There are challenges that smart people have to deal with, and this is the worst. This one concern—dealing with people whose educations are valid, but who you'd never trust to know up from down—trumps all others. It beats the feeling of isolation smart people—especially smart introverts—experience. It cartwheels past suffering through the tenth iteration of an idea in a conference room full of people who just don't get it. It even tops the urge to disembowl stupid people who don't check their blind spot before switching lanes.
Dealing with an educated idiot (henceforth, an EI) is so difficult perhaps because the experience itself is an attack on a smart person's very essence. No matter how clearly you explain something, the EI just isn't going to get it. But it's difficult to gauge how clearly you're communicating. As Terry Goodkind's character Zed put it, "It's a lot like deciding if you can see as far as you could yesterday." So you can come away from an encounter with an EI thinking that you're a failure—that somehow you just can't explain this particular concept well.
That's the trap.
It's not your fault, Smart Person. The EI doesn't get it because, despite his pedigree, he isn't smart. No matter how you adapt your rhetoric to suit another learning style, you're not going to happen upon the one that works for him. Just give up.
Let his lexical ambiguities roll off your back. Let him blow himself out with his hand-waving and inane babble. There's just nothing you can do. Have the serenity to accept it. Eventually, he will go away.
The only thing you can do to mitigate this attack on your soul is to make sure that your encounters with the EI are observed by other smart people. Their furrowed eyebrows will give you validation when you fail to comprehend the meaningless word vomit the EI spews. When they ask the same question you are, attempting to phrase it with perfect clarity (the poor souls), and he pauses, ostensibly thinking, and responds with a reply that makes your brain explode, you will know you're not alone. And you're not really a failure. He's just an idiot.
