24 Back when I was an undergrad (and through my first year of grad school) the nagging question of ‘how do i stack up against my peers intellectually’ was a burning question in my mind. I’ve since recovered from this period of intense questioning, having settled quite comfortably into what exactly I’m good at and what exactly I’m simply never going to excel at. I can’t say I honestly know my IQ as I’ve never bothered to actually get a legitimate test. I’m quite certain those online tests give you artificially high scores to goad you into purchasing their ‘extended analysis’ so you can see exactly how much ass you kick. Flattery is just untraceable bribery, IMHO. What I’ve discovered is that I’ve completely failed at becoming E.J. Corey in mad synthetic technique. But that’s cool because there’s little point in becoming a second class E.J. when I’m already a first class ass kickin’ mofo named Kyle Finchsigmate – and as corny and bullshit as that sounds, it’s quite true.
It’s not that I’m necessarily lacking in anyway (IMHO) a sufficient degree of so called “raw intelligence,” though I’m quite certain I don’t have an over abundance of it, it’s just that I don’t see as much merit in it as I used to. What I do quite confidently have is a reasonably fertile imagination and this, I think, is more important than that nonsense raw intelligence data those stupid ‘test your IQ’ sites try to sell you.
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I think many people have similar experiences. I know I did. I was quick to realize, I’m not E.J. Corey ver. 2.0, but I’m also not like some of the morons we all occasionally work with. I’ve since found what I’m good at and have worked to become even better.
Since I’m a classical music dork, your post reminds me of an old anecdote. While in Paris, George Gershwin met Maurice Ravel (known for composing “Bolero,” which Bo Derek did something to in “10″) and asked Ravel if he could study with the French master. Ravel replied, “Why be a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?” He was right.
It’s way more important to be creative than to be a genius. Having a high IQ and doing nothing with it makes you as useless as someone with a low IQ who does nothing with it. It’s all in the application. And I believe that genius is entirely subjective anyway. Someone who might be a creative genius might not score high on an IQ test, but who cares? (I think Larry David is a genius, but I doubt he’d do well at mensa. Probably would piss everyone off there.) To use that old cliche, the proof is in the pudding, not the cook. You might not be able to escape your IQ level, for better or worse, but you can, at least, keep yourself from ascribing your self-worth to a number.
You left out hard work… without which nothing happens, and enough of which can sometimes overcome deficiencies in both imagination or IQ.
I would be tempted to pick the ‘average’ person who was a hard worker and genuinely interested, over a genius who could not reliably dedicate the time and effort. A lot of visionaries suffer on the follow-through.
You’ve been quite productive, on a Saturday.
Yeah, some people are just smarter then others and possess a higher form of intellectual facets then others, for science in particular, spatial IQ is quite valuable and some are obviously very good at taking the exact 3D geometric representation of an object rotating it in their minds while others can see merely a vague structure without any concrete details. There’s also the notion of raw brain power, and this probably exists also. Yep, some people are just better endowed and pretty much have it very easy when it comes to success driven by their intellectual prowess and live a totally different existence.
However, IQ tests are relevant strictly towards diagnosing retardation and the treatment thereof, getting a good score on a IQ test is going to get you into gifted programs; yet a lot of people in gifted programs have been put in to it by delusionally motivated parents. IQ is not a predictive measure of intelligence, it’s simply a criteria for admission into gifted programs. Intelligence can only be really measured by one criteria, and that’s the fruitfulness of one’s career, such as that of E.J. Corey, and Buckminster Fuller; he was in the same gifted program as that of William Sidis, as most of you probably know, the Sidis isolated himself from academia early despite reputed as having the highest IQ quotient ever.
By the way, this is totally going in my blog.
If spatial-ANYTHING is valuable in science, I’m completely fucked. I’m not the only one, though…
Well, it’s less important in organic, much more important in the physics and math field. Remember all of the symmetry representations and the associated concepts in Inorganic?
The single most important thing that makes me an indisputable genius is my uncanny ability to create unprecedented analogies amongst the seemningly unrelated phenomena. The capability to draw knowledge from various obscure sources – which I have an encyclopedic knowledge of – and to combine such random bits of information in my fertile mind while recognizing their hirerto-unimagined connections.
