Growing up with a twin has definitely shaped my view of the world. All my life I've experienced all of my firsts -- the first day of school, first job, first school dance -- with someone by my side. We had attended the same schools from kindergarten through senior year of high school, meaning we were in school with pretty much the same people for more than half of our lives.
Even though we're twins, we have polar opposite interests. My twin sister, Maria, has always been the writer and was more interested in English classes while I've always been really interested in math and science. Because of our differences, we were never in the same classes. A lot of people would be in classes with both of us, and as a result, when they found out we're twins they had a million questions.
Who's older? Do you guys like the same food? Who's taller? Are you guys best friends?" are just some of the questions that we get asked on a pretty regular basis. My least favorite question has always been, Who's smarter?
How are we supposed to answer that question? Maria always says that the twin who has an issue answering that is the smarter twin because she's always so easily passed off the smart twin title to me, and that's not fair.
Our academic interests and topics we wanted knowledge in are so polar opposite, how can we quantify our intelligence to then compare it? In some subjects, I'm really uneducated and have limited knowledge, but she's incredibly informed in and knows a lot about, -- like literature, writing and psychology (she's a counseling major and creative writing minor). On the other hand, there are a lot of subjects I know a lot about -- like biology, chemistry and math, that she doesn't have a lot of knowledge in.
Just because she knows things that I don't, does that make me stupid? Or does me knowing things she doesn't, mean that she's stupid? Of course not; we're both smart in what we're passionate about! Our intelligence can't be reduced to quantified values and be compared, because they're both different, and they're both important.
