Well, here's a small rant (that I promise, won't offend anyone.)

I'm relativly smart. Not ingenious, but pretty smart. I act stupid on the forums, but that is on purpose (i.e. It's a hell of a lot easier than being intellegent.) Now, I tend to associate myself with smart people. The girl I'm going to ask out (next time I see her, which is very rare recently because she does morning annoucnements and is usally at the Studio before I even arrive at school) is 3rd in the class, and almost all of my friends are in the top 100 (out of 500+). Now, most of these people say I'm smarter than them; I don't beleive it and deny it; but that's what they say. Even the girl who's third in the class. Anyway, I got my transcript the other day, and I'm at 98th.

Now, I'd be quite a bit higher if my math teacher didn't take 24% of my grade away for no reason in the last week of school (I'll talk to her about it, soon.), but other than that all my grades are very good. Mostly A's, except in Math which I alwasy get a B. My GPA, unweighted, is 3.7 about, but that's because my math teacher decided to kill me with those -24 points (bringing the marking period grade down to a 64), before that it was like 3.86 or somthing. Either way, I get good grades, but not nearly the best. And I don't put effort into it.

And then it occured to me, people tend to judge intellegence soley on grades. GPA, Class Rank, and all that. But there are intellegent people who just don't try, like myself. Laziness. Now, if you get good grades, you're relativly smart, but I have to admit, some people get really good grades and are dumb as a stump. They just memorize what they need to, and then forget it. On the other hand, people like myself actually learn the material and apply it as best they can.

Now, I consider 98 out of 500+ unnacceptable, so I'm really going to step it up a notch (I really want to get into NHS, I'll be in NFL [National Forensic's League] very soon, but I want NHS]), but my question to you all is:

Are grades directly related to intellegence?

This applies to test scores as well (For Example, I scored better than somthing like 95% of the state on my last standardized test, but I still don't get the best grades on earth, nor am I smarter than 95% of the state of Pennsylvania). So, please, debate with me.