I’m working with a psychologist who specializes in education to determine if I qualify to be officially diagnosed with dyscalculia. In case you’ve never heard of it, dyscalculia is the math version of dyslexia. Now that I know that this is real, I’d be shocked if the testing didn’t confirm my suspicions. Dyslexia is rampant in my family. I have all of the typical symptoms of dyscalculia, with one exception. (I am actually quite good at ‘big picture’ and ‘long-range’ thinking, including designing effective strategies.)
I was surprised recently when my mom told me what my childhood IQ test results were north of 150! It’s not that I have ever believed myself to be dumb, it’s just that I’ve never regarded myself as Mensa-level smart and still don’t. I regularly regard other people as being smarter than me, and I’m not suffering from a general lack of self-esteem. My grades have always been lopsided. I didn’t even break a 3.0 in high school, and managed a 3.5 in college despite barely passing remedial algebra and taking astronomy to avoid additional math courses! My SAT and GRE scores were so lopsided that my total scores were utterly uninspiring. Not even close to getting me into Mensa.
I studied history in grad school… and was great at that, with the exception of the portions of studying history that required memorizing dates. A typical mistake that I’d make is to be off by a couple of years when attempting to recall a historically relevant date/event. I vividly recall how one of my professors simply couldn’t believe that I got the date of JFK’s assassination incorrect on a test. Don’t bother asking me for the exact date spans for a war or the sequence of British monarchs. I’m a hot mess when it comes to those basic Jeopardy questions! Despite that, those three history degrees on my wall are real.
Anyway, this line of thought inspired me to look up IQ tests without math. I found a couple of online tests. I took this one with a wicked hangover, while sitting on the couch watching TV with a barking dog as lovely background noise. Seriously. I only mention that because I wonder if I would get a better score if I were to actually focus my full (sober) attention.
