A Mid-Forties Butch Aspie
Makes Her Way
by MindWithoutWalls
(blog originally kept at WrongPlanet.net)
The Road from Here to There - Part 4
Assessment in Progress -
The Second Appointment
Composed on November 10, 2011
Okay, now I have a better understanding of how this is supposed to go. I really do get four appointments. The IQ test takes two to complete, so I'll go in again next week for the second half of that. The final appointment is to sum it all up.
Of course, in order to recount this week's experience properly, however, I must - you guessed it - FRET!!! It's my nature, I suppose. But this week's fretting is less awful, so don't worry too much. I can do plenty of worrying for all of us, I'm sure.
The IQ test involved fairly simple things. I arranged blocks to recreate designs depicted on several pages of the test booklet. I indicated which item I thought belonged next in the series on several other pages. I gave definitions to various terms and explained the relationship between various word pairings. I repeated strings of numbers in different orders: forwards, backwards, and from lowest value to highest.
On this session's string:
- The first fret - Egad! That seemed way too easy. If you know something's wrong, you don't give that as your answer. So, maybe I got a bunch of stuff wrong that I thought I'd nailed.
- The second fret - F*** I know I got the definition to one particular word right (checked my dictionary when I got home), but he seemed to mark his book with a different number than when I got other ones right. I think the problem was that I had more thinking going on concerning the word than he was aware of, and some of it leaked out into my spoken definition without his being able to discern why. Maybe he thought it was because I didn't really know what the word meant. The result may be that it has negatively affected my score.
- The third fret - Gee, what if it really was as easy as it seemed (the previous fret not withstanding)? Maybe next week is the hard part, and I'll be miserable when I see my dismal performance.
The thing is, I've always known a lot of what an IQ test measures is how well you take tests, and a lot else is how much you know about certain things that happen to be valued, while much of what people can be smart about is neglected. Besides, noted physicist Richard P. Feynman had an IQ measured in the mid 120s, which is, I believe, considered "high average" or something. That's not stunning, as IQs go, but look what he accomplished. It's just that there are circumstances under which a higher IQ seems desirable, and I don't want either to be scored unfairly low or to genuinely turn out not to be very intelligent.
For one thing, my girlfriend is in Mensa. Now, it's not that I feel I have to compete with her. And I don't think she'd be with me if she found me too dim, so she doesn't care whether or not I'm in it too. But I did always think it would be fun to join her there, not just as a guest if she ever went to an event, but as a legitimate member myself. She got in by way of her SAT scores. The testing I'm undergoing now might be accepted as proof of qualifying, provided my score is high enough. And the nature of the test seems to be one I can handle, so this is likely my best shot. If I miss, that's probably it.
The other thing that troubles me is probably much sillier, but I can't help it. I gotta be me. And I think this is the thing that bothers me more, given that it will have a greater impact on my life than a club membership. I know people with Asperger's can have varying IQs, but I'm concerned that an ordinary IQ will cause the psychologist to lean away from that diagnosis and more towards thinking I'm just weird or something. I've read that an unusually high IQ is common amongst Aspies. So, it may be an erroneous belief, but I still feel as though a higher IQ would support my claim that an Asperger's diagnosis is appropriate for me. Isn't that funny? I actually fear that I'm not smart enough for someone to think I've suffered from neurological deficiencies! Let's all have a good laugh over that one! (And let's leave aside for the moment the politics of connecting the concept of Asperger's with a term such as "deficiencies".)
Of course, I've also read that the Asperger's package frequently comes bundled with anxiety and depression. Yes, there are other reasons a person can have those two issues, including some things that have been part of my life already. But at least I can get a little relief if I imagine that their existence supports my case. So, let's hear it for fretting and misery! May they serve me well...
I shared my freshly updated stress with my girlfriend, and she was very reassuring. Bless her heart! What would I do without her? I'd have to sulk and stew all by myself. And I guess she'd be doing the same whenever her worries got her down. We're there for each other, as we have been for 11 years. Plus we have the cat and the dog, so we're well taken care of, with all that support. Even as I type, the cat is on my lap, helping. (I hereby attribute all typos to her influence. What a gal.)
The more I go on with this process, the better I cope. My sense of humor is returning, each past visit is less horrible in hindsight, and and each upcoming visit looks less scary as it approaches. I may yet survive this. And the psychologist seems not to be such a bad guy after all.
But this isn't over yet. There's still plenty of fretting to be done before this guy's final opinion gets rolled out. I'm only halfway to the conclusion of this journey. And then I still have to determine how to proceed from there, whatever he decides. Stay tuned...
The MindWithoutWalls Asperger's Syndrome Assessment Blog:
A Mid-Forties Butch Aspie Makes Her Way
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