I'm not a teacher but I grew up with a guy who is a legitimate and certified genius so I can answer this.

I knew him since we were in the first grade and it was apparent to everyone to that there was something different about Will. Not only did he seem to have an insane understanding of nearly every academic subject throughout all 12 years of grade school and college, but it was the gulph in intelligence between him and nearly ever other student throughout his life that made it clear to everyone who knows the guy just how intelligent and special he really is as a person. I can remember being friends with him in 4th grade and having to do a science project in class with another friend of ours who happened to be smart. Me and this other friend both have high IQs that put us in the gifted learning programs all throughout school so we were good at science and didn't have too much trouble with it. Well, on the one day that we were having trouble with some science, Will had the project done in half the time that it took everyone else and this was par for the course with him. When I was young, it made me feel lesser than and sad at times because I felt like he was just a better version of myself. I was smart, I had good friends, I was a great athlete, I played music, and I had plenty going for me yet he didn't just have all of these things as well but had them in incredible abundance and excelled at them in a way that left teachers, kids, parents, and everyone in our community and elsewhere totally awestruck by him. He wasn't just a genius that honestly never had a GPA below 4.0 throughout his entire life in school, but he also was the most athletic kid I ever played with or against (he could run like the goddamn wind), he was very popular and could have been the most popular kid in school (he shunned the drinking and hook up culture in high school and college), and he also was the guy that every girl in school really liked and wanted to be with because he just was this total outlier among the population and a Renaissance man living in the body of a 90s kid like the rest of us.

So many teachers were blown away and captivated by teaching him. One teacher in our high school told me once that Will understand the material (very tough material) so well that he could have taught the entire AP class himself at the age of 16/17 as a junior. I knew he wasn't lying because Will went on to be a triple major in this subject in college and graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA at a very good school where he was given a full scholarship to attend. If finishing like that wasn't enough, he then stayed on at school for another year just to "hone his craft and polish up" by taking very difficult courses in a field seemingly unrelated to what he majored in.

One of the most fascinating things about him is the paradox wherein he is this genius who has dealt in science, logic, and facts his whole life yet he is one of the more religious people that I grew up with and is a legitimate and observant Christian who attends Church. He isn't some Jesus freak or some evangelical but he is definitely a strong Christian who sort of always came across as maybe repressed or controlled or even subdued by either his faith or the upbringing he had because of it. Where me and my friends and others in my town went through high school and college drinking, smoking weed, and engaging in the hook up culture with varying degrees of success, Will never touched any of this and ended up marrying his high school girlfriend while forgoing any drink-til-you-drop behavior or pot smoking. Sure, he enjoyed a beer or two in college socially but never to get loaded or anything like what other guys we grew up with loved to do so much.

During college I didn't talk to Will as we had grown apart over the years but he was so exceptional in school that he had pieces written about him and his professors gushed about how naturally intelligent that he is and how he was one of if not the most intelligent student that they had ever taught. I would guess that his IQ is off the charts in a way that isn't like what we see with savant children or any of these rare child geniuses. Will is very much a "normal" guy in that he is so incredibly well-rounded, personable, and down-to-earth despite the fact that his mind is a super computer.

It was certainly an interesting experience growing up and being friends with him for years because most people will never, ever get close to a genius like this in this way. But it wasn't just his intellect that was so impressive and left such an impression; it was also just all of the other things about him that made him this seemingly perfect boy/guy/man. He was just better at you and everyone else at seemingly everything and it felt so unfair because you just knew and came to realize that he was operating on some other level/plane of existence that you just could not reach no matter how you tried. As I and others grew up, we came to realize and make peace with the fact that there was something more at work with him and this was easier to do because he was such a nice and respectful guy who you could like and admire without any trouble.