Making use of a high IQ

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It comes into play, for me, with my passions - music and language.

In language it helps immensely in connecting the dots, learning new things, etc. In my Russian class last semester (graduated now), I was the best student in the class, had advanced the most, etc. I never did the homework, or anything - I only worked on learning Russian during class. I would read quickly through what we were going to be learning at the start of a lesson to prep myself, and I'd just read the 2-3 page thing at the end of each chapter which gave a list of all the new vocab and grammar rules and such. I'm just able to see patterns and such very easily with it, able to memorize rules very well, apply them well, improvise with what parts of the language I know to try to say what I want to, etc. My German professor said I was the most impressive student she has ever had, as far as learning the language is concerned - she was stunned at my rate of progress with the language.

In music it helps figure out countless things. Everything ranging from knowing and applying music theory to figuring out new techniques on instruments, or new ways to produce new sounds. Just the other night, I was at a band practice, testing out a new amp loudly for the first time, and I started messing with the tones on it on a whim (I just thought "I bet I can make some interesting sounds if I mess with the shape and the EQ", never having done it before), while playing bass harmonics and strumming open strings, and I started making it sound like it had effects and such on it, when it was just me, my bass, and this bass amp - all improvised in the middle of a song. I was tweaking the knobs to change the sound like someone would use a wah pedal to tweak the sound - just instead of moving a pedal on the ground I'm turning a knob. That was pretty much the line of thought I had - use the knobs like the control on a wah.
I also frequently find new ways to hit and finger the strings to make many different tones, all sorts of cool stuff but I feel like I'm going on and on about a special interest. The list goes on.

On top of everything, I enjoy both music and language immensely, and that is the most important part - it helps me apply myself. My suggestion to you is to apply your intelligence in whatever special interests you have - these are the areas I have the easiest time putting intelligence to use.

I used my IQ score to get the government to let me go to college even though I'm disabled and can't work. They place entirely too much weight on IQ scores, but that worked in my favor to convince them that I am potentially capable of working if I can get a degree.

Other than that... it's not been particularly useful.

I never really had a chance to discover my potential as I never got to go to college.
Though my IQ has come in handy with repairs to my own car for example. I do 98% of all my own repairs what makes that special is that I was never taught how to do them. I just seem to be good at just about everything and usually on the first try.
The problem relating that to the job world is I do it at a slower pace than everyone else which employers don't understand!

I think that you should focus less on your IQ subtest scores, like which score to match to which profession, and moar moar moar on what you are interested in. If you find your interest, then you will be able to use your abilities to learn and apply and create in the field of your interest.

Well, I think a high IQ means you'd be pretty good at anything involving problem solving and analysis. I personally used my IQ related skills to study math and become a computer programmer.

It may or may not be helpful, but you might consider taking some vocational aptitude, personality , and career interest tests. They might point you in the right direction, although you may very well have had the answer inside you all along, and just need to discover for yourself what you really enjoy, and are very good at doing.
Depending on ones defintion of a genius, there is a huge difference between one who is gifted, and one who might be considered a genius, or even one is highly gifted. What exactly is your IQ? Do have significant differences between the subtests? Someone who is at the low end of the gifted scale 130 (98% range), for example, is different in many important respects than one who tests at 160 ( 99.9 +%).

This is sort of off-topic, but not entirely: I've only taken online IQ tests, and I've ranged from gifted to average according to which test I took. What I don't understand is how come that is the standard to measure intelligence. I have a very hard time with abstract thinking and numbers, so I'm pretty much doomed with those tests given that the gist of them are based on numbers and third dimension imagining.

However, I can pretty much figure out anything and learn anything with the exception of math and foreign language. So, I don't consider myself "dumb" even if a standard IQ test says otherwise.

If your IQ score is over 120, regardless of sub scores or areas of giftedness etc, you should be capable of learning any profession reasonably well. What will prevent you from this, is not going to be your IQ, it will be your drive. That is why people will ask you what you want to do, because you are going to be capable of anything, finding what you truly want to do is the most important indicator of success.

I've had similar struggles, my IQ score is impressive, yet I've not exactly "lived up to it", I am employed, and mostly functional....but I don't really accomplish anything truly remarkable. Nothing cutting edge, nothing inventive, I'm just a cog in the machine. But that is more because I didn't follow what I wanted to do, and just accepted whatever was convenient and easy to do. In the end, desire is the most important quality you can have for accomplishing great things. Test scores are meaningless without desire to act.

