Intelligence
January 23, 2007A happy coincidence in blogsurfing: found an interesting blog about the question of giftedness. My secret pleasure (well not so secret anymore) is to do IQ-tests and different personality tests online. They rarely tell me anything that I don’t already know. What is it I’m looking for in these tests? Confirmation or revelation?
The blog I found, already says what I think about IQ. To sum it up: that IQ-tests rarely say much about intelligence. Intelligence is something more.
I imagine I know quite a lot about my own strengths and weaknesses already, but maybe I’ll surprise myself one day. I’ve always been the slightly above avarage person I think, I’m not a genius (I don’t like to call people geniuses, what does it even mean, that you’re good at everything or rediculously good at one thing, neither one is “perfect”), but I’m not stupid.
Sometimes I feel how I’m touching on some limit of my own understanding, that I don’t grasp things, they overwhelm me, or I can’t muster up the effort to even try to understand (and that’s just laziness). Sometimes I repeat myself, get stuck in patterns. Sometimes I suddenly understand something new, or I slowly and ardently force myself to learn something. Sometimes motivation is all you need. Sometimes time is required.
Being gifted might be a question of self-confidence or personal courage. But on the other hand (can you say that without referring to the first hand?), I’m not sure it’s good to be too sure of yourself either.
I recently got some criticism on an academic paper I wrote in October. Apparently it wasn’t stringent enough, or too fuzzy somehow (not even the professor was able to put his finger on what made it fuzzy), and I replied that it’s probably because I was very unsure of how to write an academic paper in English about my subject (and I was not very happy with it, it was hard to write). My insecurity somehow permeated the language. Now I have no idea how to make it more stringent, and at the same time not make it too impersonal. This is one of those things that will take time.
So can you guess my IQ-score?
Thanks for sharing interesting blog, gifted adults is really good blog just like yours
Thank you for commenting! (I on the other hand like to answer comments because they are like a continuing conversation).
I saw your rose photo. I often paint flowers. I try to find something that goes against preconceptions of what an image of a flower should look like.
you are visually stimulated
you are 28 yrs old
you speak at least more than two languages
you had a happy childhood
you enjoy taking I.Q tests
you examine your life
i dont know how good your math skills are nor the language in which you take your tests
let me guess…..114
Ooh, someone took a guess
I speak three languages fluently, I can read three more (I should practice them more, they’re slowly melting out of my mind…). I’ve only taken one IQ test completely, and that was a “culturally unbiased” test (I’m not sure it actually is) with images only. I’ve never taken an official IQ test. I tried the one they had on Swedish Mensa’s website and got something like 18 out of 20 answers correctly, then I lost my patience with it… The test score I got on the one I finished was just below 140 I think, 137 or 138…
My math skills are probably avarage, but I had excellent grades in school when I made an effort to learn. At one point I lost interest in math, and the grades went down fast (I switched from over-achiever to under-achiever, just got tired of school for reasons I don’t care to elaborate on here
.
I’m bad at questions on logic, probably because I find it so boring. I think my strenghts are fast associative capability, creativity, great capacity to learn fast, open-mindedness and flexibility, social adaptability…
Now I have to stop wallowing in my own imagined excellence…
the world is yours to have.
muhahah, soon I shall start implementing my evil plans… but right now my back hurts too much, I’ve been falling down on slippery snowy hills all week (third time this morning, not good for my already aching back muscles), much because stupidly I keep wearing my sneakers even though we have half a meter of snow outside…
You are intelligent and the IQ tests confirm that.
But being capable of being intelligent does not mean success. You’ve got to apply it first in real life.
REad my blogspot:
scientificintelligence.blogspot.com
No, and being successful does not mean you have to be a genius… just very persistent…
But this only illustrates that there are different kinds of intelligence.
I’ll check your blog!