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I'm sure you're doing well right now, but are you sure it's a good decision to rely your entire life on a judgment made by your 9 year old self? I mean, what have we learned by when we're 9 year old? Maybe you learned some arithmetics and concluded that you've mastered the entire field of mathematics? Again, I'm not saying you made a mistake in your life, it may have worked out for you but it may not work for 99% of the population. Maybe you were lucky.

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It's possible that I'm wrong. It's maybe even likely that I'm wrong. I guess my point is that, in the big picture, of the factors that make a child successful or not, being told they are smart seems to me to only be a mistake if you don't tell them anything else -- if you don't teach them what it means to be smart.

At some point, I learned that I wasn't as smart as I thought I was. That was a valuable lesson, and one that I learned as a child.

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