Picture this: You have a major test in your history class tomorrow. You soon realize that you have 100 pages of material to read to prepare for the test. The obvious plan for a college student is to forgo reading and just memorize as many definitions as possible.

How about if you could read one full page in about 8-10 seconds with your left eye reading one page and your right eye reading the other? Then after reading your material, you could maintain all of the information you read and recite it back to someone? How extraordinary would that be? 

Well, savant Kim Peek can indeed do just this. This unbelievable man was the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's character, Raymond, in the movie "Rain Man." Although savants have a specific types of genius, most of them have some type of mental disorder.

According to Wisconsin Medical Society about 10 percent of persons with autistic disorder have savant skills. This creates an interesting paradox because a mentally disabled person could have mental abilities above and beyond the average human. 

However, the Wisconsin Medical Society said, "Not all savants are autistic, and not all autistic persons are savants." Savant syndrome can be acquired through disease or injury of the central nervous system, which consists of the brain and spinal cord.

Out of all of the skills a person can possess, savants typically have five main areas of expertise.

1. Music: This is the most common skill, mostly having to do with the piano.
2. Art: This skill mostly has to do with painting and drawing.
3. Lightening Calculating or other mathematical skills: This has to do with the ability to compute difficult numbers, like multi-digit prime numbers.
4. Calendar Calculating: Very common among savants, calendar calculating deals with the ability, for instance, to say exactly what day your birthday will be on in 20 years.  
5. Mechanical/Spatial Skills: This has to do with constructing difficult machines and memorizing intricate maps. 

After learning about different types of intelligence in my psychology class, I became very interested in savants. I think it is absolutely amazing that a mentally disabled person can have an ability like calendar calculating. Kim Peek has this unique ability. 

By understanding savants, I feel that we can better appreciate the things that come so easily to us and the things that take us forever to master. For example, I have to do a considerable amount of studying in order to do well in a history class. Peek, on the other hand, could read the entire history textbook in about 30 minutes and be able to tell you what it contained.

I, however, can easily communicate with a person, live alone and can function fine if taken away from my comfort zone. If you have ever seen the movie "Rain Man," you know that Raymond had trouble doing these things that we take for granted everyday. 

So while you are walking to class saying hello to your friends or studying for your next big test, think about how easy or difficult these things would be for a savant.

In an interview, Fran Peek, Kim's father, quoted Kim saying "You don't have to be handicapped to be different because everybody is different." Although most savants are considered mentally retarded, their amazing abilities make them some of the most extraordinary people in the world.