Why Didn’t We Make it Into Mensa?

Ever since I was a child I’ve heard about fellow humans with super intelligence joining the Mensa That is, an organization whose members are people who scored a very high level in some IQ test. I always fantasied that I would one day take that test and discover I had a super human IQ too and be accepted too, but growing up, no one ever subjected me to any IQ test of any kind thus my IQ level remains unknown.

Yesterday I decided to check if any intelligent people from Kuwait, or the GCC region, or the Middle East, might have made the Mensa list. Surely we have some super intelligent individuals amongst us? Its not like you can teach a child from an early age to become clever with high IQ, its a gift and you can either be born with it or not. To my dismay, I found no one on the list! Now, is that because we had not one person with a high IQ born in the Middle East region? Or is it because we don’t really care?

All parent’s and teachers seem to only care about is to teach a child to collect half a grade here and quarter of a grade there to become “The first in class” with an average of 30 students per class! So academic achievement is the cutthroat in determining the level of intelligence per child. This child knows math, therefore he is intelligent. This child can’t do math, therefore he’s stupid. I don’t think that’s fair, or true, for there are different kinds of intelligences. Is intelligence the same thing as IQ? I don’t really know! I do hope so though.

Now I went to check on Mensa’s website to see if there are any Mensa chapters around and the nearest one is in Turkey. In Mensa‘s British chapter though, I found out you can take the Mensa IQ test at home and check if your level of IQ qualifies you to join Mensa! I also found an iPhone app for the Mensa IQ test which of course I downloaded right away. I will use it soon and check how I would do in the IQ test. Afterall, I might have a very high IQ and wouldn’t know about it because no one ever bothered to test my IQ!

Did you ever take an IQ test? What was your score?