IQ score distribution

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Some here might already have read it, but this thread has a paper I wrote on discovering my own giftedness / learning disability. I have made a few corrections since this was posted, but mostly it's the same.

Z

What a brilliant paper Zonder!! Thank you for sharing that. I had not seen the link. I was able to connect with what you were saying in the paper on so many levels. I have also had the revelation that perhaps I am in the grey area near the "twice gifted" caregory (my general ability IQ was 120). Many of the issues you mentioned from your childhood came close to home for me. Especially the playing in the dirt and water. I am a geologist. When I was little I used to spend a lot of time building dams and watching water flow. I was facinated with the movement of the different size grains by water of different velocity and turbidity. At the age of about 7, I really had no idea that people studied that very thing! My math dysfunction has more or less cost me a career as a geologist. I can't seem to wrap my head around math. Who ever heard of a scientist that can't do math? I had to "jump ship" so to speak on my first attempt at a master's degree because I had some serious interpersonal issues within the department. There were a lot of women in the department (oddly) and I did not socialize with them in the way that women do such things. One of these women happened to be the departmental chair. I ended up taking my credits (GPA 3.7) and switching schools. I entered into a PhD program with the help and support of some faculty from the school that I was fleeing!! ! I had the exact same issue that you did with the GRE! I couldn't have explained it better myself. In fact, I recall sitting in my interview for this program and being asked to explain my extremely low score on the quantitative portion of the test. In anticipation of this, I had prepared a response that included some of the more controversial aspects of the GRE and concluded by stating the GRE was a measure of something, but I wasn't really sure what it was (perhaps ones ability to take a standardized test and pass). This answer was acceptable and I was admitted. I had to bail out a few years later because my mother was dying and this caused me to have a rather serious period of extreme dysfunction. Now, armed with my new perspective on who I am and what some of my issues likely are, I have an educational "plan" through the disability services at the university and this time I will hopefully walk away with a master's degree! In a way I am looking to prove myself, too. I too have been tortured wondering if I am some sort of genius or some sort of profound idiot! I have eleven years of college education which includes four and a half years of graduate school course work and all I have to show for it is one BA in geology and one totally complete thesis that failed its defense. I suppose that I do have the rather high GPA's from both schools, but no one seems to care how well you did in your classes. They are only interested in what degree was awarded. So.... here I sit. The worlds most overeducated stay-at-home mother who has never actually held any sort of "real" job for more than one year. I agree that it is very important to address the issues that people like us seem to have. I could have been successfull if I had known these things many many years ago....

Thanks whipstitches,

When I was tested for learning disability, I was told that because my block design score was so high (99%) I should be very good at math. But I failed math in the 3rd grade so I thought I was kind of dumb. C'est la vie.

I know that some opportunity has passed me by, but I've also done some interesting things. You may be, as you say, overeducated, but you're still doing something worthwhile and brave -- parenting. That's something that I haven't felt I could successfully do.

Z

I suppose you are right. I actually have two children. My oldest daughter is 16. I had her when I was 18!! It was a classic case of me not really knowing what was going on.... Everyone was very concerned that I would not be a very good parent, but no one was every very "specific" as to why. Being obsessive about things like I am turned out to be a very good thing so far as parenting is concerned. That is because I read book after book after book on child rearing and was particulary attentive to my daughter because I had read "all of the instructions I could find". I, like many folks on here, have had serious issues holding it all together, however. I managed to live on my own with my daughter for about 9 years before moving back in with my mom because I couldn't cope with "life" and "school" at the same time. I think that my mother may have been the source of my AS/AS traits, but her situation was very different from mine. She had been a single mother, too - but it was because my father died when I was very young. She received money from his employer as well as SS payments, so she never had to go to work. She continued to be a stay-at-home mom. When my grandmother died my mother inhereted enough money to continue to fund her monthly bills for several years to come. It worked out well for her. We wouldn't have survived if my mother had to go out and work for a living. She couldn't talk to the clerk at the store so she would've never been able to complete a job interview!! My mom had over 200 canaries living in the house.... and they were all CARED for!! That is the weird part. It wasn't like the obsessive/compulsive animal hording stuff you hear about on the news from time to time. She had them all well organized and well cared for. He entire day was centered around bird maintenance. She even kept records of their geneology because she was technically a "breeder". She sold some of her birds to people that participate in bird shows for ribbons, etc. She was like Mendelson and his peas!! Always trying to make the perfect little bird. When she became to old to handle the birds..... she sold off all of them apart from the ones that were her "pets" and began collecting bird "effigies". There was a sign on the front door that said "welcome to my bird house". She had THOUSANDS of bird "items". Every plate, napkin, towel, cup, door knob, light switch plate..... they all had some sort of bird on them. The clock, the china, her clothing.... I don't think there was a thing in the house that didn't have at least a bird sticker or decal on it. She prefered items that came to her with the birds already on them, however. She was also an avid gardener.... because she was interested in attracting birds to the yard. She said she liked them because she had a "bird brain" and it only made good sense to love birds. When she died.... we made sure there were plenty of birds on her coffin and we had hummingbirds carved into her headstone.

