Brilliancy or Intelligence: Which One Is More Important?

What comes to your brain when the question of brilliancy and intelligence are being discussed? Have you considered what people mean by ‘this is a brilliant child and this is an intelligent child’?

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I have actually asked myself these questions and tried to see where I fit in. Considering what it means to be a brilliant student, it appears few people have these qualities. The quality of being a brilliant student is what many people would love to have. Although not many have this quality.

Being intelligent means having good understanding or a high mental capacity; quick to comprehend, as persons or animals. source 

Intelligence has been defined in many different ways including as one's capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, planning, creativity, and problem solving. It can be more generally described as the ability or inclination to perceive or deduce information, and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. source 

Intelligence is the quality of being very smart and well-informed. 

Brilliance on the other hand, means to be excellent in physical or mental ability or to be exceptionally talented. Brilliance is the quality of being very clever and bright.

Intelligence and brilliance are mental qualities. To have any of the two is to consider yourself lucky. Not many people have these qualities and that is why you wonder how people think when they say some things in public.

If you are asked, between intelligent child and a brilliant child, which do you prefer? I believe many people will choose a brilliant child for the fact that people praise them more because they are easily noticed in class or anywhere. But if you ask me, I will say I prefer the former (intelligence) to the latter (brilliance). 

The brilliant ones, no doubt, often do better than the intelligent one in class but the quality cannot be overlooked by any teacher. While in school, the brilliant ones were always getting the ‘best’ results while some of us are just a bit behind them. 

At a point, after first semester and when we started seeing results, lecturers were saying ‘you are not a brilliant student but an intelligent one’. This is because while most people focused on how to pass exam and others focused on reading all the topics treated by the lecturers, I didn’t do any of these.

I paid attention to the lecturers words and they have ways of 'warning' students about some topics. While people read and jot things the lecturers were saying in class, i paid attention to his words, mood and some things he keeps repeating. This forms an idea on what he will probably ask during the exam. 

Most cases, i prepare very well for these 'questions' i have in my brain and all through my stay in school, they always come out in exam! This actually makes philosophy apparently easy for me. It is like seeing the questions in your head and preparing for it. This makes exam cool for me.

The brilliant students have their qualities too but i will prefer an intelligent kid to a brilliant one because i have a clear vision of what it feels like to be an intelligent student. They do things you don't expect because attentions are not always on them until they keep repeating same intelligent skills.

What do you think about these two qualities? Do you prefer an intelligent kid to a brilliant one? Have you been a friend to any brilliant or intelligent kid before? 

Thanks for reading. Your boy @smyle the philosopher.