I’ve been bored at work and taking a few IQ tests. This is a matter of morbid curiosity – I stand to gain nothing except for brain exercise from taking the tests (not to belittle the brain exercise). But it does more than that, I’m forcing myself to wonder why I never considered myself a very intelligent person.
No one ever told me I wasn’t smart. I was told the opposite. Most things were unremarkably easy to me in school, but that meant nothing to me. I had been characterized as a language arts buff and found myself compelled to that role largely because it was what I had been told I was good at.
So much so, that despite kicking large amounts of butt in all my science classes, and being told as much, I didn’t take one AP science class. I did take AP Calculus, a class which I felt perpetually stupid in but managed not only to pass the class with an A but also receive a 4 on the AP test, a task I didn’t take any particular pride in.
I managed a full scholarship into an honors program at Montgomery College, I took classes at Cambridge University and I still didn’t feel particularly intelligent.
My focuses were on social sciences and language and I was growing severely bored, which I should have taken as my first clue that either the subjects or the schooling wasn’t right. I majored in English at UMBC, I dropped out. For a variety of reasons, the most compelling one being that English, despite all my love for it, is not really what I want to do with my life.
I always had this twisted view that intelligence as regards english/language/social sciences did not constitute real intelligence, just gathered facts and interpretation. If you take classes in those subjects, you are often surrounded by moderately intelligent people with no real critical thinking skills and no real desire to think. It wasn’t so much the subject matter that bored me, but the roles students played – or chose not to play. The point is, your science and math classes are largely composed of the same people, you just don’t realize it as quickly. You can get the right answers in math, in science, in programming without necessarily being able to practically apply those solutions. They don’t test practical application in the same, very public way that social sciences and languages do.
Maybe if I had pursued a college that wasn’t so science and technology based, I would have had a better experience with students and professors in English. But I think my most profound dilemma is that I don’t want to study one thing. I want to study everything, all at once. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to do that. That’s the way the world works, isn’t it? Interestingly enough, all the people I know who had or have the same dilemma go into programming and things. This makes some sort of perverse sense to me, but I never thought I was any good with computers because I never played too many video games.
Yes, this is the way my brain works. Dorks play videogames, dorks are good at math and science, dorks are good with computers. I don’t play videogames thence all the other criteria must not be true.
Actually, given that line of thought, I’m probably just as stupid as I feel.
K.
The contents of this blog entry may not reflect the views of the Webmaster of Doom, Michael.
Also: For those of you that care, on the completely unprofessional IQ tests I’ve taken online, I tend to average around 130.
One Comment
SMRT!
I know I am in this field I’m in because I am interested in so many different things. I like to write. I like engineering. I like learning new things constantly. I manage to get all of those and then some working in the field I do (plus I’m good at it, which is also nice). So I can be considered another example for you of someone who has the same dilemma and went into programming. I will also say that I am the only person on my team who has a CS degree! One guy has a map/geography degree, one guy has a EE degree, one guy has a Mechanical eng degree. As a field, we tend to be less rigid on training.
I will say that I went to a college that prided itself on ensuring we had a lot of practical application of material as well as theoretical know-how. This is why the CS dept. was its own entity — generally speaking, if the CS dept is part of the Mathematics school, it’s theory-based. If it’s in the Engineering school, it’s application based. And if it’s solo? It’s more likely both. I am a practical-application kind of person, which is ALSO why I had such a horrible time getting through school (and probably why I am a good employee). Can you tell I think about this a lot? We can chat about it sometime if you like. I actually think this is one of those things that all four of us have in common.
BTW, right before I went away to college, Dad told me I wasn’t any good with computers. Yeah, well, so much for that! And I stopped playing videogames (other than say, tetris and stuff like that) when I was in junior high school. So.
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