Sorry to be so somber.... your parenting comment made me think of her. I know she is the source of my behaviours and I think that she could see it in me all along. She just had no idea what was "right" with her. I don't think there is really anything "wrong" with any of us....

I also ended up in the 99th percentile on the block design. The person who administered the test and explained the results had the same comment. Why can't you do math? She was puzzled... not condescending.

Completely off topic, but who is the man in your avatar photo?

My parents were all about music and church. That's about all they did. My mother still directs a choir and when she is in music mode she can't do much else. We moved too much to have many pets except my dad had to have a tank or pond of fish wherever we lived.

A really good book that helps to explain stuff is Linda Silverman's Upside -Down Brilliance: The Visual-Spatial Learner. She doesn't connect the neurological profile to ASD, but the book does help to explain many of the quirks we have. Essentially there is a language or left-hemisphere deficit, and the right hemisphere becomes stronger. So you do very well with non-verbal but sometimes need help with verbal or math that is processed more verbally rather than visually.

The book is out of print (and costs upwards of $100 on Amazon) but if you can get a copy, it is a good read.

Z

That is Robert Cornelius. The image is thought to be the first photographic portrait (daguerreotype) in the United States. In a lot of ways I have quirky connections to him and my hair sticks out too, so hence, the avatar.

Z

I thought that it looked like a very old glass plate photo. I don't know a lot about photography, but I recognized that it was probably either a) actually very old or b) a newer photo made up to look old.

I used to live in a rental apartment that was in a very old building (1805) that had been used as a tavern, a general store and even a post office over the years. I found a very old photo of the building in the university library and your photo made me think of it. I am not a history enthusiast per se, but I did have a lot of fun digging up information about this building and I even got to see the glass plate used to make the picture. The building was older than the state of Indiana and haunted!! I heard foot steps and moving furniture in the unoccupied upstairs rental units. The real estate company that was renting reported that they had a hard time keeping tenants in the building because of this phenomonon (sp?). Creepy.....

My IQ results were average, and verbal non-verbal both evenly distributed. Everything scored average besides working memory, which was low-average and reading/writing/spelling were superior.

While I don't remember the specifics, the average of all the various subportions of the woodcock-johnson was 92 for me. Hilarious, but it seems to carry over to the GRE to some extent, because my cumulative score was 660. My ACT was also quite low (I think I got something like a 16?).

I had a 6 hour IQ test run by a psychologist when I was 19. Composite 125, ranging from 180 in abstract logic and pattern matching (test didn't run that high, psych said it was a conservative estimate), 150 for math, then down to 70 for verbal communication.

In high school, my SAT was 1200 (I didn't like it, 6th grade regurgitation), but my ACT was 2 points higher than the valedictorian (I only had a 3.2 gpa) at 29 (32 with today's scoring) - 36/36 in science, 35/36 in math, 20/36 in english.

Currently I make 6 figures as a consulting software engineer. My life is fairly empty though, so success at work doesn't solve everything.

^Wow, did I see a genius up there?

However... Well I think finishing community college will just do fine for me...