Read Online Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties by Patricia Marx - Free Book Online
Authors: Patricia Marx
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Wechsler the night before will not give you an IQ higher than your cholesterol. But how could I resist? As a rehearsal for my psychometric ordeal, I decided to take my neurons on some trial runs by sampling several free online IQ tests. By
free
I mean that they cost money—not the tests per se, but the results (anywhere from $9.95 to fifty dollars, sometimes with bonus personality test included). A handful of outfits online offer the kit and caboodle without charge—and I completed as many of those questionnaires as I could tolerate. The items range from simple analogies (head is to hat as hand is to glove) to spatial puzzles that invite you to imagine reconstructing deconstructed polyhedra and then rotating them in order to determine which plane ends up next to which other plane, a task that makes my brain stand up and scream.
Please, whatever you do, don’t make me tell you again how I scored. If you’d like to revisit my humiliation, see the second page of the prologue.
The first time I was evaluated by a psychologist, I was about six. My parents were concerned because I still wet my bed. The psychologist watched me playwith blocks and showed me some inkblots. He came to a conclusion: “In my judgment,” my parents say he said, “your daughter is lazy and will never get into a good college.”
This time an affable young woman in charge of psychological assessment at NYU School of Medicine at Bellevue Hospital would superintend. The process, she warned me in an e-mail, could last five hours. “Try not to worry too much,” she wrote after I sent her a worried note. “We will make it fun!” This made me more worried.
It was a four-hour undertaking, and not as agonizing as I’d expected, but what is? I wish I could disclose the test questions, but because the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is copyright-protected, it was requested that I not reveal this information. Also, letting you in on what to expect would thereafter skew the average IQ upward, which would make me seem even more dim-witted (is it possible to have a negative IQ?), and that is something I need like a hole in my head. Another reason I can’t divulge the exact questions is that I forget what they are.
As long as you don’t tell on me I guess I won’t get in too much trouble by advising you to bone up on your block design. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to practice repeating series of numbers in reverse order—but you probablyalready do that. There’s also a mathematical game that looks like a Fisher-Price toy for eighteen-month-olds and involves strategically moving doughnut-shaped disks from one peg to another. In addition to these sorts of merriments, there is a seven-page personality test consisting of statements, a few of them startlingly kooky, to which one must respond (1) very true, (2) true, (3) somewhat true, (4) not very true, or (5) false. If you answer “very true” to the statement “Most people look forward to a trip to the dentist,” it means you are (1) high on nitrous oxide, (2) a dentist with a child in college, or (3) deliberately trying to foil the results. (The answer is 3, and this is typical of the sort of question planted in the IQ test to make sure you’re not answering honestly and to the best of your ability. So watch it.)
My apologies for this chapter’s anticlimax, but, just as I chose not to find out the results of my brain scans until undergoing the follow-up test, I will, no matter what my editor says, put off knowing my score as long as possible, or at least until my brain is wised up. In the meantime you might be interested to know that just now, when I took an online quiz in order to find out “what your name should be,” I was informed, “Tiffany is the best name for you. You’re charming and you rock those heels, girl!”
ANSWER:
Ethylene gas is what causes a banana to ripen. Bananas produce their own ethylene, but adding more causes them to ripen faster. Thus, after shipment, green bananas
free
I mean that they cost money—not the tests per se, but the results (anywhere from $9.95 to fifty dollars, sometimes with bonus personality test included). A handful of outfits online offer the kit and caboodle without charge—and I completed as many of those questionnaires as I could tolerate. The items range from simple analogies (head is to hat as hand is to glove) to spatial puzzles that invite you to imagine reconstructing deconstructed polyhedra and then rotating them in order to determine which plane ends up next to which other plane, a task that makes my brain stand up and scream.
Please, whatever you do, don’t make me tell you again how I scored. If you’d like to revisit my humiliation, see the second page of the prologue.
The first time I was evaluated by a psychologist, I was about six. My parents were concerned because I still wet my bed. The psychologist watched me playwith blocks and showed me some inkblots. He came to a conclusion: “In my judgment,” my parents say he said, “your daughter is lazy and will never get into a good college.”
This time an affable young woman in charge of psychological assessment at NYU School of Medicine at Bellevue Hospital would superintend. The process, she warned me in an e-mail, could last five hours. “Try not to worry too much,” she wrote after I sent her a worried note. “We will make it fun!” This made me more worried.
It was a four-hour undertaking, and not as agonizing as I’d expected, but what is? I wish I could disclose the test questions, but because the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is copyright-protected, it was requested that I not reveal this information. Also, letting you in on what to expect would thereafter skew the average IQ upward, which would make me seem even more dim-witted (is it possible to have a negative IQ?), and that is something I need like a hole in my head. Another reason I can’t divulge the exact questions is that I forget what they are.
As long as you don’t tell on me I guess I won’t get in too much trouble by advising you to bone up on your block design. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to practice repeating series of numbers in reverse order—but you probablyalready do that. There’s also a mathematical game that looks like a Fisher-Price toy for eighteen-month-olds and involves strategically moving doughnut-shaped disks from one peg to another. In addition to these sorts of merriments, there is a seven-page personality test consisting of statements, a few of them startlingly kooky, to which one must respond (1) very true, (2) true, (3) somewhat true, (4) not very true, or (5) false. If you answer “very true” to the statement “Most people look forward to a trip to the dentist,” it means you are (1) high on nitrous oxide, (2) a dentist with a child in college, or (3) deliberately trying to foil the results. (The answer is 3, and this is typical of the sort of question planted in the IQ test to make sure you’re not answering honestly and to the best of your ability. So watch it.)
My apologies for this chapter’s anticlimax, but, just as I chose not to find out the results of my brain scans until undergoing the follow-up test, I will, no matter what my editor says, put off knowing my score as long as possible, or at least until my brain is wised up. In the meantime you might be interested to know that just now, when I took an online quiz in order to find out “what your name should be,” I was informed, “Tiffany is the best name for you. You’re charming and you rock those heels, girl!”
ANSWER:
Ethylene gas is what causes a banana to ripen. Bananas produce their own ethylene, but adding more causes them to ripen faster. Thus, after shipment, green bananas
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