mechanics. But instead of parlaying that into a fine career he lives with his parents and smokes dope all day and waits for people to call him to fix their car or computer. Probably because he got a drug related felony and thinks it is impossible for him to step into the regular workforce.

 

[waggy]

High school friend. Eagle Scout. Top 10 in his high school class. Given full 4-year scholarship to Heidelberg University. Drank his way out after just one year.

a buddy of mine is exactly like that. a over achiever as a youth. Eagle scout, top in his class, great athlete. Given a 4 year degree to a Great school in IL (Uof I)

what he do? drank himself out of school the first year. He failed EVERY class his first semester. he got a nasty letter saying if he did it again he would lose his scholership. instead of getting his shit together he continued to drink and failed every class again.

gets kicked out of school. comes back home. spends the summer working fast food (never had a job before). decides that sucks goes to the local CC then to NIU.

has a decent job but could have been more.

 

[SheHateMe]

Oh gosh. I have too many to say, but one in particular I will talk about because it still hurts my heart to talk about how far this guy fell from grace.

I went to Middle and High School with a guy named Ronald. We were also on the track team together in middle school/hs, he did cross country and he played basketball too. Not only was Ronald super smart, but he was good at every sport.


At the beginning of the year in 12th grade, Ronald started doing some crazy shit. He quit sports and stopped coming to school. It was really weird. He was going through some things at home that many of us did not know about until years later after HS.



I still don't understand what happened to him. He is on facebook from time to time. He did absolutely nothing with his life. I graduated in 2008..so, that was a long time ago :/


Bad stuff always happen to good people.

 

[sonambulo]

Funny thing, perspective. No wonder so many answered 'me'

I'll chime in with my tale. I'm from a working class family but wound up with a full boat to a Forbes top 5 prep school (harder to get than you might think). I had another full ride lined up for University (a good one) but lost it due to a mix of some events that took place out of my control and some very poor decisions on my part.

There's that whole razor's edge analogy. Long narrow path but it's real easy to fall off. No real way to get back there once you've slipped off either.

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah... I gotta say Me too.

I always thought that I was going to be some big shot tech mogul, but I ended up becoming a low level IT grunt instead.

 

[ultimatebob]

Woah... Dupe post.

 

[disappoint]

Oh gosh. I have too many to say, but one in particular I will talk about because it still hurts my heart to talk about how far this guy fell from grace.

I went to Middle and High School with a guy named Ronald. We were also on the track team together in middle school/hs, he did cross country and he played basketball too. Not only was Ronald super smart, but he was good at every sport.


At the beginning of the year in 12th grade, Ronald started doing some crazy shit. He quit sports and stopped coming to school. It was really weird. He was going through some things at home that many of us did not know about until years later after HS.



I still don't understand what happened to him. He is on facebook from time to time. He did absolutely nothing with his life. I graduated in 2008..so, that was a long time ago :/


Bad stuff always happen to good people.

I still don't understand what happened to him.
He is on facebook from time to time.

I still don't understand what happened to him.
He is on facebook from time to time.

I still don't understand what happened to him.
He is on facebook from time to time.

There is a reason why we call it failbook from time to time.

 

[IronWing]

Had a good friend who was smart, master's degree, good health, drank himself into street bum status.

 

[jadinolf]

Probably me.

 

[monk3y]

Definitely me...

I've always been school smart and that didn't change when I entered college. Unfortunately at the end of my freshman year I got into a pretty bad motorcycle accident and had no one to help me. The people I had newly met didn't even come by the hospital (I was in there for 5 days).

I changed after that accident, I wanted friends that wouldn't desert me in my time of need and pushed school work back as a distant priority. Since then I made a great amount of very close friends, met my wife, and am having an absolutely wonderful life. I just know career wise I could have been a lot more than a person with just a bachelors.

 

[nageov3t]

one of my friends from high school.

I don't want to say that he never amounted to "anything," but he graduated at the top of his class from Georgetown, sailed through law school, speaks 3 languages, and now he works as a legal research assistant for the state while living at his parents house at 32.

 

[OinkBoink]

Definitely me...

I've always been school smart and that didn't change when I entered college. Unfortunately at the end of my freshman year I got into a pretty bad motorcycle accident and had no one to help me. The people I had newly met didn't even come by the hospital (I was in there for 5 days).

I changed after that accident, I wanted friends that wouldn't desert me in my time of need and pushed school work back as a distant priority. Since then I made a great amount of very close friends, met my wife, and am having an absolutely wonderful life. I just know career wise I could have been a lot more than a person with just a bachelors.

I remember that thread you made about your wife's mouthy sister. Bachelor's degree an' all.

 

[tcsenter]

Well I don't think it qualifies as not amounting to much, since he's doing what he always wanted to do, but classmate of mine was taking college classes his senior year (AP courses the previous year), excelled at just about everything (even a pretty good athlete), especially math, highest GPA allowed, member of MENSA, got scholarship offers or at least accepted to a bunch of DIV-I and Tier-I schools. He ended-up at a middling Tier-II college. I don't think the college even offered post-graduate degrees back then, though it offers several today. Got a BS (with honors) and became a HS teacher.

I initially figured he went there so he could also play sports. He wasn't so great an athlete (and our school's athletic conference wasn't so competitive) that he could've made most DIV-I teams, so I thought he chose a college where he could still make the team. But a lot of top-tier colleges aren't like NCAA powerhouses that routinely send people to the draft or have highly competitive athletic programs. i.e. he probably could have made the team at a much better (academically) school with DIV-II athletics.

 

[God Mode]

Me. Too many undiagnosed and untreated mental problems. I can run circles around all the well off and successful people that I know. I have a genuine fear of success and telling people/clients "its nothing personal, only business."

 

[iGas]

My best friend during high school and up to my mid 20s.

He won first place with a score of 100% in the Canadian national math contest in high school, and queen Elizabeth II shook hand with him when he excepted the award. He also won a full 4 years tuition scholarship for UBC. He dropped out of school after 2 weeks to work for 7-11, because he claimed that the math professor was stupid and ignorant.

He is now a freelance software developer that make less than $30K per year, but I assumed that he is happy with his life, however I truly believe that he can do much more for society if he have discipline/reserved.

He is an extremely intelligent individual, and work very hard on any task if he put his mind to it (I'm speaking from experience, as he and I have worked side by side and he also was my most trusted worker when he was my employee.)

 

[HeXen]

If you are older than 21 and you are not living in your parents house and not living off of taxpayers more than 5% of the year. Then you amounted to something imo.

 

[kranky]

A close friend in college, could add columns of 2 and 3 digit numbers in his head faster than you could do it on a calculator. But he decided he liked drugs more than anything else. Now living in Section 8 housing in a ghetto project, on SSI (disability through Social Security). He could afford to move to a nicer place but won't ("It's too much work"). I think it's because where he lives now he can get drugs easier.

He spent 2 years trying to get SSI and they finally ruled in his favor. When he was told he won, he called me to say he was going to get a large check for retro payments in 6-8 weeks, and asked if I could come visit him in a month so I could help him figure out how to manage the money before the check arrived, and I agreed.

A month later I called to see when he wanted to get together. He said it wasn't necessary. The check had arrived the week after the ruling. He didn't call me to tell me. In the three weeks after it arrived he had spent it ALL, $40,000, on crack. He was all matter-of-fact about it, just said that he appreciated that I would have helped him but now that the money's gone, we don't need to do anything.

I think he knew the check was going to show up quickly, but I never could figure out why he played the game of "come help me manage my money".