You're (Not) So Smart!

The last couple of days have been Busy—that's right, busy with a "B." Starting Thursday, I taught, went to a GSC meeting for LC, attended BWWC panels, volunteered for the conference, volunteered for the keynote, colored eggs with Andretta and Marlin, volunteered some more, attended more panels, and went to "Game Night" at Jennica's. I'm tired, yo? I'm guessing that this is what a professorship is like exept that colored eggs and kicking ass at Taboo! are probably not obligatory. Right now, I kind of feel like that massive brain blob from Startship Troopers except for one thing: Mensa.

Attending a conference is generally good for the brain. It helps kick-start one from the sluggishness of one's own scholarly work by showing—hey!—other people have ideas. Really fantastic ones! So I've been excited to see a few panels at the British Women Writers Conference, and I've been riding a little intellectual high from the experience as well. Then, last night, I met this friend of Jennica's from Mensa. During the course of playing Taboo!, we got to talking about Mensa. Apparently, there are a lot of ways to get into Mensa, but all of them include taking tests. Let me just say in Phoebe-from-Friends fashion that tests hate me. I missed being gifted by two points when I was a kid; I took the SATs twice and got a lower score the second time; my first GRE score wasn't high enough for my MA program (they let me in because I brought a fellowship); and the one time I remember taking an IQ test, I was in the double digits ( I can only hope this was an anomaly). But don't cry for me, gentle reader, I'm doing fine in my Ph.D. program.

Still: Mensa—what the hell? Why am I so jealous of people who get the official stamp of nerditude? Maybe because everybody wants to fit in somewhere, and I'm the kind of person who fits in just a little bit but everywhere. Jennica and Bartha the Mensan indicated that Mensa has its privileges among them being that it increases your "hot" factor. Case in point: Jennica said that, by Mensa standards, she's a "10." While I was considering this unexpected benefit, Bartha started a story about his former lover, who he referred to as "my former lover." That's really all I can tell you because I disengaged at "lover," mentally hyperventilating at the rare opportunity to sarcastically gut someone for the use of this term but trying to maintain a sense of decorum with someone I'd just met. At that moment, I realized where I stand mentally and socially, a fact that I don't need a test to confirm: my place...is with the smartasses.