"You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own and you know what you know. And you are the one who'll decide where to go."
Theodor Seuss Geisel may have known more about what places any of us were capable of going then we already give him credit for, if recent research from Griffith University's Arthur Poropat is right.
The senior lecturer from the university's school of applied psychology has found that personality – and conscientiousness in particular, but curiosity also plays a role - is more important than intelligence when it comes to academic success.
In other words – the student that works hard will probably do better than the 'bright' student in class. And it all comes down to personality.
Using meta-analysis (where all, or as many as possible, studies on a particular topic are examined) Dr Poropat discovered that when someone else was asked to assess a person's personality, their ratings were "much better" at predicting how well someone would do at school than predictions based on intelligence.
"At least four times as good," Dr Poropat said.
"When you look at all the measures of personality, it is at least four times as useful as predicting your grades as your intelligence.
"...The big one is conscientiousness. And a big part of conscientiousness is about what is called effort regulation – not just effort, but how well you manage your effort. You would be familiar with people who put a lot of work into something where you think 'why are you bothering?"
"So it is about managing your effort appropriately. One of the things you find with people who are high in conscientiousness is they plan things out, they set goals for themselves, they are reasonably well organised about the way that they work."
The second most important personality trait to predict success at school – and its offshoots – that Dr Poropat's research uncovered was an openness to experience.
That's the trait found in people who tend to be forever curious about how things work and why things are, who tend to be creative and tend to look for ways to explain something.
"When people rate it (that personality trait) in themselves, that's useful, but when someone else rates them, who knows them well, it is at least as good as intelligence, on its own."
The third trait that popped up was emotional stability – those rated by others as having more emotional stability was also an indication they would do well academically.
When people rated their own personality traits the results weren't quite as strong.
Dr Poropat said that was a combination of people not being entirely honest in their ratings but also, and more likely, people considering their whole picture – considering their thoughts and feelings across their whole life, rather than the work you do – which is what others assessing your personality tend to use.
But the good news is that Dr Seuss, when he allegedly told an interviewer "it is better to know how to learn than to know" was right again – conscientiousness, that all important indicator, is something that can be learned.
"My background is psychology, so I knew all the psychological research that the thing that predicts academic performance is intelligence. So I was really surprised when I got these results," Dr Poropat said.
"But when I started talking to teachers, teachers are typically not surprised by this. Teachers mostly know that it is the student that works hard, not the bright student that will do well. That the curious student, the motivated student, will do well."
Dr Poropat said his research points to a need to change how we assess students.
"...Unfortunately the people who make decisions about how you select students into university, they are more sold on the intelligence stuff. The teachers themselves aren't and one of the things I think this says is, it is not that we should throw out the intelligence tests, because they are useful, but we shouldn't over play them," he said.
"We can train people to become better at managing their effort and so on. Conscientiousness is one of those things that just gets stronger with age – and not surprisingly. If you have survived in a job for any length of time, you have had to learn how to be more conscientiousness.
"On the other hand, we often train people out of being creative and curious and being open to experience. That is something we could focus more on. And on both of those things there is good evidence that we can train people on them- that will affect how well they do at school."
Or as Dr Seuss said, "think and wonder, wonder and think".