Does this make me intelligent?

Starting in about grade eight or grade nine, I was taught in my English class how to write an essay and that I had to form all of my thoughts into five paragraphs. To this day, I am still writing essay's in my classes and I am in University. Back when I was younger, the format for a proper essay was five paragraphs, the first paragraph was the 'Introduction,' which was the paragraph that you had to briefly explain what you were going to talk about in the following paragraphs of your essay. The second, third, and fourth paragraphs were called the 'Body' or 'Supporting' paragraphs where you had to expand on your Introduction in more detail. The fifth paragraph was the 'Conclusion,' where you had to give away your final points about the key parts you mentioned in all of the other paragraphs. In University, you still sort of follow this same format. Except now, you have to follow a word count or a page count. Meaning that your essay has to be between 1500-2000 words or your essay has to be 7-9 pages double spaced - all depending on what the professor wants.

I would like to think that I am very good at writing essay's and for the most part I am very good at formatting my essay's to the professors' liking. I could write an essay on how I feel about inclusive education and the ways I can be inclusive in my future classroom, and I still may only receive a grade of 60%. Aside from being passionate in my writing, I don't understand the purpose of essay's. I see that it helps me think intensively and think creatively but how does this prove my intelligence, or maybe even prove that I am not intelligent? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. says that "intelligence plus character, that is the goal of true education," I could write about something spectacular and prove how intelligent I am but a grade of 50% might make me feel like I am not as intelligent as I thought I was.

Intelligence plus character, that is the goal of true education, right? I don't believe that grades determine how intelligent students are. While I don't believe this, there are some teachers that do believe this. Growing up, I never had good grades. I never had good grades because I wasn't a good test writer. I wouldn't say my grades were horrible but I always knew that I could do better. Yet that's the thing, I wasn't doing any better on my tests. I always asked why I wasn't able to get the grades that I wanted, even after studying for three days straight for the exam. Then a few years later, 2 years of being out of high school, I realized that every student learns differently. It's not that I was 'dumb' and that I didn't know anything, its that I have different ways of projecting my knowledge and writing a written exam is not one of those ways. Yet in almost every single one of my classes, I had to write a test. Because of this, my marks were being affected. I never had low grades because I didn't understand the material, it's that I learn differently and writing tests isn't one of my stronger ways of projecting my intelligence on the material. I still felt less intelligent than my peers because of this and I feel that as teachers they can give students the choice of writing an exam or doing some sort of final assignment that is still testing what the students know but is a better way for that student to comfortably project their knowledge. Overall, I believe that intelligence and education are not reflected upon each other. I believe that even if you don't go to school, you could still be extremely intelligent or be just as intelligent as someone who is going to school. Education does not prove whether I am intelligent or not intelligent.