So my advice, focus on what moves you. What do you want to accomplish? Wha would you change if you could? What will it take to do it? Then do it.

I agree with most of what have been said here. Though, basically, I don't see where the problem is.

One of the problems of having a 'special interest' is that you're useless out of it: you can't focus, you're not really interested, your mind don't keep knowledge (because she considers it not worthy enough to be kept), and that doesn't change no matter how much effort you do to focus and to learn. So, at the end, doing something that lies outside of your 'special interest' is exhausting and highly unproductive. That's because it's recommended to find a maketeable skill that lies inside your 'special interest'. You will be much happier and much more succesful.

But if you don't have a 'special interest' it means that you focus in what you decide without problems, just like any NT person. So, where do you find problems?

I'm frustrated, to put it mildly. I did well at school, everything was easy and I got a degree in microbiology, without a great deal of effort (I had real difficulty trying to study, so I basically didn't study much at all). However, I left with my ordinary degree, as I had social anxiety and dreaded what the 4th year required of me, not academically. Then, I went on to do a taught post-grad course in environmental studies, which involved a work placement, which I did in the energy management section of the local council. The work was admin and I was kept on as employee, after my course ended. There I stayed for the next 11 years. I got one promotion and moved around, due to staffing reviews, but I never progressed any.

I always felt I was in the wrong job and started to teach myself IT skills, that were not essential for my job, but helped me to do my job better. My boss took note of what I knew and put me to work, designing databases and advanced analytical spreadsheets. So there I was, doing the same stuff as some of the IT staff (as well as my regular duties), but being paid as an admin assistant. When it came to my reviews, my boss would kind of mention that I was amazing at these things and indispensible, but the main topic of conversation was my supervisory/ communication deficits. Of all the admin assistants, I was the only one who got assessed as being 'fair', the others were 'good' or 'excellent'. This really affected my self esteem. I also felt taken for granted, in relation to all the high level work I was doing, which no-one else could even begin to comprehend. Before I left, a new system was being brought in and my databases had to be converted over, by IT. I had loads of compliments from IT about my work, who were amazed that I'd taught myself and they had even learned something, from studying them. That confirmed it for me that I really was as good as I suspected.

When my daughter was born, I decided I'd had enough of the place, so I never went back after maternity leave. I've not worked for 6 1/2 years, except for some voluntary work, including moderating this site. My special interests are in health, nutrition, genetics, natural and ancient therapies, etc, but I'm lost as to how to take this forward into a career. I also have those IT skills, which I could go back to, but I don't have a qualification in IT and have been considering doing a qualification at home. I've also toyed with the idea of perfecting my art skills, but I'm not good enough to make a decent living, unless I can be inventive. I need to think about what I want to do with the rest of my life, because I'm going round in circles and getting nowhere.

I feel at a slightly different end of this, hoping to someday make use of my high IQ in learning. I collected this amazing amount of almost-failing grades and failing grades throughout my last 4 years of school while at the same time, the professionals kept saying that someone with my IQ should ace grades 11 to 13 of grammar school and receive a formidable qualification to enter university.

The correlation of a high IQ score and academic performance must be moderate to weak because I benefit mainly from what I'd call the practical use of my IQ:

suppressing and changing a few of the impairing symptoms of my autism such as learning the flexible rules of various forms of social interaction, trying to imitate flexibility by pretence and learning by heart the cultural back-and-forths, using my acquired knowledge of short-cuts and instructions to decode written and spoken language and trying to improve my use of language, trying to use "loopholes" in routines to exploit them and to try keeping the sensory-based routines from interfering in daily life, memorising lots and lots about what is going on around me and of what people do and say and managing the chaotic disorder ADHD by being structured, focussing on being thoughtful, trying to suppress the impulsivity and hyperactivity with tricks (because willpower doesn't do much) and using my learnt skills of organisation. Not foolproof as they're disorders and autism and ADHD can't be cured by mindpower but it helps so much in daily functioning.

I'd be more interested in learning how to put giftedness to use in academics. Even schools where I did well at most subjects for four years, the teachers there told me that they didn't understand me a lot of the time. Later on, most teachers elaborated unkindly that they didn't understand how I reached my conclusions (that they said were correct but that didn't earn me many points) in analyses and claimed my thought processes hardly made any sense to them, blah blah. I didn't succeed in figuring out what was wrong back then.