Men, Women, and IQ Perception

An article in Newsweek reports that men think they are more intelligent than they are, women think they are less intelligent than they are, and both men and women think that men are smarter than women ( http://www.newsweek.com/id/101079/page/1). I think I knew this subconciously, but now that it stares me in the face, I'm pretty irritated. Logically, I know that I'm smart. I have multiple proofs of this. Yet somehow, I feel that I am inadequate to pursue things that are well within my reach. For example, I went to school at a top-rate research university and was interested in getting a degree in cellular biology when I first got there. Into the biology counselor's office I went, excited about my plan. She took a look at my SAT scores and said, "you know, it really looks like you are more suited to the arts than the sciences." I left disheartened and did indeed spend my years there pursuing the 'softer' subjects. Looking back on it, though, it seems ridiculous that I wouldn't just pursue cellular biology anyway. My SAT math scores put me into the 96th percentile for math, meaning that my scores were likely better than most of the students in the biology program. The reason that math score wasn't higher is because I work through math problems at a slow rate and could never quite finish the math sections. (I don't subscribe to those methods of trying to get the right answer without having to think the problem through. I just plow through stuff the old-fashioned way: doing the problem, getting the right answer, and then looking for it in the column of possible answers.) I have since discovered that the school counselors were encouraged to deflect potential students from departments that cost them lots of money (science and engineering) and push them into subjects that cost almost nothing (English, language, etc.). Guess who was the gullible victim of this practice?

In my 10th grade biology class, we studied microbes. When we got to the lysogenic and lytic cycles of viruses, I had a great idea for a way to target specific types of cancers using these distinctive features. I went up to explain this to my biology teacher. "If that actually worked, someone would have figured it out by now." Again, I was disheartened. Wow, I took the word of a teacher who was not even competent enough to distinguish between meiosis and mitosis -- something that I ended up explaining to the class -- and who I KNEW was an utter idiot, even before the meiosis and mitosis incident. 10 years later, Time magazine featured a group of researchers who were having great success working on an incredibly innovative way to cure cancer. Loving all things biological, I read on eagerly. It was exactly the idea I'd had at the age of 16.

OK, I'm really not tooting my own horn. I'm a big, fat weenie is what I'm saying, willing to take whatever anyone says about my abilites and potential as the truth. What gets me is that, in the article, the researcher states that men of average and below-average intelligence 'think they are quite clever'. Yes, they do!! I would swear to it that the less intelligent a man is, the smarter he thinks he is (to a point). It's almost as though any odd and incorrect thought that comes into his brain is regarded as a brilliant insight. (I'm sure that this is the result of mothers who dote on their sons.) The bluster and pomp that usually accompanies these guys somehow blinds most people as to how insufficiently thought-out these insights truly are. Well, I don't suffer bombastic fools gladly. I've found that the best technique to make sure you never have to talk to these men is say something so simply obvious that they should have already thought of it. It's an effective method of keeping them well out of your way, even if they can be a bit antagonistic when your paths must necessarily cross.

Goal for my life: Stop being a weenie!