It is somewhat regrettable that world had not fully appreciated this rare quality of mine; obviously it is only matter of time before the long-overdue awards and honorary titles will be bestowed upon me.
or there is always the “evil genius” route. Then people must notice you. Of course then they put a 00-agent on your case. Then you’re screwed.
I am fully aware of this attractive career path. When I was a little kid and got bored of collecting bugs (the only part that I realy enjoyed was killing them) I realized that what I really wanted to do with my life. I wanted to become a misantrophe. Since these early years, my powers only increased and my outlook darkened.
I hate to agree with LaClair on this one, but any half-smart undergrad entering grad school could become a good synthetic organic chemist with hard work and experience.
The ability to creatively synthesize things from photoshop, Chem-3D and Angew is also a big help.
In his defense, it was a completely green synthesis.
i guess that was the true genius step – realising you could do synthesis without chemistry
I think his approach was very valuable to the comunity. He should write a step-by-step procedure paper and publish it in Angewandte. Something like “Remarkably Simple Method for Comprehensive Data Fabrication in Total Synthesis Of Complex Natural Products”
I am so smrt… I mean smart.
Science PhD-level performance requires a 120 IQ or better. Most IQ evaluations are both verbal and math. IQ as such is not wholly indicative of performance in grade. GRE/10=IQ. SAT has been gutted. The Severely and Profoundly Gifted require tests that are normed well above 100 IQ.
Uncle Al is a high autist – no sense of left and right whatsoever, no sense of direction (gets lost in bathrooms). Wore an analog watch to assign chirality. OTOH,
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/chiralan.htm
caused NIST to rewrite its commercial stereochemistry software. [6.6]chiralane has a perfectly tetrahedral chiral center defined by four rigorously identical groups in turn surrounded by four rigorously identical groups each, point group T overall. The carbon skeleton isn’t only chiral, it is mathematically perfectly chiral – and software screamed and died. NIST had a merry time recoding.
DO IT! Success is the only evaluation that matters. Management is an ass.
GRE is a horrible way to measure IQ. WTF does your present knowledge or arcane vocabulary have to do with your ability to learn? I swear I feel just as dumb as I did before I knew the definition of auricle.
i agree. chemists spend a good 4 or so years learning more useful long, obscure words than the ones that appear on the GRE.
I voted for imagination, but you also have to know crap. Do you know how annoying it is to ask the crystallography professor why the reciprocal space is the fourier transform of real space and get a non-answer, or, asking the inorganic professor if two improper rotations of order 6 product up to a rotation of order 3 and getting “I’m just a poor southern boy” as an answer.
grammar, and spellig, hopefully, are not, necessary skills;
I just came across this pic from paul’s chembark blog… best pic ever.
here’s the dude that puts both traits together:
http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/...../toste.jpg
His awesomeness knows no bounds.
In Organic Chemistry, we tend to forget about the importance of MEMORY. The best way to impress people and make everyone think you’re a freakin’ genius is to remember reactions you’ve only seen once, and 4 years ago, while recovering from a hangover. THAT will make people respect you, even if you can’t have any creative ideas and all your research projects are about “enantioselective additions of diethylzinc to benzaldehyde”.
That’s so true.
GRE and IQ the straight dope. Neehaw.
IQ is not the ability to learn or anything else in particular. Here’s what it is. When Binet started the whole intelligence testing racket he discovered that almost whatever the test that test correlated positively with every other test. When the tests that correlated the most with one another and were most reliable were taken from a host of trail tests and put together the first IQ test was born.
Each of you has as many IQs as there are IQ tests. BUT. All your scores will be close to each other in percentile terms.
The Raven’s Progressive Matrices, Stanford-Binet, Wechsler, etc. all correlate with each other and each is accorded the status of intelligence tests ONLY because of this correlation.
AND the SAT, GRE, LSAT, and all the rest have as strong a correlation with these self-described IQ tests as any one of them has with the rest. In other words, they’re IQ tests.