http://www.realworlddegree.com/street-smart-vs-book-smart/
What is street smart?
Well, when I think of street smarts I think of someone who has good common sense and is intelligent, but isn’t necessarily doing well academically. This person gets his or her knowledge from try and error, from talking to people and exchanging thoughts and opinions. He/she is more of a doer than a crammer.
The Oxford dictionary describes “street smarts” as:
the skills and knowledge necessary for dealing with modern urban life
The term street smart is often used to compare and contrast another term called “book smart”.
And what is book smart?
The stereotype of a book smart person is someone who is very well educated, who is a gobbler of books and tries to understand complicated theoretical principles. But this person might have troubles interacting with people or putting his academic knowledge into real world practice.
College graduates have advantages
In general it is true, college graduates who I would consider as book smart have better chances of well paid jobs. Their starting salary is mostly higher.
In a world where you get valued by “little numbers and letters”, where you primarily get a job through handing in a sheet of paper called resume, it is tough without academic qualifications.
There are many professions that actually require extended education – lawyers, doctors or university professors. You wouldn’t want a school dropout to perform your life saving surgery, would you?
But graduating from college doesn’t give you a free pass to a successful career.
The irony of college
Isn’t college supposed to prepare you for a successful career?
You were taught by your parents and teachers that if you study hard enough you will get a successful well paid job as a reward. That’s not necessarily true.
There are people who totally succeed in school and at college but fail in their professional careers. And those who fail in academic institutions might be the ones joining tomorrow’s most influential entrepreneurs.
What makes the difference?
Key success skills
Whether or not you’re book or street smart to become successful you should first of all define what success means to you. Defining your personal level of success will give you enormous power.
- What kind of job are you looking for? Do you want to be employed, a freelancer, entrepreneur or CEO?
- Do you want to earn big money, follow your passion or combine both?
- Are you willing to work hard for your goals or do you aim for a work life balance?
And to climb the ladder of success you need certain skills and traits regardless of you’ve graduated or not.
Very important are marketing and sales skills. Even if you never intend to become a sales person you will always always end up selling something. Even if you want to become a hairdresser and earn money with it you need to sell your services. And to attract customers you need to market your brand. Period.
Soft skills are essential as well. In your career you always need to interact with people. People as your customers, business partners, clients. You rely on great communication skills - both oral and written.
To become successful you need to network. Networking opens many doors. Sometimes it is more important who you know than what you know.
A fundamental understanding of finances is important too. As soon as money comes in you should be able to make smart decisions with it.
And of course with a right mindset, self-belief, motivation, enormous work ethic, a positive attitude and driving goals you can get anywhere you like.
You don’t learn it at university
Most commonly you don’t learn these skills in college. Tertiary education is, like school, rather based on memorising facts to pass the next exam than practising soft skills or learning how to network efficiently.
That’s why it’s so important to engage oneself in learning more about these skillseven after college. Read books of your choice, listen to audiobooks (my favourite while being on the road), watch tutorials on Youtube, browse through the web, attend seminars…there are so many options.
Learning is a life long journey! And can be super exciting!
So, which smart is the smarter one?
Bottom line is it is great to be well educated alias book smart. But only to a certain level namely as much as you really need on a regular basis. To gain knowledge beyond that is a waste of your resources.
You need merely a little of what you learned in four years of college yet you “spend almost [your] entire youth – potentially some of the most creative, enthusiastic, energetic, and fun years of [your life] – in pursuit of little numbers and letters certifying [your] academic intelligence” (“The Education of Millionaires” by Michael Ellsberg).
In order to really succeed you’ll need skills like mentioned above. However you don’t learn these skills in college.
What makes then more sense for many jobs is to get the theory by self-education and thus will save money and time and instead focus more on key success skills which are a necessity for most successful careers.
The leaders and entrepreneurs of today’s world
Some of the most successful leaders and entrepreneurs of today’s world prove that you can skip that part of attending college. They are school and college dropouts, who may be less book smart, but who certainly are street smart!
Just think of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, who are part of a revolutionary technology era. Lady Gaga and Alicia Keys dropped out of college to pursue their passion to music. Jay-Z never attended college and put it this way: “I’m a thinker. I figure things out. I don’t have a high level of education, but I’m practical–and I have great instincts.”
And the list goes on…