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.

I had a bunch of good ideas for blog titles this morning.

I'm supposed to come here when something is bothering me, which is damn near every day. Lately I guess I've just been really whatever with everything. If there's anything I learned from getting off my ass and going to college, it's that no matter how much you want to do something with your life, no matter how hard you try to change your routine and become a better person with a more meaningful life, you'll probably just end up thrown in jail.

If, at first, you don't succeed; try, try again. Unless you don't have the means to try again. I'm in debt with my student loans already, all of which went towards me busting my ass off to get a 3.3 GPA at college (which is much higher than my cumulative high school GPA estimated around 1.8 or something ridiculous). But that whole year won't count for anything. Those credits won't transfer, and I can't go into the Education career cluster anymore. So by the time I find a college that will accept me, I won't be able to afford it. By the time I can afford it, supposing they'd still let me in, I will have wasted half my life. Yes, wasted.

See, it's only in America when you have to put yourself substantially in debt to portray the image that your life means something. Imagine meeting a girlfriend's parents. Explain to them that instead of pursuing your degree in dentistry you needed to afford a place to stay and food to eat, so you took a job at a factory. Or Arby's. (Hey, mess up all the Big Montana's you want. They'll just get 'thrown out' anyway. In your stomach.)

So either you're rich as fuck, and don't even NEED a degree to matter to anyone else. Or you need to bust your ass for 6 years to get good grades in school to try and get into a prestigous institute and take out 60 billion double-dollars in loans to pay for it all, ALL without going fucking insane, JUST so your girlfriend's parents will like you. Well, for anything at all, really.

If you dream of writing beautiful music for the popular culture, you're a lowlife. Unless you're a girl, and then you're either a starving artist, hard luck woman or a whore. If you want to paint irritating bitches nails for the rest of your life as a beautician, because you aren't smart enough to make a complete sentence out loud, or even arrange the letters properly in a word, that's a fine career. No one looks down on the skanks that damage your hair. They all went to scool to lern that traid n e way.

In our culture we have to torture ourselves to matter to anyone else, and without mattering to anyone else you become tortured by them. I remember when a girl I used to hang out with told her mom and dad that I had been working in a factory to save money for college, he fucking scoffed at her. He asked her why she was hanging around someone who's life obviously wasn't going anywhere. When she told me about it, I scoffed myself. I apologized for not being born into a family that could afford shit. I wondered why society deemed me a loser for trying to raise myself up out of my situation. For doing the smart thing and working beforehand, instead of paying off high interest rates on loans I couldn't afford, I was unworthy of conversation with his daughter.

Maybe it's a stereotype or something. Maybe all factory workers have wasted their lives. But this chump is an assistant manager of some Alltel store, and probably never did any real work in his life. Fuck, I think the store even got shut down and he had to relocate to a different office across town. I hope he runs that one into the ground, too. Me, giving up slivers of my youth to kill my body day by day in a factory to bring myself a higher education, I'm the useless fucking filth that dredges our culture into the bottom of humanity. Or some such nonsense.

Oh, look at this. I just opened a letter from the department of treasury stating that they awarded me an extra $2,100 this year for Baker College, because I had a really good GPA. However, the elegibility requires that I not be incarcerated. Which I will be soon. So there goes another chance for me to try and succeed at life. Where is the "win" button?

Oh, and as a side note, I went to see Pineapple Express last night. It wasn't too special. Maybe I was spoiled by Step Brothers, and now will no longer laugh at another comedy because it was too fucking funny.