PLEASE somebody find a way to stop the snow so I can go to work!?
Seems every time I have a day completely off of work, I end up doing something crazy online... Last time, I signed myself up on about eight different penpal lists, and am now obliged to answer eight dozen strangers who've been writing me. This time, I decided to find out my IQ.
I took two different tests, scoring relatively high on the first one, and slightly-below-average on the second one. They weren't typical "average = 100" IQ tests, for which I should probably be grateful.
I don't know what possesses me sometimes! I don't want to know my IQ! I don't want to reduce myself to a number, quantify my abilities and potential with a (hopefully) three digit number! I want to go on blissfully believing that I'm capable of anything I set my mind to. I want to believe that, even if I don't often show it, even if I know full well I don't live to my intellectual potential, I am able to intimidate damn near anybody with my brains.
As a kid, I was the brainy one, the geek. I could read at the age of three and was attempting my mom's Stephen King books at seven. My classmates -- and teachers, come to think of it -- were blown away by my stupidass book reports. At twelve, I was assisting an undergrad with grammar and spelling.
On the other hand, I didn't learn to add until I was in third grade, didn't learn multiplication until quite a bit later. I used to sob through math homework assignments. I used to throw away as much of it as I could get away with. I didn't pass even the simplest 100-question addition/subtraction quizzes without my beloved student-teacher secretly giving me extra time. I still do math on my fingers sometimes. Once, I went into an uncontrollable rage while in my bedroom working on a homework assignment. I tore up my bedsheets with a scissors and threw books at the wall. Out of four math classes I was supposed to take in high school, I only passed two, and it took me two years to pass one of them. Likewise, science tended to annihilate my mental health. In eleventh grade chemistry, my tutor had to make retarded little analogies about cars driving down the highway in explanation of electrons. I actually had to give his drawings little headlights.
I got 1080 on the PSATs and 1170 on the SATs, which is supposedly good -- I got a scholarship for the 1170 -- but I'll never believe that for a second, considering some of the dumbasses I knew who'd gotten 1300's and 1400's.
I fucking HATE standardized tests. I can run circles around fucking everybody with essay-tests, but multiple-guess and fill-in-the-blank is an absolute mystery to me. (In other words, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm good at talking about it...?) And as for my current math abilities, I can make change for a twenty in my head, but I slaughtered about fifteen tax forms and slammed them to the bottom of the garbage because I couldn't hack the math.
WHY oh why would I fucking take an IQ test? The questions frustrated me. They all looked so simple: which symbol doesn't belong here, types. What they don't tell you, is that you have to have a piece of scrap paper, and actually do some real figuring to understand the orders of the symbols to begin with. I knew some of my answers were wrong, but I didn't know why, and I knew if I sat there and looked at the problem any longer, I'd become infuriated. I CAN'T fucking sit there and THINK about something. If I don't KNOW the answer, how is doing FIGURING going to help? Especially if I can't even fathom HOW to figure it?
Now I'm pissed off at myself for thinking this was such a brilliant idea... I'm pissed off at the people who invented IQ tests. I'm pissed off at all the hundreds of millions of people who would assuredly score higher than me. I'm pissed off because the one thing everybody always thought I had -- intelligence -- always seems to fail me when, ahem, put to the test. I'm pissed off because I KNOW I can't pass a damn test; I KNOW I don't have the kind of mind necessary for figuring and calculating and analyzing; and I still subjected myself to this, which, if I can't find a nice diversion, is going to haunt me and piss me off for the rest of the day.
I'm frustrated because I know I'm smart, sort of. I could be an English composition tutor who'd put a good number of professors to shame. But there are so many things my mind WILL NOT do, no matter how much I plead with it. I cannot make music. I cannot do taxes. I cannot type with my fucking fingers on the fucking right keys. I want, desperately, to expand my mind. I read the damn dictionary at work, for gahd's sake, copying out all the words I don't know! But sometimes, when looking at, say, a tax form, or even one of Norman's pieces of sheet music, a little something explodes inside me, and there's nothing to do but look away before I have to scream or break something.
I think this journal entry is just pissing me off more. I'm off to Lost Dog to read or something.
~Helena*