Two graduates enter the job market at the same time. The first holds a top degree, completed multiple internships, and submitted over 300 applications — receiving around 10 responses. The second, a pharmacy graduate with a more targeted approach, received job offers from every hospital they approached.
Merit matters. But outcomes also depend on sector demand, timing, networks, and contextual awareness. That gap — between knowing what to do and knowing how to navigate the environment you’re in — is what this article calls street smartness.
Drawing from criminological research on survival in uncertain social systems, academic frameworks on practical intelligence, sensemaking, and political skill, and decades of real-world observation across Singapore’s education and corporate sectors, Dr. Alan Go argues that street smartness is not manipulation. It is the connecting intelligence that enables people to apply their knowledge, competence, and values within uncertain real-world situations.
As AI handles more routine knowledge work, this contextual awareness becomes the distinctly human advantage. The question is whether our education systems are willing to teach it.
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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse, July 2026.