Mission To Mensa

This isn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

At best, I will forever label myself as a certified, card-carrying geek. At worst, tens of thousands of readers will bear witness to my failure.

When we first started tossing around ideas for our “Smartest People In Columbia,” issue, I suggested it might make a fun sidebar if I took the admissions test for Mensa and wrote a story about the experience. It was a silly, spontaneous burp of a thought that somehow made its way to the editorial budget for the issue. I was committed. Or should be.

Mensa is an international organization with just one requirement for membership: you must score in the top 2 percent on an accepted standardized intelligence test. There are more than 50,000 members in American Mensa, but you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that 1 out of every 50 people would qualify if they would just take the test. Among the privileges Mensa members enjoy are occasional local, regional and national gatherings, the opportunity to participate in special interest groups and community service projects, a subscription to the Mensa Bulletin, and some sweet discounts on car rentals, hotels, office supplies and insurance.

My first stop was at the American Mensa Web site, www.us.mensa.org. There’s a self-proctored home test available that, while not acceptable for Mensa admission, can give you an inkling of how you might score and could spare you the embarrassment of coming up short in front of an entire city. Unfortunately, deadlines don’t care about trifling things such as self-esteem and there was no time to waste on a home test. I filled out an online form and promptly received a cordial invitation to attend the next scheduled testing session for my local area. And by “local area,” they meant Kansas City. And by Kansas City, they meant Lenexa, Kan.

Now, I could make some joke about this being the only way they can get smart people to go to Kansas, but that would make me more of a smartass than a smart person.

The test took place in a small, over-lit conference room in the Lackman branch facility of the Johnson County Library. A friendly, not-at-all-geeky woman named Rhonda, the Mid America Mensa testing coordinator, welcomed me and the only other person being tested that evening … a man from Lawrence, Kan. Did I mention that this test took place right smack in the middle of March Madness? On this particular evening, Mizzou was going up against the formidable Memphis Tigers in the Sweet 16. The Lawrence-based Jayhawks would play the next day. My fellow Mensa wannabe and I made light of our rivalry, and lied politely about how we were rooting for each other’s team to do well in the tournament.

Rhonda defused our thinly veiled intraconference hostility with an offering of bookmarks and brand new, freshly sharpened Mensa pencils. No matter what happens, I’ll have a Mensa bookmark to save my place in whatever [Carolyn – draw a line through the next three words] byzantine political dissertation bodice-ripping paperback romance I’m currently reading.

The Mensa admission test is actually two tests. The first is the Wonderlic Personnel Test, the same test they give to potential NFL draftees to test their intelligence. To qualify for Mensa, a person must score in the top 2 percent on either the Wonderlic or the California Test of Mental Maturity.

The best thing about the Wonderlic is that it’s brief: 12 minutes to answer as many of the 50 questions as possible. I was feeling pretty good about things for the first six minutes or so, flying with the greatest of ease through simple logic and vocabulary questions. But as the question got progressively harder, my responses got … progressively … slower. I was on question No. 42 when Rhonda called time. I don’t know if that’s bad. I have a feeling it’s not that good.

The California Test of Mental Maturity was a battery of short tests, and “maturity” is not the first word that sprang to mind when I opened Page 1 of the text booklet and saw dozens of darling little drawings of animals, trees and tiny houses. I think I took this test in kindergarten. It was a lot of one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others comparisons. Rhonda walked us through a sample question. Oh, puh-leeze. I drove all this way to tell the folks at Mensa that a zebra is not like an airplane, bird and hot air balloon? My over-confidence was short-lived, however, as the concepts behind the pictures became more and more complex. Still, I’m almost positive I outperformed the average kindergartener.

We moved on through some math and vocabulary tests. My brain was starting to sweat but I knew the end was near.

Then, it happened.

The return of my old junior high nemesis: the story problem. A whole page of them. I took a deep breath and a wondrous thing occurred. Almost all the math I use in real life is in story problem form. Example: Sandy wants to lay tile in a room that is 24.5 feet long by 14.7 feet wide. Each tile is 18 inches square. How many seconds will it take Sandy to dial the number for Dave Griggs Flooring America?

When the tests were over, I said goodbye to Rhonda. I was so exhausted from my mental battle that I forgot to be insincere when I wished the Jayhawk well. Now, the wait began.

To help pass the two to four weeks between taking the test and receiving the results, I contacted local Mensan Charlie Talmage to find out what it means to be a member of Mensa. I envisioned gatherings highlighted by French poetry readings and lectures on quantum physics. I wondered if I should study up on the periodic table.

Au contraire, says Talmage, who isn’t actually French. The local group gets together once a month for lunch. One recent meeting featured a lively debate about which “Looney Tunes” cartoon was the best. Columbia Mensans, like Mensa as a whole, cuts across a wide swath of ages, ethnicities and careers. Talmage says the local group includes students, truck drivers, teachers, software techs … it’s not assumed you’ll have a Ph.D. pinned to your last name.

Talmage enjoys the get-togethers with other intelligent people, but he says Mensa membership can have its drawbacks. “When people find out you’re in Mensa, the next thing they’ll say is, ‘If you’re so smart, why …’ ” Why aren’t you rich? Why haven’t you cured cancer? Why can’t you fix the economy?
And maybe Mensans could solve the world’s problems, if only they could agree on how to go about it. According to Talmage, that will never happen.

“If 50 Mensans got together, they would have 50 different opinions on how the problem should be solved.” They would never reach a consensus, he says, because none of them would ever budge from his or her position.

Mensans are stubborn to a fault? Maybe I am Mensa material!

At press time, I didn’t have my results. They arrived a couple of days later, and as everyone who has ever waited for a college acceptance letter knows, a fat envelope is better than a skinny one. This was a fat envelope. I can now add Mensa member to my list of achievements. Since I’ve yet to receive any offers to join secret government think tanks, I’m not sure this designation will change my life, but it made my mom and dad proud. That’s reason enough to drive to Kansas to take an IQ test.