Is this what it feels like to realize there is no god? I've read a number of articles lately about IQ and how it doesn't exist. This one today by Roger Highfield seals it. I'm done.
The thing is: My IQ score has been very strongly tied to my identity. In Grade 6, I was identified as gifted through one or three of these tests. I clearly remember being taken out of class to sit in a small supply closet with a desk to answer questions and fill in the scantron card. I had no idea what I was doing there. Nobody told me I was doing a test, nor could I prepare for it.
Sometime later, I was told that I was smart. Okay, cool. Shit, now I have to live up to being smart. But of course, I didn't figure out that I felt that way until later.
From that day forward, I was not living up to my potential.
From that perspective, it's pretty cool. I no longer have to live up to some scrantron IQ test's idea of what my potential might be. I get to be me. Whatever that may be. This may be what I should have felt all along, and it is one of the great things about being an adult, we really do have an opportunity to be ourselves, without the identifiers of childhood. As hard as that may be.
I do need to thank the IQ test before I totally write it off. The IQ test did help me along. I have this feeling I might be dumpster diving somewhere in Indonesia instead of struggling with a PhD thesis is someone hadn't labelled me as smart when I was 11 years old.
Look at me now. I can go dumpster diving in Indonesia after I finish my PhD, if I feel like it! Dr. Dumpster Diver! YES!!
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