An Interview with Dionysios Maroudas on Giftedness and Early Life (Part One)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/05/01
Abstract
Dionysios Maroudas was born in 1986. He lives in Athens. He has a passion for mathematics, photography, reading, and human behaviour. He is a member of the ISI-Society, Mensa, Grand IQ Society (Grand Member), and THIS (Distinguished Member). He discusses: family nurturance; early social life; family history; redoing things in youth; academic progress in elementary and high school; early intellectual interests; developments in early life reflecting later interest in the high-IQ world; academic qualifications; financial and professional success; and finding a lifework.
Keywords: Athens, Dionysios Maroudas, Grand IQ Society, ISI-Society, mathematics, Mensa, THIS.
An Interview with Dionysios Maroudas on Giftedness and Early Life (Part One)[1],[2]*
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*
1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Did your family nurture giftedness?
Dionysios Maroudas: My family wasn’t what we use to call “average family”. My parents got divorced when I was 7 and my father moved abroad one year later. Therefore, my fostering was mostly my 7-years older sister’s and my aunt’s job. As a result, nurturing giftedness was never their main purpose because of their stress to raise me like a “normal kid”. What really helped and triggered my curiosity, was the better achieved communication because of our small age difference and her ability to turn math tasks into funny games since I was 3.
2. Jacobsen: How was some social life growing up? I am thinking of the fun activities and works and more casual parts of life make life worth one’s while.
Maroudas: Growing up was mainly entertaining! Since I was a child, I remember myself playing with friends in squares, playing fields, even in the Athens’ roads. Before my teens, I can’t remember how many times my mother came back from work at night, searching for me in my neighbourhood where I would have spent my time playing with other kids. (laughing)
My adolescence was full of intensity, doubt of expertise and amusement. A social teen, with incongruous friends, adapting and matching with machos and nerds equally. A guy you could find on a trendy nightclub’s table dancing with Greek folk music and the very next evening, drinking beer in his favourite rock-metal bar with a bunch of long-haired punks.
3. Jacobsen: Was there a history of high intelligence in the family based on the recorded achievements of the family?
Maroudas: In my family, I had none with a recorded high intelligence achievement. And that’s the reason I never stopped asking them the name of my real parents and information about their financial status [Laughing].
4. Jacobsen: If you could do something over again in youth, what would this thing be?
Maroudas: I would try not to be content with mediocrity. I would also try to have more self-confidence, even if this doesn’t constitute a smart person’s characteristic. Last but not least, I cultivate the importance of entrepreneurship for my future.
5. Jacobsen: How was academic progress in elementary school through high school?
Maroudas: As a student, I was attracted only by maths. I remember my teacher in second class in elementary school, who tried to teach my classroom the meaning of fractions. He brought a few kgs of fruits and said that for every correct answer, the pupils could take the peace of the fruit that represented the fraction and eat it. After a few minutes I had so many fruits, they were impossible to be consumed by a 6 years old child. In the following years, I had less desire for studying and I felt like school was boring and meaningless, and this was obvious in my grades. Furthermore, my last teacher, in elementary school, advised my mother to have me examined by an expert because she translated my boredom in her class into mental retardation. After 6 years in elementary school in Greece, secondary-school lasts for 3 years and 3 more is for the high-school.
In secondary school, I had a math teacher who noticed my ability in maths. To keep me in vigilance she used to cut grades from my tests for my bad handwriting or for writing the result without explaining it. Similar was at high-school.
I was never a bad student, always an average with high grades at maths.
6. Jacobsen: What were some of the earlier intellectual interest while growing up?
Maroudas: I knew how to dismantle a toy with a screwdriver since I was 4 and how to use its motor and lights with a single battery. Does this count? (laughing)
When I was a kid, I was attracted to collecting information and knowledge in two strict conditions. First, it shouldn’t be written in a school book. Second, it couldn’t last a lot.
I enjoyed reading books and articles about psychology, theology, medicine, sports training and cars.
7. Jacobsen: Were some of the developments of early life reflecting what would later echo in the high-IQ world for you?
Maroudas: As I mentioned, I was never what we call “wonder-kid”. Neither I cared about being one. I was satisfied being an average young, as I was expected, and it demanded the least effort by me. Only when someone challenged me or rewarded me, in maths, or in complex problems, he could understand that the solution would come to me so fast, it seemed I had guessed it.
8. Jacobsen: What have been some postsecondary academic qualifications or achievements for you?
Maroudas: I hold a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of West Attica, in Athens.
9. Jacobsen: How have these translated into financial or professional success for you if this is an important part of life for you?
Maroudas: Since I finished school, I had been compelled to work for my expenses. As a student in Marketing, before I turned 18, I was privately tutoring maths for secondary and high school students. When I was 21, I started working for a telecommunication shop and 8 months later I was promoted to the shop’s manager. After one year I got promoted to an internal sales inspector and peer coach for a group of shops. My promotion brought me responsibilities and higher income, but it also deprived me of finishing my studies on time and made me postpone my plans for postgraduate studies.
In general, I can’t say that I ever got paid back for my work or for my abilities. Working in Greece during the biggest financial crisis from 2009 until present, I had to face unfairness and exploitation several times in my career, but I’m not a quitter.
10. Jacobsen: What do you think is important for the highly intelligent and focused to find in a lifework for themselves?
Maroudas: It is said, that an intelligent brain receives plenty of unwanted information, in a similar way that an irritated nerve feels the pain of every soft touch. This tends to abstract its owner from his/her goals. So, staying “focused” is vitally important, as you mentioned. Given that, you must acquire the big picture of time. Patience and persistence are the best tools to succeed in this. And all these are required to obtain the main goal of every genius which is something to echo in time. The continuation of our existence after our death.
Appendix I: Footnotes
[1] Member, ISI-Society; Member, Mensa; Grand Member, Grand IQ Society; Distinguished Member, THIS.
[2] Individual Publication Date: May 1, 2020: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/maroudas-one; Full Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2020: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.
*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.
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