On this whole AS="genius" thing...

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I'm close to your description! My IQ is 138 (getting retested in March) and I have a bitchin Draenai (was Undead, miss him so!) mage on WoW, and I can tell you so much about the lore to that game that you'd want to puke (or if you like WoW to, marry me) LOL [also play with a couple fellow suspected Aspies, best raid group I've ever been in!]



Back to topic.... Intelligence is a concept to be defined by whatever criteria are pertinent of the times/money invested, etc. As such, being a concept, one cannot nail it down concretely.... is a concrete concept an oxymoron ?

I thought it was summed up nicely a while back when a poster on here expressed their frustration with "all this Autistic X-men crap".

superiority complex = make me wanna gag

I like the presumptions people have about AS, if people meet you thinking you're some sort of quiet genius then all it takes are a few well placed facts to have them listen to whatever you say as gospel truth.

I fricking wish.

Well I have a mensa level IQ and was top of my class at school in almost every subject (abysmal at PE and art) but did worse than expected in my A-levels as I walked out of two of my exams due to my mind going completely blank (still got A,A,B,C).

I decided not to go to university.

I have worked since then but have not had a glittering career. I believe I have so far been held back by the following:

1. Lack of a clear goal or direction
2. Low self-esteem
3. Complete lack of desire or ability as regards "office politics"
4. Two episodes of serious illness
5. Difficulty working effectively as part of a team
6. Lack of assertiveness
7. Needing to do things my own way and not being able to articulate why that was more efficient for me
8. Difficulty coping with change

and I could probably go on but that will do for now.

I am currently out of work and wondering what on earth to do with my life.

Academic intelligence is certainly not the only marker for success in life. Although I am not unhappy as I do have a husband and daughter who I love.

I'm gifted but did awful in school/overall academics. So many students and teachers thinking I'm "slow" or cognitively challenged... I can't say I fit the stereotype of a highly verbal and intelligent, geeky, almost-normal person. I'm not "geeky" enough to start with anyway.

I tried hard in school for a couple of years but showing off intelligence usually requires a lot of communication.

And not to forget: autism = not exactly the best neurobiological make-up to excel in areas of communication.

High IQ can be meaningless in terms of showing off intelligence if it's paired with autism, ADHD and other disorders.

I am a super genius, although I enjoy the term idiot savant being applied to me, but "artistic" savant is fun.

I don't share your opinion that academic intelligence is not the only path to success but that's just my stance. If you're intelligent and feel bored I don't know why you didn't go to a university (I'm 17 and just got out of GCSE's with similar results to you and university seems like the academic light at the end of the stupid tunnel) If you can't work in a typical office environment or can't be happy in one, it's never too late to join a university. But again, I suppose I have a rather limited perspective here.

I chose not to go for a number of reasons:

1. I had a bad experience at school (was bullied pretty much all the way through) and was worried it woulr just be another three years of the same

2. I couldn't decide what I wanted to study and did not want to invest all that time and money into something if I wasn't sure about it

3. It would have meant being financially dependent on my parents for another three years and I did not have a good relationship with them and was anxious what would happen if I failed in some way, especially after what happened with my A-levels

I have not ruled out getting a degree at some point. I would like to get some kind of further qualifications before I go back to work. I still feel like I haven't found my niche in the world though and am struggling to work out what I would enjoy and be capable of doing. I feel a bit stuck at the moment to be honest.

If I recall correctly Einstein also found school incredibly boring, I think he did pretty badly in school for many years and was accused of being an idiot. I wonder how his old teachers felt later on

However there isn't always a connection with being some kind of super-genius and finding school boring. I always found school to be the dullest form of torture yet created by man, and somehow I don't see me ever being considered the absolute best at *anything*

I have (had? hasn't been tested in around forty years) a very high IQ, around 160, but it hasn't helped me do anything special except sometimes surprise people. I do _not_ believe those numbers are "predictors of success in adulthood" as they were intended to be.

I agree with the statement that the whole IQ thing is flawed, but also:

There is no deserve here. People have the right to choose the course of their own lives. Who are you to say they're not doing something meaningful? Is it meaningful to them? Probably. Why should anyone have to live up to your particular standards of "meaningful" in order to "deserve" their own neurology that they were born with?

No, they're really not.

I'm one of those MENSA-level geniuses, and I did abysmally in school, dropped out of high school, and dropped out of college three times.

The MENSA thing I went to was a bunch of weird freaking geeks. Eh, but Phoenix is like that in the summer. My sister is a member, but I didn't join after visiting a meeting.

I didn't actually join. My father thought it was unfair that I could qualify for mensa and he didn't, so he nixed it.

I never felt I was really missing out.

I heard about a long-term set of case studies in which very young children's IQ and creativity index were measured using standard tests. These kids were checked in upon years later, in their 20s, 30s and up into middle-age.

As it turns out, IQ measured at all of these points had no correlation with "success in life" (measured as highness of position held in workplace, salary and satisfaction with job). On the other hand, children who showed higher creativity scores often times met more success in whatever fields they entered. Defining creativity is an interesting thing. To create something new, be it forming a business model or painting a masterpiece, it helps to have a different perspective. I believe that uncontestedly Aspergers provides us with that.

Perhaps that's why some of the most famously successful people in our day and age are aspies, not because all aspies are, but because given a person with the right drive, dedication and ability, the mind is predisposed to see things in a novel way.