A Diatribe On Intellect - The Peril Of A High IQ

Today, kids, we’re going to discuss the aberration known as high IQ, and why it is problematic. In this territory, I know of what I write. Over the past 20 or so years, I’ve been subjected multiple times to various batteries of standardized testing. Your MATs, your ASVABS, your Graduation Exit Exams, the whole shtick, all through primary and high school…. all with 98th percentiles or better. That lovely GED - custom tailored for high school dropouts, yet significantly more difficult than the Alabama Graduation Exit Exams - netted me a grand total of five mistakes. ACT? A 28 composite…. Harvard starts accepting with a 27. And at varying points in the timeline, I’ve been needled and prodded by the wonderful folks who administer that most venerable of IQ tests - the Wechsler.

In the last fifteen years, I’ve been through the Wechsler wringer a good handful of times. Each time, the end result has been a verbal IQ decidedly ranging from 147 to 157, depending on multiple factors such as sleep deprivation, relative health, emotional state, etc. (Fact is, kids, if you know you’re walking in to one of these bad trips, it’s best to do it on a full stomach and a good night’s sleep, and not when you want to choke the raw sewage out of the person who ordered it). So, just for the sake of balance, let’s average out this ten point range, and just say that my verbal has rated right around 152.

152.

Who would ever guess any three digit number - other than one’s weight - might end up almost completely defining their life?

Here’s the deal…. 152 on the Wechsler basically rates as “highly superior intellect”. Back in the day, 152 was only a few points shy of genuine, bona-fide “genius”. I’m guessing the overall education system of the US must have suffered a mighty blow in the past decade or so, because now a 152 apparently does equate to something like “genius”. What would this miniscule number mean for an average lay-person? Well… simply put, it means I’ve qualified for Mensa since I was 11. I’m not a member for reasons completely irrelevant to this discussion (or maybe not), but that’s a story for another day.

Now, there’s a great number of folks milling about out there who put a tremendous amount of stock into the importance of IQ tests and the implications of their results. There are studies built on it, life-altering decisions based upon it, and moral judgements made on it. Yet the large percentage of the average populace has no clue what they are talking about when they discuss IQ tests. The average person apparently believes an IQ test is an extensive standardized test of exceptionally difficult, arcane questions and concepts, which will definitively state how smart you are, what you know, and where you should be going in life.

WRONG! Oh, so wrong….

How many reading this have taken an actual IQ test? Anyone? I’m sure there’s at least one person, because I’m not that excruciatingly unique. For everyone who hasn’t, here’s the scoop on IQ tests:

• Your average IQ test is generally geared to quantify your verbal IQ (which actually has far less to do with talking than the name implies), but there is also a common test for the measurement of spatial IQ (which has to do with your manipulation of objects).
• The spatial IQ test is a real bitch, even though the premise behind it is so incredibly simple. (Here’s a card. The card has a picture of a red and white pattern. Here are some cubes. The cubes have red and white patterns. Use the cubes to recreate the patterns on the cards as quickly as possible). My spatial IQ always hovers right around 109 - very, very average.
• Your usual full-length standardized IQ test is pretty long, sometimes as much as a few hours, but its duration is primarily determined by the subject.
• The results are generally graded on this weird little curve, based upon the general knowledge expected of different genders and ages, as discerned through the examination of representative samples of the population. Yes, it gets more involved than that, but that’s a great simplification.
• Last, but most importantly: The questions aren’t that bloody difficult. The questions asked are actually reasonably easy, if you just remember to expect curve balls. In the average verbal IQ test, you aren’t scored so much upon giving the correct answer, but rather on how long it takes you to provide the correct answer. Kind of like buzzing in on those $200 Jeopardy questions.

What that breaks down to is that a 152 score doesn’t mean much about what a person does or does not know. All it really means in terms of cold hard fact is that the person in question is a quick thinker, both logically and abstractly (going back to the comment about curve balls). In less definitive terms, an IQ test is NOT a determination of what a person knows, what they will know, what they should know, or where they will end up in life. It is, instead, an indicator. It indicates how quickly and completely the subject processes certain kinds of information. It indicates generally where they are in terms of educational “maturity” - on what academic level they could theoretically comprehend and assimilate new knowledge. It indicates very roughly whether a person is on par with his or her peers. Most of all, it measures a very difficult-to-quantify trait: POTENTIAL.

The best way I have ever heard it explained:

“That scribble there doesn’t mean you’re Einstein, but it does mean you could be one day. It means that you have the potential to learn, understand, and utilize just about anything… if you want to.”

Whoa. I think I liked it better when I was under the mistaken impression that this stupid little number meant my head was stuffed full of useless crap.

Where’s the problem, you might ask? Why do you feel the need to write some sort of lengthy rant about this? Why can’t you just be happy you scored so obnoxiously high, and kindly shut up already?

