As it happens, I discovered this point in high school; I thought of myself as “the smartest kid at school,” and yet the mental gymnastics required to justify that I was smarter than one of my friends were sufficiently outlandish that they stood out and I noticed the general pattern. “Sure, he knows more math and science than I do, and is a year younger than me, but I know more about fields X, Y, and Z!” [Looking back at it now, there’s another student who also had a credible claim, but who was much easier to dismiss, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had dismissed me for symmetric reasons.]
As it happens, I discovered this point in high school; I thought of myself as “the smartest kid at school,” and yet the mental gymnastics required to justify that I was smarter than one of my friends were sufficiently outlandish that they stood out and I noticed the general pattern. “Sure, he knows more math and science than I do, and is a year younger than me, but I know more about fields X, Y, and Z!” [Looking back at it now, there’s another student who also had a credible claim, but who was much easier to dismiss, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had dismissed me for symmetric reasons.]