Emily (she/her)

Absolutely not, some of the smartest people I’ve ever met have zero emotional intelligence. You can be incredibly accomplished academically and still be totally unable to work productively with others. A lot of these people lean towards aspie/AuDHD supremacy as well funnily enough - they think everyone else is just far too irrational to agree with their horrendously undeveloped philosophies.

I think the world would have less conflict if the average “emotional intelligence” went up 50%

Gaol is just the old way of spelling jail, the US also used to use the same spelling. It’s pretty rare I see the spelling in modern use today, even if we kept it longer than most (until the 60s officially). Americans shouldn’t throw stones in glass houses though, considering their large number of strange and unique spellings of common words compared to the rest of the English speaking world. A little part of me dies inside every time my spellcheck incorrectly changes “colour” to be spelt as “color”. Likewise, I’d like to point out that the term thong referred to footwear well before G-strings were invented.

I’m not actually convinced most Americans even know what true Aussie accents sound like. Most imitations are poor attempts at the Broad accent caricatured in American movies, even though most people speak with the General accent. My friends who speak with Cultivated are even assumed to be British.

In my opinion, it’s not about trying to prove you’re a genius, the key is that confidence and passion is infectious - people want to be around interesting people who are interested in them. Being skilled and well-read, as well as having hobbies lets you engage competently in deep conversation and have interesting qualities you can connect over or other people can grab on to.

I took estrogen and everything worked itself out from there~

Seriously though, there were a few factors. It was a combinations of building up my confidence (that’s how estrogen helped, turns out when you stop hating your body and life, you get more confident) and actively constructing situations that allowed me to connect and build relationships with people. I started a book club as a not so subtle way to get people in a room and talking to me, I reached out to people to have them round for dinner, I put a lot of effort into being thoughtful and kind. Developing a variety of hobbies and interests means I have plenty to talk about and lots to fill my time when I’m not doing that - a creative hobby is especially great for that.