The Accidental I.Q. Test.

Yesterday I met with my psychologist again. I gave him his 746 question homework assignment back, we talked for a few minutes, and we started doing some tests. He pulled out ten or so of these black and white photographs and asked me to use my imagination to develop a story about each one, including what happened before the image and what will happen after.

I thought it sounded pretty goofy. Like the kind of thing you'd do when you were a kid.

I messed around a little bit, which is probably not something you should do at a psychologist. I made up a story about the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, and got him chuckling pretty good while he scribbled down notes. For a 71 year old dude, he's got some animation.

Anyway, we started doing word association, and word meanings and stuff. We got into numbers and patterns and backwards repetition and holy fuck it was almost a headache. He asked me if I knew anything about IQ, and I told him I didn't know a lot. I said I think the average is in the 90s and you need to be over 130 to get into Mensa, (which was almost right). He broke it down for me like this:

"The average is 100, mostly between 90 and 110. 60% of the population fits into that category, allowing for 20% to fall above 110 and 20% to fall below 90. As a general rule-of-thumb, you need 115 to get a Bachelor's degree. You'd need 125 to get a Master's. You'd need to score 135 to get your Doctorate. You scored 140."

"To put that into perspective, you scored better than 99.6% of people who would take this test. Out of a random sample of 100 people your age, there would be a 40% chance that one of them has a higher IQ than you."

Now, people have always told me that I'm pretty smart. I used to believe it, but aside from correcting somebody's paper, I wasn't too great at anything else. I gave up being a smart kid in middle school. But finally, to have somebody who knows what they're talking about tell me that I'm set at the bottom rung of "genius" level...

I feel slightly inflated right now. And it's not my wiener.

That puts me above store managers, teachers, professors, attorneys, editors, and even Eminent Professors. Whatever that means. Google says it's good.

I'm trying not to let this go to my head. I know I'm talking a lot about it, but I'm kind of shocked. My psychologist went in a whole new direction yesterday. He was talking about Universities and careers I could look into, and I told him I just wanted a job I would like. "I like my job," he said. "I like it so much I haven't retired yet." I reminded about our first visit. "Dr. Nicholson, last time I told you I kind of wanted to be a psychologist, and you tried to ween me off of the idea."

"Yeah, Chris, but that was before I knew how smart you are."

I was talking to Fivena about it last night, and she gave an interesting view. "This is exactly why I would never let my kids get tested. For one, what does it even tell you? It's so unreliable, it depends on how much sleep you got, how you feel on that particular day...too many inconsistencies. Two, LOOK AT HOW YOU'RE ACTING. YOU BIGHEAD."

And maybe she's right. Maybe if I took a licensed Mensa test I wouldn't make the cut. Maybe this guy gave me some extra points because I made him laugh a little bit. Maybe HE was in a good mood because he knew that for asking me questions for two hours he was going to get $500 out of my pocket.

I think that for something so renowned, we should start using stricter means for IQ testing. I don't mean to make sure every tester is an asshole, but we should at least all get by using the same scoring system and same texts. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Tell me what you think.

Also, now that I'm looking at going to a REAL college, tell me where you're going. Or where you wish you could go. I haven't looked at too many schools, and right now I'm clueless, unless I want to go to the University of Santa Cruz or something.