Hi everyone,
I’m not sure if this is the right place for this thread, so if it’s in the wrong place, I apologize.
Anyhow, I don’t know if anyone knows anything about MENSA, but I’ve always been told by psychologists that I’m highly gifted, and it hit me that this might explain my problem with not being able to make friends/dating etc., so I’m thinking about taking a test to join MENSA. Does anyone know what it’s like? Is it good? Or is just a waste of time? The problem I have is that many gifted people tend to be somewhat anti-religious, and I really want to meet other Catholic people, but it still might be worth a shot.
Plese don’t take this as bragging, by the way, I’m really looking for an honest opinion,
Benedicat Deus,
Latinitas
MENSA has a reputation for attracting people who like to think of themselves as more clever than the average human being. That is the reputation. Remember that the Catholic Church has a reputation for attracting people who are obsessed with rules and juridical hair-splitting about what is and isn’t a sin, with most of them either hyper-critical, guilt-ridden, or both as a result. Well, sure, we have some of that. That doesn’t mean that either you or the Catholic Church will be better off if you come to us looking for that!
In practice, it depends which bright people decided to join your local group. Even if you are bright, they may bore you or strike you as arrogant, and vice versa. Social skills are real skills, and if you get a bunch of bright people together who have poor social skills they will–wow, who knew?–still lack social skills. They’ll offend each other without meaning to do so, communicate poorly, and suffer all the consequences of having low emotional intelligence. Still, there is no reason that bright people are more likely than less gifted people to have a low social or emotional intelligence, not any more than being good at math means you’ll be bad at sports. Your MENSA group may have people with average or better social skills, and you may get along with them just great.
If obsessing over how to speed-solve the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle is one of your guilty pleasures, MENSA may be a place to find other people with similar interests. Just go in being aware that it is kind of a shot in the dark. Just being bright isn’t that much to have in common with somebody else. There are people who imagine they’ll be happy if they can surround themselves with other people who are all as impressed with themselves (and with them) as they are, but it doesn’t work that way. The slothful can enjoy others who are slothful, gluttons can adore the company of other gluttons, and even thieves can work together towards a common goal, but the proud, as a rule, hate the proud. Pride is a prickly sort of vice, and yet bright people in our times are constantly tempted to take it up as their birthright.
By the way, I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself about not being able to make friends. A friend is a very special gift. I heard a priest once say that if you have two or even one person that you can count as a truly trusted friend, you’re doing great. With most people, there is going to be at least a little self-protective distance between them. If you’ve never broken that barrier, that does not mean you lack social skills. It may only mean you haven’t been fortunate enough to make a really great friend yet.
No disrespect to you, but I think that you have limited engineering experience, if you actually correlate the two between academics and real world. I’ve yet to see, any
honest engineering students, (or medical students); and the program is not easy. I’m in a state university, nothing easy about it.
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I've been to both trade school and academic school, I'm a certified 6G welder (XXX-Tube) T.I.G. root, 7018 Cap on high pressure steam lines for power plants.
I know the difference between the pretend university world and real world skills. The university does not, train people for real world vocation, engineering or not.
I’m going to abandon this post, as to not, hi jack the OP. I just had to throw in my two cents back at you I was interested as to what the high testing people here had to say about study skills or memory skills, ect.
Have a good week and no disrespect intended. to you
To answer your question–yes, really bright people tend to get through their homework faster. The people I have known at the very top of the class don’t need to cheat. They actually know how to do the problems and can finish the tests in the allotted time. They do have to study; the information and strategies do not just magically pour into their head. Like a gifted athlete, however, a gifted scholar tends to find his or her work satisfying. Many get a rush out of finding an elegant solution or an original insight.
Some really bright people have this tendency to talk in the way they read and write and to talk as if everyone on earth has the same aptitudes and academic background they have, and that can make other people’s eyes cross. They can come across arrogant without intending to, and they can be boring to people who have no idea what on earth they are talking about. These days, that is considered having a not-so-great social or emotional intelligence. As far as I know, that doesn’t have any necessary connection with academic aptitude, excepting that a socially-inept nuclear engineer will bore you on different topics than a socially-inept high school drop-out.
