(Un)productivity Report and GLAT

First: half the afternoon has gone and I still haven't done much. I looked up what PCA is about and realise I can't even remember what an eigenvalue is. *sigh*.

Then one thing lead to another, knowing my attention span of a ferret, I looked up the mathworld news, and saw the Google Labs Aptitude Test (GLAT for short) and thought it's a good idea to look at that. Okay, it was interesting. But boy does it bring back some bad memories. It just reminds me of the Maths Olympics question.

In a way, I always think that if it's not because my chronic laziness, and my ridiculously short attention span, I can probably get in. But most of the problems involve this thing called patience or at least invovle me sitting there and think in a coherent fashion. My mind just works. It doesn't work in a straight line (I'm blaming it on the fact that I'm, alas, a female) and it just wander around until I bump into something. I like testing situation, coz it's the only time it'll go into panic mode and then my head go into autopilot and everything just works so well. It works like a charm, and I don't have to think (well, I don't, my brain does. It's hard to explain).

Okay, think I was off track for a bit... Anyway, sometimes I hate the fact that I'm not a proper genius. No no don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I want to be smarter. But being in this inbetween state annoys the heck out of me. I know I'm not quite, how do I put this, normal I guess. But at the same time I'm not really quite a genius either, and it's the fact that I'm stuck here that annoys me from time to time, especially when I'm surrounded by people who WILL be considered as geniuses.

I guess it's good enough that I am smart enough to do what I'm doing, and occasionally make it sound like I know what I'm doing. It's a very odd sort of feeling really. I don't think I can deny the fact that I am clever, considering where all the evidence points to. But not quite clever enough to actually see into things clearly.

Sometimes I don't even know where to place myself on this continuum of cleverness. I've done IQ tests, and depending on which test you believe in, my IQ would be somewhere between 72 to 150. (Granted that only one test showed my IQ lower than 120, and to argue that I have a learning disability is somewhat absurd if you think about the fact that I got my first class honour without doing much work.)

Personally, I doubt my IQ is anywhere close to 150, else I don't have to look up eigenvalue and got confused, which eventually led to me reading the GLAT and wasted a good few hours. Most test points to around 130, and I suppose I should be glad about that. But sometimes, I really really wish I'm either, well, normal (and, like the rest of the population, won't find my stupid maths joke quite that funny), or actually be clever properly, so I can actaully understand all this stuff I'm suppose to understand and not quite be the dumpest in the group. This whole being stuck in "clever, but not quite clever enough" state really sucks.