Street Smarts vs Book Smarts | Yakezie Reader Insights | Yakezie Forums

The combination of both is the best! lol

My book smarts got me in student loan debt ("I'm good at school, why not get an advanced degree?") while my street smarts helped me save money on graduate school, the cross-country move and living in a city while eventually helping me learn ways to monetize my writing and pay for my "book smarts." lol.

Book is helpful, but street smarts are more applied! ;)

Perhaps we need to define street smarts and book smarts.  Book smarts are good students and street smarts are people who use common sense to evaluate problems or situations.  The perfect situation is both, however I prefer street smarts over book smarts if I had to choose.  Most successful people are able to make quick decisions based on their experience. They are able to apply their knowledge to a variety of real life situations.

I say both are necessary.  Knowledge obtained from schooling and/or self-education is important, but without the ability to apply those lessons in a real-life situation (provided by street smarts) it's pretty worthless.  There are a lot of smart (educated) people in this world, but they are are socially awkward or unable to take care of themselves.  Just imagine Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory—the guy knows almost everything in the world but can't hold a conversation, doesn't understand sarcasm or social protocols, and is just downright odd!

Street smarts are more useful than Book smarts from what I've seen.

However, what trumps all the "smarts" is Emotional Smarts/Intelligence.  Relating to people, working with people, empathizing with people – these skills are more important and more critical to success than any "street" or book smarts.

I vote for street smart.  But book smart is also important.  I'm thinking that you can use book smart to initially find a good job but you need street smart to move up the chain of management.

PKamp3 @ DQYDJ said:

A little of column A and a little of column B – but it's definitely situational.  I often see street smarts as sort of a synonym of 'common sense' (can someone with book smarts tell me if a phrase can be a synonym?  Witty!).

 

That said – Eric mentioned Sheldon Cooper;  I think if you have a lot of book smarts you need to at least have a modicum of street smarts to avoid coming off like an absent minded professor type (and spend your career in the laboratory).

Lol. Sheldon Cooper- the true representation of being only book smart. Great illustration gang.

Great question. I've got a master's degree (MBA), always scored extremely well on standardized tests, etc. So, by that definition, I'm probably book smart.

That said, I've come to believe that street smarts are more versatile. Not that book smarts don't matter, because they do. But really, really good street smarts can go a long way.

I heard something attributed to former White Sox (now Marlins) manager Ozzie Guillen, who supposedly never even graduated high school. The line went something like this:

I’m smarter than a lot of guys who go to Harvard. When you come to this country
and you can’t speak any English at 16 years old, and you have to survive, you
have to have something smart in your body. If you take one of those Harvard guys
and drop them in the middle of Caracas, they won’t survive. But if you drop me
in the middle of Harvard, I’ll survive.

What he said…I believe it. Street smarts are versatile.

Completely situational.  Am I in a boardroom or back alley?  Sometimes they feel like the same thing though…