I don't feel like a genius....

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you're fast enough for what matters.

I was offered to be in the gifted program during 5th grade but didn't accept.

The times that I feel the least like a genus is when the IQ threads show up, because I know that 95% of the members here are more intelligent than I am.

I'm no genius, but I receive many more comments on my intelligence than anything else. I guess I would say that it's my most prevalent attribute.

It's wise people that know their capacity of knowing all is limited.. and that works the other way around too.

Don't worry about your intelligence. It will diminish as you get older.

You're reminding me of myself at your age. If I had the chance, I'd go back and batter my earlier self around the head a lot to get him to lighten up.

As for intelligence, how about this: once upon a time I was pretty good at maths (though I very strongly dislike it) but nowadays my skills have largely atrophied. Am I any less naturally clever now I can no longer do degree-level maths*? Was I any less naturally clever before I learned to do so? I don't think so. Could I pick up maths to that level again if I was beaten with sticks? Sure; my point being that to some extent skill at maths and similar exercises - IQ tests, for instance - is a learned skill. Provided you have an aptitude for maths, you can learn to be good at it - or excellent at it, or whatever. Your native aptitude still makes a difference, but you can't simply look at someone who is very good at maths - or, of course, IQ tests - and conclude that they're a naturally very clever person, because it's a function both of intelligence and learned skill.

Or another: at work today a colleague showed me some sample 11+ questions off the BBC website (maths and pseudo maths, much like an IQ test); he took the test and would've failed it. I took it and of course aced it - I'd've been highly embarrassed if I didn't! - but of the half dozen people I watched take that test most failed and no-one else got it fully right (including a maths teacher ^^). Are my colleagues stupid, not to be able to pass a test for primary school children? Of course not. Those questions say more about the background and mindset of the test administrators than they do about the people taking it; they were questions set with a heavy assumption about the learned skills people have and while they superficially measure intelligence what they really measure is whether one is familiar with that sort of pointless BS question. Whatever real intelligence is, it ain't that.

I often feel both intelligent and stupid. I'm slow in some ways (and regardless of the above, I don't have a high IQ, 'cause there's some aspects of those things I do badly at) but I do have some funky correlating s**t going on in my head enough to make me a proper clever dick. I've no trouble knowing and feeling myself to be clever, but equally well I know that cleverness does not truly lie in test scores and exam results. On the one hand I want to scream "yes, you're good at physics, it's the only real subject and nothing else is important!" but on the other I know that's a load of bollocks.

Hehe. Someone needs to work on their swear filter. Bollocks bollocks BOLLOCKS! Whu- simple things? I'll get me coat.


*well, okay, my degree is in physics. A bit more practical and less abstruse arty s**t than a straight maths degree would involve, but y'get what I'm saying.

I always feel like I can be more smarter than I am.

Madam if what you are saying is true your ability to escape all expectations and fly higher than us and yet not feel the intelligence I feel is a sign of humility, not that you are lacking something. Feeling that you are normal will I think be long thought of as an irrevocable sign of an ability to get along with the common men, even if you may outstrip them mentally by several degrees, and myself I am sure.

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you're not the only one.

I think a major part of this comes back to the idea of perception vs reality. I have a very high IQ as well(though I was never formally tested when I was a child) and I have noticed I can intuit things my classmates have an extremely hard time understanding. Yet I have never thought of myself as especially smart. It just comes easily to me.(ex. I "discovered" negative numbers when I was 4) You have to use theory of mind(admittedly not a easy feat for Aspies) to understand that NT's struggle with the same concepts you and I take for granted.