Hey Pandas, What Was Your “Damn I’m Smart” Moment?

It wasn't just one moment, but a culmination of several moments in my medical history. So, I have a great doctor. She's kind, caring, and compassionate, and is always willing to listen to my concerns, respond to my symptoms, and answer any questions I might have about my healthcare. She's been my PCP for seven years now, and over those years my health has declined. I had been experiencing a downturn in the past nine months or so, and she hadn't been able to find what the problem was (I probably should add that I have a medical background in that I was a CNA and completed a pre-nursing program at a local college, and my grandmother was a nurse). So I started researching my symptoms and found something that aligned with the symptoms I'd been experiencing. I told my doctor and she exclaimed, "You need to go to the ER NOW! I saw this in your blood work and thought it was because of 'blank', but I see now it's actually a side effect of the medication you've been taking, and it can be life threatening." Now, this isn't the first time this has happened. It's happened at least three other times in various situations such as what medications I should be taking, what tests I should have done, and why I got ill so often. I basically have to research everything and suggest to her what I think is wrong, then she has an "aha" moment and we go from there. It freaked me out a bit because this last thing should have been very obvious to her, as a doctor. But, anyway, I figured all of these things out myself with just intuition about what was going on. Of course, I did research using Google, but I had to develop a starting point. So I realized I seem to have a certain affinity for medical diagnosing, at least when pertaining to myself.

For me, it's when I come up with answers on TV quiz shows (and I mean actually *on* them, not just watching) or auditions that I didn't even know I knew. Many people appear to crumble under pressure, but I find I actually think more clearly, and manage to pull an answer from my brain that I have no idea how it got there - examples being who wrote Endymion, with which band did Justin Timberlake find fame, and who was the girl who appeared in many Monty Python sketches?

I was a high school sophomore.. advanced biology class.
The teacher, Mr Long, asked me to tutor two students, the quarterback and the head cheerleader! And they were seniors!
There was no getting out of it, and my introverted self was terrified!
They passed, I got some respect from upper classmen.. which I ended up graduating with anyway, because I took all my courses and had nothing lower than A-

When I was going to college in '87 and had a fast food job to afford to pay rent and whatnot. Some random coworker that didn't seem to give me the impression that they'd never graduate high school said "You think that you're so smart because you can use big words" and my response was "Until now, I wouldn't have been so sure, but now that you mention it, I guess you're right. Thank you."

When I thought of something real good, and I'm like, "damn, I'm smart."
Sooo, it was a science project, and I had loads of beakers and I figured out mixing things with different colors/ingredients but then I went to the shop and when I came back, everything was all over the place

I work as a data scientist, I had a presentation on this set of findings I had where my boss let me go down a rabbit hole because I was curious and comb through billions of lines of data over the course of a couple months. Finally I had a good understanding of some stuff our company could benefit from, created a set of reports and a finally the presentation to give to our strategy team on things I found and my recommendations, I was worried because during the whole presentation no one from our strategy team paused me to ask questions. My final slide was a set of 12 recommendations that our company would benefit from following.

There weren’t any questions because my approach and output was so cohesive they didn’t question what I did. Now they are implementing the recommendations and so far it’s been financially beneficial for my company.

That’s when I was like… wow … I am smarter than I let myself think I am. I won’t let it get to my head instead I’ve grabbed employees in my department and started teaching them that a good scientist is a curious scientist and how to go down that rabbit hole.

That I was the best in class of my merchant apprenticeship (here in Germany it's 1 or 2 school days together with work in a company per week). Never had to learn outside of school for anything thanks to my good memory for facts.

I remember that in 10th grade we had a history test and I absolutely didn't know any answer for sure despite actually learning for it ... Got 110% on it because I provided additional, but unecessary answers on top of all the correct ones.

On a daily basis it's more for speaking fluent english and my colleagues in the HQ not , leading to interesting wording from them (*Sausage Doc, Hat up display...)

Going from being completely computer illiterate to teaching commercial website design and other subjects at a computer school in two years' time.

When I had had enough of dealing with creeping mold, no central heating, and a leaking roof, and called the city inspector on the landlord. Good thing I did; three days later, the ceiling in my bedroom collapsed during a heavy rainstorm.

I work for mental health care services, a receptionist in a UM office. My unit (6 of us) process paperwork regarding inpatient stays, and admissions. I’ve been in that office for over 21 years. Longer than anyone else. Another gal was the queen of inpatient processing. Until 4 supervisors, the new director, and 8 clinicians at various times asked ME questions regarding procedures from the past, as well as medical coverage for the 21 and under group. Not only did I have most of the answers, but showed examples. Including ways I perfected certain methods to gain information without emailing, or calling psych hospitals/facilities. I really surprised myself. I really thought I didn’t know as much as I really do. Extremely proud full moment, and confidence booster.

I realised that I was so smart when I read that children usually learn the alphabet at 5, and then learn to read at 6. I was shocked because I had learnt to read at 3.

Another moment was when I started watching the big bang theory and understood almost everything that they were saying.

I was little (7/8 years old) and I was with my grandparents at the "cité des sciences" in Paris (I am French). There were plenty of activities for children and one of them was a kind of riddle on the Mona Lisa. There were two paintings (front and back) and we had to find which of them was a copy. The person in charge of the puzzle had indicated at the beginning that Da Vinci had had the nails removed from the painting and one of the two paintings still had them. I was the only one to make the link and out of the twenty children, I was the only one to find the answer. I thought "but it’s obvious! There are four big nails! How could no one find them?". At the end, I won a candy and a little bit more of self-confidence.

Had my chemistry exam today and a multiple choice question came which asked us to pick out the heptahydrate salt. I randomly picked green vitriol and then when I looked it up later I realised that maybe I am smart

When I was very young, I could see on a world map that some of the continents could fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Everyone told me that was just silly. Impossible.

Any time I'm reading posts on Facebook!!!!!

In sixth grade science class, we were starting a unit on astronomy, and some kid asked why Pluto wasn’t a planet. I immediately stood up and explained to the entire class why the IAU decided to make Pluto a dwarf planet.

Another time was in fourth grade when I wrote a paper on R136a1, the most massive star, just for fun outside of school. This one kid who was kind of the jerk of our class was acting super bored and zoning out on purpose and all that. When I said, “R136a1 is so massive that it loses 321 thousand billion tons of material per second,” everyone gasped and that kid was looking around like, “What’d I miss?”

Much less academic answer: when washing my matching sheet set, I try to keep it all together. So when it's dry, I fold the sheets & place them inside the matching pillowcase before putting them into the linen cupboard. One matching set, all together for the next time I want to use it.

ok im really dumb but once there was a trivia game andi was the only one answering so i got every one right . people were like, ooh yay bee ur so smart and i was like 0_o. but they asked, where the great barrier reef, and i said Australia cause duh, and they were like "omg! how did u know that thats crazy!" lol, it was weird. and im just good at trivia cause i know random stuff

I have been a good student academically throughout my school life, and my college life, I have cleared lots of competitive exams.
But, on numerous occasion, I've been told that I am pretty dumb, and I agree with that, I'm a whole dumber than you can think.