Summary of “What is Intelligence, Anyway?”
^1In “What is intelligence, anyway?” science fiction writer Isaac Asimov explained how he realized that there is more than one kind of intelligence, and that he wasn’t as intelligent as others when it came to non-academic things. ^2Asimov told how he smugly thought of himself as quite intelligent because he always scored high on academic, verbal tests of intelligence, until his auto mechanic, who Asimov thought was not intelligent, was able to fool him with a joke by using his hands. ^3Asimov realized that, if an intelligence test required him to use his hand to repair something, he’d score very low. ^4Academic education is only one way of being intelligent. (I used 110 words to summarize the original 550-word article, about 20% of the length)	^1First sentence has title, author and main idea. ^2Second sentence tells a major detail about Asimov’s attitude about himself as smart, and that he was fooled by someone not so smart. ^3Another detail that shows Asimov learned he wasn’t so smart all the time. ^4A final sentence that restates the main idea.
My Response: First thoughts: l I’ll bet he hated the army. He probably didn’t like being ordered around by people he thought were less intelligent than him. l I might have been fooled, too, by the auto mechanic. But, I might not have. l I’m good at reading and writing, but lousy at fixing a car. However, I’m good at fixing things around the house—but not good enough to be a professional. l My sister was a good artist and a terrible speller. I’m a good speller and lousy at painting and drawing. l I have met people who were not educated who liked to mock educated people as if those educated people were not really smart—or practical. I think that sometimes they mocked because they were actually insecure about their own lack of education. l Some people seem to be good at everything: reading, writing, fixing things, dancing and singing, painting, etc. But there are very few of those. l You’ve got to find what you’re good at, and like, and pursue it.	I write down my first thoughts quickly, in any order. I won’t use all of them, but I’ll pick out ones that can help me write a good paragraph with a good main idea and supporting details.
Now I’ll write a Response paragraph using some of my ideas: Isaac Asimov told a very humorous story about how he got “busted” for thinking he was so smart, in order to help us all feel better about ourselves. For those of us who might think we are pretty smart, it is a cautionary tale that maybe we aren’t as smart as we think we are, and we just might get tripped up by our own smug complacency. And for those who maybe haven’t thought themselves very smart because they don’t read and write as well as Asimov, well, that’s O.K., because they are probably smart at something else. I think it is important that we figure out what we are really good at, which gives us pleasure, and then develop that talent as much as possible. However, we will still have to work hard at what we’re good at in order to become excellent at it. It’s fun to work hard at something you know you’ll get really good at, but its just work to work hard at something you’re really not very good at. The reward of hard work, however, is feeling like you’ve accomplished something others haven’t.	I didn’t wind up using many of my original first thoughts at all. But my paragraph has a topic sentence with main idea and supporting details, and it ends with a sentence that kind of restates the first idea. Everything in this paragraph is my opinion, and it is not a restatement of Asimov’s ideas. It is a Response that I make based on his ideas. (I also used a couple of the vocabulary he used in his article, “smug” and “complacent.”