Which is better: Popularity or Intelligence?

photo courtesy of Google

Written By: Sawyer Summers
This week in English class we had a discussion about if it would be better to be the smartest person in the school or be the most popular person in the school. I personally think that it would be better to be the smartest person because then you could get good grades and get into a good college. This could mean that you would get a better paying job in life.

Another reason it would be better to be the smartest person in school is that some people believe that popular people are rude. Brinlee Lords, a student at MJH, said, “Smart people are usually nicer than popular people.” She thought that some of the popular people are stuck up and rude. I agree with her.

About half of the people in my English class would choose to be the most popular instead of the smartest. Audrey Sutton, another student at MJH said, “I think it would be super fun to know everybody and party all the time.” Some people say that if you were popular, you could still get a good job because you would know a lot of people. There is definitely some truth to the saying, “It’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know if life.”

A couple of kids in my class thought that there are two kinds of smartness, street smart and book smart. If you chose to become the smartest, would you also be smart in the ways of the world or would you just be book smart? Mrs. Rhodes, a teacher at MJH stated, “I think smart people are sometimes typically smart in school, but are not always smart in other ways.”  
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It is good to be smart, but it is also good to be popular. Hopefully, we never have to choose just one.