Well, it’s like this… Once you officially score that high on one of these brain-ticklers, word gets around. Quickly. Test administrators tell guidance counsellors. Guidance counsellors tell teachers. Teachers tell parents (and more indiscreet teachers do stupid things like mentioning it in front of classmates). Parents tell anybody who’ll shut their yap long enough to listen. And at some point or another, the results make it into your permanent record. In other words, they follow you everywhere, throughout the rest of your life. Not necessarily for the better, either. When you’re young, your peers ostracize and ridicule you. That tiny number means you get beaten up once a week, nobody sits next to you on the bus, the back of your head gets plastered with spitballs, and people routinely deface your locker. And adults have expectations for anyone they hear scored high on an IQ test - the height of those expectations is generally directly proportionate to the height of the score. Great things, feats of wonder, academic prowess are all common expectations. You scored over 130 - it shouldn’t be any problem for you to pass high school physics, right? RIGHT?!?!?! You also like to write and know a lot of fifty-cent words, so where’s that Great American Novel? With your interest in politics, how come you aren’t on the fast track to Presidency? Yes, folks, this is the kind of ignorant, if well-meaning, bullshit I’ve heard nearly every day for the past 15 years. What in the name of the Holy Bubba made anyone decide I was destined to do great things just because I apparently can? Do these people think I cultivated this “potential” from nothing, much as one might develop a boy band? Have any of them ever stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t exactly come into this world waving a $100 dollar bill, begging someone to sell me an intellect, and perhaps I might not have the slightest inkling of what to do with the one I possess?

It seems the majority of people in my life - past, present, and probably future - feel I have a responsibility… nay, a moral obligation… to make some sort of grandiose use of this “superior” intellect. Some have expressed the desire to see me become part of the history books as the next MLK, Jr or JFK. Some have suggested I work diligently towards a Pulitzer. Still others have made known their burning desire to see me become a feminized version of Trump or Gates, with a few well-placed not-so-subtle hints that I should “remember” who my “friends” are if that ever happens. The one thing every one of these folks has had in common is…. none of them have ever taken thirty seconds to stop and ask me what I think I should do, or what I want to do with my life. Apparently, the existence of that goddamned number on a stamped piece of paper completely negates any right I may have to choose my own path , and further negates any right I may have to follow that path leisurely, tripping and falling about along the way just like everyone else.

You know what I want to do with my life? I want to do the same kinds of things people of “normal” or “average” intellect do every day. I want to raise my children into healthy, happy, mature, reasonably well-adjusted adults. I want to spend the rest of my days indulging with my husband in the joyful work of marriage. I want to finish university one day, with a degree of some level in something or another. I may want a career of some sort after all the kids are in school - I’ve already narrowed it down to a few different fields such as family law, journalism, large-scale social work, graphic design, etc. And whatever I do, I want to eventually be able to sleep nine hours every night and own a cat my dog-loving husband actually likes. Oh, and it would be nice to eat sushi and wash it down with white wine on a semi-regular basis.

Folks, this is isn’t too much to ask, is it? The ability to lead a comparatively simple life, with common aspirations? Is there some law of which I know not that states this is a crime for anyone of above average intellect? Furthermore, why is it so difficult for a jury of my peers to understand great intellect does not equate with great common sense? Is it wrong of me to ask that everyone put their microscopes away and relieve me of the pressure of their expectations? Honestly, I don’t mind living in a fish bowl, or I wouldn’t write anything so public as a web log. But I do mind living each day with both the openly and subtly expressed disappointment (even anger) of people who take one silly little three-digit number to heart, without ever actually comprehending what it does and does not mean. Yes, I have clay feet, and it would be nice to step down from that pedestal on a regular basis - even those with “superior” intellects have to visit the john now and then.

Point of interest: A quick brain with incredible potential does not mean dick-all to me. It’s not going to do me very much good unless I end up on Jeopardy or Win Ben Stein’s Money - neither of which is likely. It doesn’t make me feel any more or less smug when I kick everyone’s ass at Trivial Pursuit, even though I didn’t want to play the annoying board game in the first place. It’s a huge detriment when trying to determine how to interact with other human beings. It causes great confusion, misunderstanding, and - sometimes - embarrassment to everyone around me. It causes me to (over)analyze all information crossing my path, and read between lines that may not even exist, until I end up in the long gaping maw of depression and anxiety. It keeps me awake at night, interminably pondering meaningless things like whether two hermaphrodites could possibly impregnate one another. And it means I will always be held to higher standards that I never wanted, never needed, and most likely will not meet.

If there’s anyone out there who didn’t do so well on their Wechsler and would like to upgrade, I have one occasionally-used intellect in slightly battered condition. Feel free to make an offer with your trade-in.

Oh, and put the friggin’ Trivial Pursuit away already, would ya? It’s only fun and games until somebody gets hurt.

~ by J. on December 7, 2004.