I don't understand why some people are so hung up about their IQ score. Is IQ the only thing they think they can be proud of? Is it a way to act superior to others? The obsession with one's or one's families' IQ reminds me of the old saying about putting lipstick on a pig.
There. I said it. I'm sure there are a few here who will be offended. Ah well....
Well I'm not sure what my IQ score is... but I used to be very obsessed with it. As a student, if you did well in school the adults would praise you, put you in the gifted programme and tell you were destined for great stuff. As far as I'm aware many gifted children end up working ordinary jobs or even dropping out due to stress from high expectations. I didn't enter the programme, but my teachers often told me I was smart (I'm not sure if it was lip-service). As a kid, being praised made me happy. For me it defined my worth as an individual.
I do not know if I really was smart, but I did see 'dumber' people in my school who struggled with many basic questions. Being slow meant experiencing more hardship. I didn't want to be slow, I wanted an easy life doing the bare minimum and still coasting by. I took pride in knowing things without studying. What was the point of studying if I could just coast by? It backfired tremendously in the end because the material got harder and I lacked the study skills and work ethic to catch up. Ultimately, my dream was shattered. Perhaps a truly gifted person would've coasted by all the way through university. Perhaps I was an early bloomer and everyone has caught up. Or perhaps I was never smart to begin with. I would not want to live if I was dumb.
I remember a tutor telling me I was smart, probably because how quickly I grasped concepts, even though I forgot them the next week due to my laziness in memorising them. He recounted to me that he studied just a couple of weeks in university and did well. He was not the boastful type and rarely talked about intelligence in general, so I don't think he was lying. I could never achieve something on that level. I hate that I couldn't and probably never will. Because of my mediocrity, I'll be slaving away in a dead-end job just to get 3 meals everyday and a bed. I don't think I'm asking for all that much, I don't need to be rich, just have a stable and cozy life.
It was my experience in school that taught me being dumb meant having a difficult life, maybe even knocked down to special ed. I should've internalised the last lesson and learnt that hard-work is equally important. But to me, the point of being smart was to 'get' things easier than everyone else - at least in gifted people with a balanced cognitive profile (not disabled in some areas like processing speed or verbal intelligence)
I know that it's ludicrous to base my self-worth around a single aspect of who I am (if I wasn't just delusional). But it's not much different from being good at sports and being praised at it. Many of us want to cling to our perceived strengths and be proud of them. I wouldn't brag about such a thing either because I know how severely limited I am, and yes I know that my mindset is very naive
Sorry for the rant, but I hope that my explanation has shed some light on why intelligence matters so much to some people. Intelligent people are not worth more than their slower peers, but I do feel that they have an easier time navigating life
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