It's always tragic to have a student who's as dumb as a stone, but somehow it seems particularly tragic when he or she is also gorgeous (. . . and sweet-tempered; it probably wouldn't be so tragic if the gorgeous student in question went around kicking puppies or pushing small children into traffic).
The student I'm thinking of is in my class on Author #1, and he's model-beautiful. And not generic, J. Crew-model-beautiful, either, but arrestingly, unexpectedly striking: fine features, very fair skin, dark wavy hair about chin length, and blue eyes. Not especially tall or especially buff, but very fit. He totally belongs in a period drama as the poetic nobleman.
The only problem is, if he were cast in such a drama, he'd never remember his lines. He is, not to put too fine a point on it, one of the thicker human beings I've yet encountered. I've been gradually coming to this conclusion based on his first paper and the infrequent, head-scratching contributions that he makes to our class discussions, but I just finished his second paper and it's head-against-the-desk-bangingly bad.
Ah, well. Dame Fortune has only so many gifts for each of us.
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Tiruncula commented at 1:57 PM~
Tragic! But...erm....could you post a picture? :)
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Dr. Virago commented at 2:34 PM~
Oh don't worry about him. People other than academics often seem to think pretty people are smarter than they are* either because a) they're too dazzled by their beauty to notice they're not very bright or b) they were expecting so much stupider that any coherent sentence is delightful surprise.
*This is especially true of men thinking beautiful women are smart, but it happens the other way, too.
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Courtney commented at 5:44 PM~
Paraphrasing an old conversation: "He's cute, there are different standards for cute people.
"You mean no standards?"
"Yeah."
Although I relish the semester I had that most dangerous triumverate: the hot, intelligent, and on-his-way-to-actual-feminist-thought 18 year old.
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Courtney commented at 5:45 PM~
Oops, sorry. Had him in my class. I did not have him in any other sense.
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La Lecturess commented at 8:10 PM~
Quinn: I'm falling on the floor, here. Hee!
Dr. V: I don't know if that's always true. I had a college friend who was tall, blond, and well-put together. She also happened to be brilliant. But until she graduated from college, she was always in smart-person schools, where her intelligence (if not perhaps its intensity) was taken for granted. When she went out into the working world she was astonished by how condescending people were to her and how dumb they assumed she was. Part of that, I suppose, was being 23--but she was working at a company and in an industry with a high bar for entry, and even so she got this reaction.
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Unknown commented at 9:12 PM~
Ah...there are so few of us gorgeous and brilliant people! :) Of course WE all are...
I had the most gorgeous student once - she was Brazilian and was even better looking than that Giselle creature. She was the *sweetest* girl ever - she took 3 classes with me and used to express a lot of genuine concern because she thought I drank too much caffeine. She worried about my blood pressure (with good reason probably).
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M commented at 9:52 PM~
I think it's always tragic when a cute guy/girl is "dumb as stone."
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StyleyGeek commented at 12:59 AM~
My supervisor always whines when she comes across a student who's both good-looking and smart. She claims there should be a law that you get EITHER brains or beauty, because otherwise there's not enough to go around.
On another note, I do some modeling work part time, and at a recent event someone asked me what I did as my main job. I told him I was in grad school and he just about killed himself laughing. Then he said condescendingly, "You don't have to pretend to be smart, love. I'm sure you would have got the job anyway..."
If my employer hadn't been watching, I would have "accidentally" planted a stiletto heel on his toes as I walked away.
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Jennifer commented at 5:53 AM~
If my employer hadn't been watching, I would have "accidentally" planted a stiletto heel on his toes as I walked away.
It doesn't matter who is watching when it is accidental. I've been pondering that of late.
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commented at 9:50 PM~
The most tragic of all possible people would have to be the sort that are smart but just don't get it in some way that's hard to put your finger on. I once knew a boy who printed his essay ( which actually wasn't all that bad) on the back of old political posters. He just didn't seem to see that there was anything wrong with this.
