But, I was still left with my intelligence right? Surely that would be enough? I shouldn't have to go to school, I'll just get someone to hire me, a Bright Young Man™, and I will be on my way to success.
By the time I got to High School, I hated school as well. It was too easy for me, and especially in the lower grades I was bored, a lot (I "got" the lesson about 5 minutes in, but hours later the teacher was still trying to teach dumbest kid). Even in AP math, the other kids in my class would struggle, while I sat in the back of the class, ignoring the teacher and reading Hot Rod magazines; then I'd go home, read the book, do some of the homework and go in on Fridays and ace the quiz/test.
Some teachers were "good" with the way I learned while others apparently hated me for it. My sophomore math teacher (AP "Advanced Plane Geometry") ruined math for me. She would assign 30 homework problems each day, if you did all 30 and got all 30 wrong (but "showed your work") you got a 100. If you did 29 out of 30 (or did 30 out of 30 but didn't "show your work") and got them all correct you got a 0. It was the "show your work" part that I abhorred the most; it was like trying to explain how I breathed to a chimpanzee. I stopped doing her homework pretty much altogether (I'd do enough to "get" the lesson and not bother turning in anything since she was going to give me a 0 anyway).
She swore up and down that I was cheating somehow. Made me move my desk right next to hers so she could watch me when I took a test. Made me come back afterschool to retake a test I'd already aced. Had a teacher's aide sit and stare at me, watching while I took the test. None of it convinced her that I wasn't still cheating somehow. After dealing with her for 2 semesters I wanted nothing more to do with "higher math." I took Trig my junior year and that satisfied my graduation requirements, and I never took another math class again. In my 25+ years as a software engineer, I've used Trig ONCE while writing a program to figure out seat placement in an arc around a stage.
I don't recall ever having a "I deserve this because I'm smart" mentality. It might be that my parents seemed disinterested in how smart I was, partly due to the fact that my brother struggled with reading (something similar to dyslexia, but he only saw the first couple of letters and the last couple of letters in a word, everything in between "didn't exist" so he'd "guess" at the word). While I got A's and no praise, he'd get C's and a whole bunch of praise (at least that's how my mind remembers it). I also recognized that while I learned certain things so quickly that it seemed like I just "already knew it", there were other things which I struggled with (Spanish class, for instance).
I also joined the Army on the delayed entry program my Senior year of HS. If I did have any "entitlement attitude" when I arrived for Basic Training, it was definitely gone by the time I graduated it. Ironically, I "fell" into the software engineering industry. I never took a class for it, just sat down and started coding. In the mid-late 90's between the .com boon and Y2K stuff anyone that could write a line of code could get a job as a programmer. Coding concepts came as naturally as breathing to me and I quickly progressed to be a Senior Software Engineer. My social skills, however, left a lot to be desired: I was the stereotypical programmer from the 90's, the geek you kept in the basement, fed carbs and Mt Dew, dumped requirements on his desk and he'd churn out code like a machine, but you didn't let him talk to anyone because he'd creep them out (or something).
I had no interest in being a
Lead, no interest in being a
Mentor and no interest in being a
Manager. I was content to churn out code, even though I'd hit a plateau in my career. It wasn't until I went through a divorce and had a girlfriend introduce me into the "Personal Development" world. It was those courses on Human Communication that shifted the way I communicated with myself and others to the point now, that I find being an
Influencer (Leader, Mentor and Manager) exciting and rewarding in ways that churning out code could never have accomplished.
Ironically, for me, then "being smart" (being
the Analyst) was enough. Enough, at least, at the beginning. But once I hit a certain point, being the
Analyst wasn't enough. When I first learned the 4 personality types at the Personal Development event I went to, we wore "nametags" for each personality type and practiced being that personality type. For my "Influencer" name, I chose a name from the
Family Circus comic: "Not-Me". I could identify with the
People Pleaser and the
Doer personality types (in reality I was like 45% the Analyst and 40% the Doer, or no code would have actually been written), but I did not identify with the
Influencer at all.
I also got a ton of the "that's not for people like us" from my parents while growing up; it took me awhile to break out of that mentality. I remember when I bought a brand-new BMW M3, ordered it from the dealership, waited 3-4 months for it to get built and shipped here. The entire time I waited, there was part of me that expected a phone call ("We're sorry sir, we checked our records, and this car
isn't for people like you". Even the day I picked it up, I kept expecting the sales manager to come out and give me the bad news. Thinking about that, I'd say if anything I got the exact opposite of an "entitlement attitude" from "being smart".
I have rarely had issues making a decision and am happy to put my name on the decision, right or wrong. I'd rather take the credit or the blame that waste time hem-hawing. My number 1 refrain to my kids is "DO SOMETHING".
Sounds like you have a healthy amount of the
Doer in you, as well as more
Influencer than I used to have. I guess one of the key differences between us might have more to do with "Human Rights" than our relative intelligence. It sounds like you received way more of the
Right to Be than I did. The
Right to Be is what you get when your parents (or other important people in your life) tell you that you are important, that you are unique, you have value, or that you are appreciated, etc... Between the praise my brother received that I didn't and being told (repeatedly) "the world doesn't revolve around you", I got very little of the
Right to Be growing up.
People with a lot of the Right to Be, do end often end up with a least a little bit of an entitlement attitude. The participation trophy generation got A LOT of the
Right to Be and we see that when they think that they are an "exemplary employee" simply because they show up for work.