Have you ever met a real-life savant who didn't realize that they were a genius?

We have a paid summer internship program for juniors and seniors pursuing construction management

degrees. Five years ago, we had a young woman come into the program in her junior year.

She was very tiny in stature and very quiet, but we soon learned giant in intellect and loud where it counted.

The way we operate is each intern will spend three weeks on a different project, learning a

different role within the organisation, then three weeks on site as a superintendent intern,

three weeks on site with safety, three with project management, and three on site with quality

control. After each period,

I received a call praising her ingenuity and ability to adapt and improvise in any situation. At the

end of the internship, we had a plus Delta review of their performance, and based on that review,

we make a determination of whether to offer them a place the following summer. In the case of a

senior, we determine if we want to extend them a full-time employment offer.

Every review she received from each department all said the same thing.

Hire her now. We extended an offer for a salaried position, part-time, from that point through her senior year, along with tuition reimbursement. This young lady

still amazes everyone every single day. She's 25 years old, making an amazing salary and

absolutely dominating any projects she's given. If she doesn't know it today, she'll practically

be an expert tomorrow. She's incredibly impressive. I can see her having my job one day, that of operations director.

Hopefully it's after I retire, though. Criminal defense lawyer here, I had a client who was a low-level

substance dealer and weapon runner. Most street-level guys have a very different kind of

intelligence that doesn't translate all that well to the white-collar world.

Many of my clients asked to read case law, and I've only really met one of them who could digest

it and discuss it intelligently with me. This guy. He'd do his own research from the jail,

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