Very recently, I applied to sit the supervised test to prove myself eligible for Mensa membership. That may appear to some a pompous thing to do, but for me, it was important. I passed the home test some years ago, but ever since I have long put off sitting the supervised test. Why? I am not entirely sure – I think that a part of me was afraid of failing it. My intellect is as much a part of my personal identity as my nationality or my hair colour, but one I am significantly more self-conscious about. I sometimes find it hard to acknowledge my own cognitive ability – I was taught for so long to downplay it so as not to make people uncomfortable. I often wonder if I would have been so encouraged, had I been born a boy. Certainly, as I got older, I came to realise that demonstrating superior intellectual prowess made boys uneasy, and the vapid hair-tossing, giggling Beverly Hills wannabe variety of teenage girl was what I was expected to aspire to. Think more Tori Spelling than Virginia Woolfe. That, combined with the fact that I was condemned to spend my school life unfulfilled and neglected, has significantly hindered my acknowledgement and nurturing of my brainpower.
As a child, I was always told I was bright. I was a bright girl, very clever. A real bright spark. This was usually accompanied by a pat on the head or a similarly affectionate but condescending gesture. Even as a little girl, I was made to feel like a dog that had just managed to sit on command. In retrospect, it was a bit more than that. I read my first words off the side of a doll box when I was two, and by the age of five I had memorised the precise distances between the planets of the solar system. I knew what a black hole was, and how it worked. I had a reading age comparable to someone in their mid-teens by the time I started school at the age of 4 or 5. I was obsessed with dinosaurs, and knew the difference between vertebrate and invertebrate creatures. I wasn’t “bright”, I was prodigiously intelligent. I’m not saying that to be obnoxious, that is an entirely toothless statement. What I am trying to express is that I was consistently taught to undervalue and neglect my intelligence, rather than nurture it for what it was.
When I started school, I was actually made to repeat my first year because I never paid attention. The teacher seemed to be under the impression that I couldn’t keep up with the curriculum, when in fact this couldn’t have been further from the truth.
I was bored out of my skull, and on top of this I was terribly afraid of my teacher. I developed a phobia of going to school, and I was scream and cry when my mother would wake me in the mornings to bring me. Eventually, my parents entered into a deal with the school whereby I was permitted to leave class earlier than normal that year, in exchange for repeating the class. My parents were desperate – by this point I was all but clinging to their legs in the morning, and this was all that would calm me – so they agreed. The results were disastrous. This decision all but ensured that I would spend the remainder of my school career constantly ahead of the curriculum, and bored out of my tiny mind. Within two years they were bringing in extra work from higher classes, just for me to have something to do – but by then, I was socially well-adjusted so they never remedied the situation by moving my forward.
Anyway – please bear with me, for this post does actually have a point besides lamenting how bored I was as a child.
For me, going to Mensa would be the beginning of a truly new existence. One where my intelligence is acknowledged and nurtured, rather than undermined and ignored. Part of my quest for identity, now that I have left the church, is figuring out just who I am, and trying to form associations with people I have a great deal in common with. I want to seek out the company of people who have something in common with me, be it intelligence, political worldview, (non)religious affiliation, interests, or personality type. I think everybody could benefit from doing this. My intellect, to me, is a talent, no more or less to be appreciated than the ability to sing or draw well. I want to love being who I am, and that involves recognising my individual qualities, and caring for them accordingly. I would like to think that this could encourage you to do the same, because if you are reading this you can be sure that it is no more than you deserve also.
