Being smart and MIT

[danaeris]

Written in response to a post in coffeekitty's journal:

Quite frankly, I had no such mentor in high school. I mean, it was clear that the teachers thought I was a good kid, and smart. There was one teacher who seemed to think I was brilliant but she didn't put any personal time into me as a person and I thought she was a bit of a ditz. And there were other kids in my grade and the grade below who were receiving comparable grades -- or better -- in math and sciences. One of them also went to MIT (we're the only two who ever went to MIT in the history of our school, oddly).

I went to MIT for the opportunities, both academic and social. I'm pretty confused about what ensued. I know I was depressed and suffering from anxiety, but not sufficiently aware of that to get it treated. I know that I was out of my league, but it is unclear to me if that was because of the depression. I know that when my medication isn't working, intellectual pursuits, and work, seem impossibly complicated, difficult, and frightening. And I know that my problem sets seemed that way, but maybe that's because they were. :)

Many people seem to find it amazing that I managed to get married, divorced, and graduate on time with a 4.2/5.0 GPA. They seem to think that means I'm pretty smart, even for an MIT student, but I don't know. Even at MIT, getting a B average (more of a B-/C+ in my physics classes) was easy, but getting an A in technical classes was IMMEASURABLY hard for me. It required easily twice as much work as the B would have.

Looking back, I think I will always wonder how I would have done if my depression was treated properly.

I also find my mind to be... interesting. See, I don't actually have that high an IQ. Only 127 last time I was tested (unless you count online tests where Tickle tested me at 136 and iqtest.com tested me at 156). Borderline genius. And I know the IQ isn't everything, but most of my friends have much higher IQs. Why is it that getting that B average was so easy, and the As were so incredibly hard? What does that say about the way I work, or about my potential, about potential I'm not achieving?

Sometimes I feel like a pretender. Like everyone thinks I'm smart, but I'm really not. After all, you're all geniuses, and I'm only a borderline genius. And its not that I don't think I'm smarter than most of the world. I do think I'm smarter than your average person. By IQ, I'm in the upper 4% of the population. But in this strange and wonderful social group, I feel intellectually inferior, and uneducated. Physics hobbyists often end up lecturing me about physics stuff. And I sure as hell don't know much about politics, history, or literature.

My mind confuses me. I think I have one of the fastest learning curves I've ever seen. I think I absorb things and have excellent "intuition." I think I'm excellent at understanding some very complex things. And yet I know so little. I'm often scared to speak up during intellectual conversations because I feel I know so little.

Anyway. Not sure where I was going with this, but it seemed worth posting.

Comments

[polkamadness.livejournal.com]

I'm a genus, you're smart, he's a moron?

[davetoo.livejournal.com]

Erm ... wow ... change school names and courses of study, and this could be about me. I prefer not to think about my grade-school IQ scores, because I feel like I missed that potential by so far. I blame depression and lack of self-esteem for my poor performance in school, and poor life choices for my poor memory.

[geekosaur]

Indeed, this sounds remarkably familiar. :/

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

We run in a highly educated, as well as extremely intelligent, group. You are not a pretender, and I'm sure not all of us are geniuses (I actually don't know what my IQ is--they probably tested me at some point, but no one ever told me). But each of us probably IS a genius in at least one field of endeavor, and some of us (like me) are pretty good at a bunch of things but not genius level at any one of them.

I'm often scared to speak up during intellectual conversations because I feel I know so little.

You now know that you don't know. Which is immeasurably better than thinking you do, when you really don't. So I'd say cut yourself a little slack. :^) Start talking in those intellectual conversations--you may surprise yourself. Ask questions, if you're not sure. People LOVE to be asked questions so they can pontificate to a willing audience. At the worst, you'll learn something.

[deedeebythebay.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed at how much this sounds like me. My IQ was tested at around 130, other tests put me much higher, similar to yours.

Yet, my focus is poor and I know it. It leaves me being a jack of all trades and mistress of none.

I *know* I'm smart. Quite smart. But I also know I feel terribly inferior. That, in my opinion, is my biggest "dumb down" factor. Because I don't believe in myself as much as I should/could, I don't trust my brain and I am easily intimidated.

Sometimes I feel like the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion all rolled into one.

[emmett-the-sane.livejournal.com]

The IQ tests are bunk. There are lots of types of intelligence, and only the surfaces of a few are scraped by them.

I'm not going to mention in a public forum what my own scores were (as a child/young teen), but suffice it to say that they were in the top 1-2%. I had crappy grades. I could learn things wonderfully, so long as they were presented in the right way. The IQ test happened to fit that model. Take me out of that model and I froze up.

Now, folks go over my head without even trying, much of the time. Especially when it comes to mathematics (a big sore point with me, as you know). I'm doing things to change that, but it's going to be a long road. And, quite frankly, those who are learned in one area have typically sacrificed another. Some of those who can spout off long math-geek diatribes are incapable of navigating even mildly complicated social situations.

I want to say gobs more about this, because it's something I have decidated considerable thought to... but sleep calls. We should talk about it in person sometime.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

Don't ever discount intuition... I find that my intuition is one of my greater strengths as a software test engineer, no matter how much it drives the developers batty. It clearly bugs them that I'm so often right with what a bug is/where it is, but so often unable to explain why.

Of course, software testing is still more art than science at times and there's no real formal education for it yet... we're making it up as we go.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

but most of my friends have much higher IQs

If most of your friends are older, then they may well have been tested using different tests and different scoring methods. For what it's worth, I've taken a number of different IQ tests at various points throughout my life, and there's a 48 point spread between the highest and lowest of my scores. So, take any score you get with a large grain of salt. Bottom line is that you can't compare 2 different tests - apples and oranges, for what the different ranges mean.

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

You're in a crowd of specialists. Most crowds are crowds of specialists. The specialists you're currently around are just particularly geeky and intelligent-sounding about their specialties rather than, say, knowing the batting averages of everybody to every go through major league baseball since its inception.

So of course you feel stupid when you talk to somebody about their area of specialty. It's not your area of specialty. I consider myself pretty smart, and I certainly know some fun obscure stuff. But I get lost when talking to the physics guys too, and I have a reasonably useful background in that. You're never gonna know every field as well as its chosen enthusiasts. In fact, you'll probably never know three fields as well as the really hard-core guys, even if you try really hard. S'okay, that's true of the rest of us as well.

And some days, we *all* feel like pretenders. People much smarter than me seem to, and I know for sure that I do.

[polkamadness.livejournal.com]

There is a study that went as follows:

Person a makes up a list of hard questions they know the answers to.

They then test person b on their questions.

The experimental subjects are told all this then shown a videotape of the testing; afterwards they are asked to judge the relative intelligence of a and b.

Yet in spite of knowing that person a had the unfair advantage of making up the questions, subjects consistently believe that person a is more intelligent based on the videotape.

- Mark

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Shorthand, b/c I am tired:

1. Sounds like a bit of the imposter syndrome. I am trying not to think like that anymore, because it stops me from actually learning and does hold me back. Not being confident can limit your potential.

2. There is a huge difference in intelligence (whatever that is, but probably more like learning) and knowledge. Don't feel dumb for not knowing things! You don't even have to feel dumb for not understanding things when they are explained, b/c soem people suck at explaining things. ;->