“You cannot survive in Engineering.” “The best student in your department will struggle in MBBS.” “Any XYZ student will excel in your Economics department; you can't achieve that in…” Hey, pleaseeeeee... These are the kinds of things you hear from supposedly intelligent graduates, especially from top science degrees, being said to people in the Arts and Commercial fields. Few days ago, Engineering and Science graduates came to the TL flaunting their performances in Graduate Training exams, postgraduate Finance degrees, management courses and the likes. While at it, they boastfully challenged even the best brains in these fields with variations of the statements above. Unfortunately, as serious as this conversation is, I always find it funny. Because there is often very little behind these claims beyond ARROGANCE and a needless SUPERIORITY COMPLEX. Let's make something very clear: INTELLIGENCE IS INTELLIGENCE. A brilliant Law student does not suddenly become unintelligent because he cannot solve an Engineering problem. An exceptional Economics student does not become less intelligent because she has never studied Organic Chemistry. And an Engineering graduate does not automatically become intellectually superior because his degree required calculus, mechanics or thermodynamics. You are confusing specialisation with intelligence. Engineering requires a particular combination of mathematical reasoning, spatial thinking, technical knowledge and problem-solving. Medicine demands its own enormous combination of scientific knowledge, clinical reasoning, memory, decision-making and practical skills. Economics, Law, Accounting, Literature, Political Science and the other disciplines also demand different combinations of reasoning, analysis, communication, abstraction, interpretation and judgement. The fact that your discipline trains you to solve a particular class of difficult problems does not mean you are the only person capable of difficult thinking. In fact, educational assessments themselves recognise that performance across different cognitive domains overlaps without being identical. The OECD's PISA studies basically show that being good at maths, science, reading, or creative thinking can be related, but they are still different abilities. Being strong in one does not automatically mean you'll be equally strong in all the others. That distinction matters. A person can be exceptionally intelligent and still need to learn the language, concepts and techniques of a completely different discipline before becoming excellent at it. Training, knowledge and exposure matter, but so does raw intellectual ability. And this is where the superiority complex becomes funny. If you take a brilliant graduate from Economics, Law or Philosophy and drop them into Engineering without preparation, struggling does not prove that they are unintelligent. It proves that Engineering is a specialised field. Do the reverse. Take an Engineer and drop him into advanced Constitutional Law, Literary Criticism, Financial Economics or a completely unfamiliar field without preparation. Struggling there would prove exactly the same thing. Nothing. Because you cannot use unfamiliarity with a discipline as a scientific test of intelligence. Your degree tells me what you have been trained to know, not the full limits of what your brain is capable of learning. So please, let's retire this strange DISCIPLINARY CHAUVINISM where people turn their courses into IQ rankings. A difficult degree is difficult because of what it demands — not because everyone outside it is intellectually inferior. Your discipline can be difficult without everyone else's discipline being easy. And honestly, some of the smartest people I've encountered are smart precisely because they know this. Let's be guided. And let's reflect the true wisdom that our degrees are meant to build in us. ✍️: SOBUR || Ọmọ Afáríogun