The Uncanny Fail #1

The Uncanny Fail #1

Hi everybody, Mary here.

So, as promised by the little announcement yesterday, here is the very first Uncanny Fail with a little story of mine. Please take this as a conceited, presomptuous post, because this is not the way I mean it. Anyway, here it is !

I'm A Zebra

(Or how my I.Q. of 135 ruined my life... forever)

So, yes, I think that I'm quite proud of this. I've always been considered by many people as a clever, smart, or intelligent person. But do you really believe that it's easy to be like that, a sort-of genius with the mind of a rocket ?

Did you ever think that being clever, or just having a high I.Q., is a privilege, a gift ? Not all the time, I'm afraid. This is the insight of someone who lived too fast for her own good and ruined her life forever... Yes, I'm Mary, nineteen, and I am a f*cking zebra.

(P.S. : I.Q. tests are very debated in the scientific community as it only measures the speed of the mind, not the actual intelligence of the person. There are many types of intelligence, the academic one, the emotional one, here is an article about the theory of multiple intelligences from Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences)

So, here's my story. My mother told be, quite recently, that I had been a clever child since the beginning : at the age of only 18 months, I could recognize letters on the carpet-plushie I had been given, at two, I could read syllabs, at four, read, at five, write. Even in my earliest memories, from the age of four or five, I could read the clock, calculate, know my numbers, and such.

Obviously, my mum freaked out, she believed that I was abnormal, she took me to a psychologist and I had an I.Q. test at the age of six. The verdict is given : 135. That's the number I will keep forever. I' m a genius, people say. I'm gifted, people say. I am a highly advanced child, people say.

Obviously, I can't deny that my state has given me quite a couple of advantages : being a brilliant student is something that people wish they could have. But that situation also ostracized me a little : having very few friends to no friends, not being understood by a society that looked too slow for me, and having a depression over an existential crisis since the age of 14. Having a mind that never shuts down and makes me think hard, even at 2 a.m., is quite messy.

Of course, I won't complain about the fact that I will probably use my brains to achieve goals that many people win't even think of. It's just that I disliked being called a genius, a gifted child, or even a higly advanced child. It's only last year that I've heard the word from a psychologist, Jeanne Siaud-Facchin, that I was... well, a zebra.

Why, you might ask ? Because like all people like me, we have a set of charaterestics, some of them being positive like our permanent curiosity, our creativity, having a broder sense of injustice and having the feeling to fight it, having older friends/talking to adults (you don't even know how many times I've ben called a teacher's pet), a sense of humour, an interest for complicated games, and our generosity (link *in French, sorry* about gifted children : http://wiki.zebras-crossing.org/doku.php?id=articles:enfant-surdoue), but also negative ones, real problems in adulthood and relationships, like introspection, thinking and interpreting all the time, a low self esteem - especially me lol ! -, having depressions, burn-outs or suicide attempts, taking meds, feeling solitude, isolation, and feeling different from other people when in relationships (link for gifted adults, *in French again, sorry for that* : http://wiki.zebras-crossing.org/doku.php?id=articles:adulte-surdoue).

But everyone of us is different and unique in their personalities, goals and ambitions in life. My example being that I am quite a cultural person, interested in the cultural field, but I ABHOR maths and science. I can't even understand any of that sh*t, despite being a great mental calculator.

Anyway, complicated life fos us zebras. If you feel that you can relate to any of these characteristics, you should probably see a psychologist that will have an interview with you and an I.Q. test. And I will conclude on this thing : only 1/3 of gifted people are brilliant academically. The second third has a normal scholarship and the last third is failing because they aren't diagnosed and are not fit for a normal scholarship, and thus, needs a specific learning method given by specific schools.

Being intelligent is not necessarily about having the widest knowledge of them all. KNOWLEDGE AND INTELLIGENCE ARE SEPERATE. It's about having a different mindset and understanding of the world, a different mind, that is not in any way or means "superior" to any others. THAT's why I am a zebra. Because I am just different. I am not superior. And having high expectations on me, hearing people around telling me that I have no right to failure, and this sentence ingrained in my mind forever : "Come on, you're THAT clever, you can make it right, now, can you ?", is quite heavy. Especially when you know that I've heard this speech since the age of 6.

I AM NOT SUPERIOR. NOBODY SHOULD CONSIDER ME AS SUCH.

I AM JUST DIFFERENT AND HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS.

When will people understand that ? For them, either I am a goddess or I am a monster. There is no inbetween. But YES, there is : me being human. Thanks for understanding that.

Okay, that's it for now, I hope that you enjoyed this post and I will see you very soon with another one, I hope !

And as usual, our last word : KIDNEYS !