heironymouscoward's Journal: 99.7% and counting

I went and did it. Joined the only club that would have me, despite Groucho's warnings. To be honest, sitting in that dim room, surrounded by malformed faces, unkempt and badly dressed, I felt truly at home. Yes, despite many attempts to be on the side of testosterone and rubgy, I came out of the closet and joined my local Mensa group. The psychologists doing the tests said I was smarter than 99.7% of my fellow humans. I apologised and told him I'd had a bad day, which was true. Little baby crying all night does not make for the sharpest of wit.

So, now I'm wondering what I'm going to do with that Mensa card. First, it's always useful when someone calls me stupid (this happens surprisingly often, just like my Slashdot comments get marked -1 Troll more than I'd like). I can pull out my piece of paper and say "unless you are one of those three per thousand, technically you are the stupid one".

It was that kind of answer that made me popular at boarding school. Only after some years did I discover that "popular" meant one was allowed to have a girlfriend and generally enjoy life, rather than being playfully beaten up all the time. I was seriously shocked and disillusioned when I found that spitting is not a sign of affection.

The funniest part of the Mensa package was a survey asking about whether my high intelligence had caused problems when I was younger, and still did. "Did you find other people were slow and stupid?" Well, duh!! Education is good, but it tends to force a single speed on the whole group. My brain shut down for the most part, so much that I almost dropped out of university. In one famous CompSci course (database design, I guess) I got 7 out of 100. In numerical analysis, a fantastic 30%. I was saved by the arrival of the microcomputer, which gave me an open canvas on which to learn how to think again. After a year of doing nothing else than writing 6502 assembler and teaching myself to sell games on cassette, I went back to CompSci and finished my degree, getting near-perfect results in every subject without even trying. My tutor was, how can I put it, somewhat stunned.

I measured my IQ when I was about 20, getting 125. This is good, but not extraordinary. I guess it's about average for students in a good university. Mensa scored me at 140, which is still less than Descartes, but OK for a middle-aged man with a headful of worries.

For me this is pretty good evidence that the education systems we have constructed are seriously flawed, and not just for us "clever" people. I've been lucky to find ways to define my life so that I can live and work in fifth gear... this means running my own business, doing the things I want to, living where I like, and so on. It would be surprising if such a regime was not good for one's IQ.

But what about the millions of people who suffered through regulated traumas at school, who found themselves in cubicles and boxes at work, and who may well be running in third gear for most of their lives?

Even a small difference in mental health - and this is what I'm talking about - must have very serious consequences over time.

I'd like to get more case studies on this subject, so if you have a minute to tell your experiences, that'd be great. And perhaps an entry in your journal so that others can come here and add their thoughts too.

IMHO

[MarkusQ]

IMHO, the worst downside of being smart is that you can find clever ways to dodge the little low-stakes learning experiences that come to you when you are young, and so wind up having to learn some of life's key lessons when the play is full speed and for real.

It is quite frustrating to watch the not-so-brights swoop like a flock of birds to avoid a hawk while you're thinking (in a panic) "I refuse to react on instinct! I can work this out...if we say that delta V is about sin theta times X, neglecting w

Re:IMHO

[heironymouscoward]

Sign in a football club: "You don't have to be a moron to play here, but it helps".

Similar experiences...

[Ethelred Unraed]

...at least once we moved to Minnesota. In Virginia I got straight As, had a lot of friends and did well overall; in Minnesota I went to a city junior high school, and quickly got isolated as the geeky kid with the Southern accent and funny clothes and too many brains for his own good. Self esteem was in the toilet, grades took a nosedive, and hated it.

Then I went to a boarding school for a year (mainly to avoid being at the same school as my former classmates), and that was even worse: spoiled rich kids