I have tried to make myself smarter and it just doesn't work for me. I always admired verbally gifted people like my husband and my son with their vast store of general knowledge and thesaurus in their brains that allow them to make quick witty remarks and come up with just the right words to express themselves. Even though I have learned a lot of new vocabulary and can score higher on vocabulary tests now there is still a difference. I still can't express myself as well as they can or make jokes the way they can. No matter how hard I try I can't make myself verbally gifted.
The same goes for math. I am doing algebra every day now. Some of it I remember and some of it I don't remember ever learning in the first place. I can learn it but I have never been able to come up with faster alternate ways of finding answers like my son does and I could never do mental math like he does. I know it took me longer to learn algebra the first time than it takes my son. I think I only did well in school because I was a good test taker.
