Quest Series: Mensa Part 1

After doing some thinking during my lunch break... well, take out the word thinking and replace it with drinking, I thought of the brilliant idea for a new column for The Flow. After a few Bass Ales, the Quest Series was born. The name is kind of self-explanatory; one member of our writing staff will take on a challenge and chronicle the events leading up to his ultimate success or failure. Being the patriarch of this idea, its only fair that I also serve as the guinea pig; quite like Norman Osbourne/the Green Goblin. As my first quest, I will attempt to gain entry to the elite club for so-called geniuses: Mensa.



For those of you not familiar with Mensa, it is a very secretive group that only allows entry to people with an IQ above the 98th percentile. Allow me to post an excerpt from their official constitution. One might call this their mission statement.

Mensa "provides a forum for intellectual exchange among members. Its activities include the exchange of ideas by lectures, discussions, journals, special-interest groups, and local, regional, national, and international gatherings; the investigations of members' opinions and attitudes; and assistance to researchers, inside and outside Mensa, in projects dealing with intelligence or Mensa." [Mensa Constitution]

Basically in laymen's terms, the above paragraph states that Mensa is an organization for smart people to do the same things that they do everyday, except they don't have to keep looking over their shoulders for the occasional retard.

Are these people on their high horses or what? You would think an organization that sets out to align the world's population of geniuses would want to serve a greater good than to sit on their asses and talk about how stupid everyone else is. They don't even make any attempt to try and translate their intellect into swagger with the ladies. Despite my criticism, I will try to gain entry to this elite club of nerds and Asians.

After conducting some simple research, it seems the only way to get into Mensa is to take their official Mensa test, administered regionally. There's also the alternative of submitting evidence of your score on an approved IQ test. Since I don't have the latter, my choice is easy.

As suggested by the Mensa website, the first step is taking the Mensa workout. This quiz consists of 30 IQ questions that you are given 30 minutes to complete. I've tested at "genius" levels before on IQ tests so I was supremely confident, despite my lackluster GPA in college. The questions were a mixed bag of number sequences, word play, pattern recognition, etc. Some were very very difficult. In the end, I scored a 28 out of 30. That was about what I had come to expect, although I surprised myself with a couple of good estimates. Mensa's website, which I can only assume is run telepathically through the mind of a robot/supercomputer with artificial intelligence, predicted that I have a "very strong" chance at acquiring a membership to their band of social outcasts.

After what some would call an utter domination of the Mensa workout, I was riding high. I looked up when the next test sessions in the Washington, DC area would be. Unfortunately, I can't attend the next test, so I can't give an ETA as to when Part 2 of this series will be.

I should point out that Mensa has many subchapters. The subchapter that will be reviewing me is called the Metropolitan Washington Mensa. The leader of this cadre is a man known simply as Herb Guggenheim. I know what you're thinking... "Herb Guggenheim, what a sweet porn name." (could be made sweeter if it were Herb Huge-enheim) I thought the same thing. That is, of course, until I saw his picture. This guy couldn't pass for a pornstar if his name were Herpes Von Monstercock, not even a gay one. Without further ado...

Suuuuuuuey. Suuuuuu-Suuuuu-Suuuuuey! Damn that's a face made for radio.

Turns out they're actually a pretty active group. They go to shooting ranges, comedy clubs, drinking, etc. The catch is that you gotta hang out with droves of people looking like ol' Herbie up there. But hell, this is the Quest Series, and I'm setting a precedent. If I'm doing this thing, I'm doing it balls to the wall. Until next time...

-Carm